Hello college confidential!
I’ve been lurking here for years but now that I’m a high school junior I think I should start posting.
I go to a school in a low income community (overcrowded w/ 3000 students) and my counselors are not much help in the search for awards, scholarships, or advice.
As of right now, my stats look like:
Race: Arab/Middle Eastern
Income: middle class
PSAT 10: 1480 (PSAT this year coming soon) SAT: 1560 (780 math, 760 reading) SAT II: 770 Chemistry
GPA: 4.0 UW
AP so far: AP Chemistry, AP Calculus AB, AP US History, AP US Gov, AP Comp Sci A, AP Biology, AP Lang
(I will have taken every AP class at my school except for art. We do not offer many)
Rank: 1/710
Community service/ECs: Known around the community as a youth leader, over 500 hours with certification.
City Youth Lead commission, Key Club secretary and state committee leader, NHS member, Diversity Committee secretary, numerous summer programs including a very competitive/selective dialogue program at Michigan. Seasonal meetings with students with disabilities (throwing parties/field day for elementary school kids). Lifeguard at community pool.
I have a few more but that’s irrelevant at the moment.
As you can see, I have okay test scores and extracurriculars. The problem is that I’ve had to learn about and educate myself on everything I have done. My counselors are swamped with students and since we are not high achieving they tend to focus on the less apt students than the ones who can handle themselves. I am unsure what colleges to look for and I am really looking for any scholarships, awards, or other distinctions to apply for. I plan on going into STEM, specifically chemistry on a Pre-med track.
Thanks in advance!
The best scholarships are the ones provided by the universities themselves. Applying for outside scholarships doesn’t really work to your advantage because most are small and only work for a year.
You need to look at each school’s website and take a look at their NPC (Net price calculator) to figure out your costs. When you fill out your FAFSA and other information, be sure to check the box that states that you want to be considered for scholarships/financial aid for the school.
If you reside in California, you may qualify for Cal Grants. Otherwise, you need to look up your instate options.
First of all, 1560 SAT score is not an OK score. It is a strong score, and your will be competitive at any college in this country with that score. So take that out of your mind. With #1 rank, 4.0 UW gpa and 1560 SAT score, you’re a very strong contender. Now coming to your main question…Given your strong stats, I would take a two pronged approach:
- Look at some of the top colleges in the country (e.g. Stanford to the Ivies). As @“aunt bea” said, they are some of the best options when it comes to need-based aid. Most of these have strong STEM programs, especially sciences. Research and see what type of environment you would prefer…location, core/open curriculum, weather, social scene, etc…
- Look at colleges with strong merit scholarships (e.g. Vanderbilt, Duke, Emory, Rice, Wake Forest). Again, try to narrow it based on your environment preferences. If you’re keen on getting financial aid (merit), you may also want to look at schools that offer automatic scholarships based on stats (e.g. University of Alabama).
Of course, you will have to balance the list with targets and safeties. I think you can do that after you have done a little more research on the above two.
BTW, congrats on your strong performance in high school!
Given your scores so far, it’s not unreasonable to think you’ll have a shot at national merit. In that case, your safety schools might be places that give big scholarships to NMSF.
Go spend some time in the Financial Aid Forum to read up on that part of the process.
First of all, as previous posters have stated, you have outstanding stats so congratulations. In that area, you will be quite competitive for the most selective schools. However, many others will be competitive too (amazing what you kids can do today!) A significant differentiator at that level could well be your leadership / service activities and how you package that. Your essays will be a great opportunity to bring depth and insight to your character. Think about why you do the service work, how has it helped others, how has it made you a better person, where do you want to take that, and HOW THE SCHOOL WILL BENEFIT BY YOUR PRESENCE!
Assuming you have your pick (which is quite possible), search the web for merit based scholarships and universities that provide the most merit money. Several top schools (non ivy league as they don’t offer merit) offer full scholarships to the top 1% or 2%. They typically draw from the kids who would otherwise attend HYPS. Great for the school to win that quality kid and great for the kid to obtain a scholarship worth $280k at an incredible institution (Duke, Vandy, Wake Forest, BC, Richmond, Emory, etc.) Many of these schools have moved to a “need blind” position where, they will meet 100% of demonstrated need and not consider that need in the admissions process. Because of that, many kids gets need based aid and very few get merit (non need based aid). You have a very good shot at merit but it will be very competitive for that much money.
Regarding your essays, be interested and interesting. Show them how you’ll change the world. Best of luck!
The money coming from the schools themselves is by far the biggest and easiest to get. Focus on the school money (and not outside scholarships) for now.
How “middle class” is your family? Annual income of $50k, $100k, $200k?
Schools give out money for financial needs and also for merit.
The tip top schools do almost entirely need-based aid. As you work your way down the USNWR rankings (about #20 or so) merit aid gets introduced.
At the HYPS level, you can get need-based financial aid up to about a family income of $275k or so. Once you get a bit lower, the need based aid runs up to about $200k.
If your family income is such that need based aid is possible, you should target those schools (there’s only about 50 or so of them) that (i) are need blind for admissions and (ii) meet full need. (ii) is the most important thing. Good thing for you is that the meet-full-need schools tend to be the top schools.
If need aid isn’t in the cards, then you need to target merit aid schools. The basic game is that a kid who is Ivy caliber can get a large merit award (i.e. a discount) by attending a lower ranked school. For merit aid, the most you can typically expect to get is full tuition, meaning your family still has to pay the $15-20k for room and board.
There’s a very few true full ride merit scholarships (Jefferson at UVA, Morehead at Duke and UNC) but those are extremely competitive, and so hard to rely upon for planning purposes.
Give us some more info and we can probably fine tune the guidance on this.
Excellent summary of how merit aid works!
One more thing.
The most important/helpful thing for right now is to talk with your family and figure out a realistic budget for your college. Are they willing/able to pay $10k a year? $25k a year? $40k a year?
You can figure this all out pretty quick once you know (i) your budget and (ii) how much need based aid you could expect based upon your family income.
Run the college board EFC estimator with your parents, and save a copy of the data you input. Then you will have the information you need to run net price calculators at all of your colleges.
Thanks for all the helpful advice!
My family income is in the ballpark of $100k, so I can’t really afford HYPS without some sort of aid. Thanks for opening my eyes to this stuff and giving me an idea of how much I need to pay. My essays will be pretty strong as I myself enjoy writing and I have a very good editor in mind. I just really keep hitting a wall when trying to look for any form of national recognition or scholarship to improve on the ECs front. Thank you guys again for introducing me to many colleges I hadn’t even thought of. I am applying to Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, UChicago, and some safeties that have full merit tuition covered. Is there anything specific I can do for those schools?
Are you a US citizen or green card holder? Michigan may not be affordable, they don’t give great aid to OOS students over a certain threshold.
I was born in Michigan and still live here actually, so the tuition there isn’t super crazy but still is kind of a hurdle.
HYP will give a lot of aid to a student with a family income of 100k (like more than 50% tuition)
You are going to have some good affordable options.
As just one example, let’s look at richer-than-god Harvard. Which is one of those “meets full need” schools that you’ll want to be targeting.
$100k family income, $100k in family assets (but not including home equity). Family of three, one kid in college.
The Harvard NPC says you get a need-based scholarship of $60,000.
That’s probably less than what UM in-state would run you (which of course is an outstanding cost/value proposition). Also probably less than what you’d pay at a private college which gave you a full tuition merit schollie, since room and board typically runs $15-20k per year.
For you, the problem is more likely to be getting into Harvard. Not paying for Harvard. Maybe you can work on discovering a cure for cancer in your spare time? : )