help with college choices

College Search & Selection
1

<p>My daughter needs to start her college apps and we are needing some advise. We moved to TX 12 years ago from the UK, where the college apps system is simple and the choice of colleges small. You have 4000 college to choose from, Yikes! </p>

<p>Our agi is around $130K but we came here with no savings, pension etc. so we are by no means well off. We are thinking we would not receive any need based aid so merit based aid is a must. My daughter is an all rounder academically but has no solid idea of what to major in...she has mentioned dentistry and petroleum engineering briefly and plan II at UT Austin.</p>

<p>gpa 4.39 weighted
class rank 9/702
4 APs, + 2 more this year, dual credits
SAT 2040 (will sit again)
ACT 31 (will sit again)
Editor in chief - newspaper
Captain - varsity tennis
President - Key club + hours of volunteering
Usual NHS and honors societies
3 UIL wins at district and regional in journalism</p>

<p>She will get automatics to UT Austin(no merit) and A&M(little merit maybe). She likes the idea of a nice campus, mountains, parks, beaches maybe. Over 3000 students. OOS okay. good variety of majors. Merit aid is very important as we can only afford about 10K a year at a push.</p>

<p>If this was your daughter what would you advise her?</p>

<p>Thanks,</p>

2

<p>Need-based aid, if you have no savings, is a good possibility. Consider private colleges as well as the TX publics; OOS publics are unlikely to offer her much aid, and in most cases, UT and A&M are stronger than surrounding states’ public Us. If she says > 3000 students, I’ll assume that means a preference closer to 3000 than 30,000. The U. of Richmond and Bucknell are park-like liberal arts colleges, > 3000 students, with strong aid programs. Rice would be a very worthy reach. Barksdale Honors College at Ole Miss is one of the top honors colleges in America, and she’d qualify for an Academic Excellence scholarship there, making it fairly reasonable.</p>

3

<p>^ $130K will probably be an EFC around $35K with no assets. That doesn’t match with the $10K you can afford. I agree that OOS publics will not offer aid for the most part. There are some that will like Arizona and Alabama. Miss is a good recommendation. Try this thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;