D27 would like help building college list as she is only familiar with IVYs and Flagships
Her stats so far are:
GPA 4.0/4.6 uw/w
Rank 1/120
Competitive Private HS
AP Gov & Politics - 5
PSAT (10th grade) 1480
Prac ACT 32
Language Latin & French
ECs:
3.5 yrs Var Swimming (not D1 material)
yr round swimming
Summer Lifeguard
Model UN - leadership
French Club
not so much CS due to COVID
Future sched:
11th grade 3 Hon classes, 3 APs
12th grade 1 Hon class, 5 APs
Intended Major/minor: Poli Sci/French
future law school plans
Eligible for some need-based aid and TEP
Region: NE or CA, she’d like a city or reasonable distance to a city
Leans left (this is important)
No hooks (white, Middle Class, Mid-Atlantic)
Her list so far:
Brown, Columbia and USC!
We think she’d do well at LACs (but we are biased toward LACs)
FYI, Brown and Columbia on the same list is a little odd (except for the people who put all 8 on their list). Have you run any Net Price Calculators to see if the amount works? I don’t know what TEP is, but you need to understand if it will just reduce institutional awards. This could be school dependent.
Re: Brown & Columbia - IKR? but she has not actually been to any of them so I think it’s the location of Columbia and Brown’s lefty vibe.
I’ve run every net price calculator out there. She knows our financial limitations could knock out all the IVYs. But she wants to try and I am ok with that. But there need to be other REAL options too.
TEP = Tuition Exchange Program (DH works at small LAC) (list of about 600 schools - Award is based on the IMPORT and the EXPORT. She almost definitely be approved for export because of her stats. Some IMPORTS only grant the aid to 10 - 20% of TEP applicants (e.g. USC); you can be given award at some schools and not others depending on who knows what? ~$40K/year for 8 semesters. Some schools will stack aid (e.g. USC) and others won’t.
American and GWU are both TEP schools and definitely not for her (she did not like AU). We will visit Georgetown this year. She thinks she might like Northwestern & U Chicago but that’s name recognition.
AU was too disjointed for her. Didn’t feel college-y enough. I suspect GW would be same.
If we got TEP money, yes, those would be affordable. I’ve read on a CC TEP thread that some kids turn down TEP money because they get enough merit aid that it comes out even. So I’m looking to mix TEP & not TEP with REACH, MATCH & SAFETY.
We are visiting Brown, Connecticut College (TEP), Wesleyan, Amherst, Skidmore (TEP), Lafayette (TEP) and Dickinson (TEP) in August.
Your list has a lot of overlap with D20. If she likes Lafayette, I would suggest maybe Colgate. D is not into Greek life and isn’t a partier but she is heading down the path of a 4+1 IR program at the Geneva Institute. She was moving around in the area where Poli Sci/Econ/History connect and has a strong background in French, which is required for the study abroad portion as well as the Masters portion. Might be something your D is intrigued by. They also just redid their whole FA/tuition plans to a sliding scale based on family income, which is also intriguing.
You should wait a bit before you start focusing on specific colleges - a lot can happen during junior year which can change opportunities and affordability. As young as she is, her interests can also change.
I can say that the opportunities and possible colleges that we could have considered for my daughter when she was finishing sophomore year were very different than those which were possible when she finished her junior year. Moreover, it was during her junior year that she decided on her major, or more correctly, in the summer between junior and senior years, when she worked in a lab.
Also, considering that your D27 got 1480 on her PSAT 10, I would say that there is a very good chance that she will score high enough on the PSAT/NMSQT to qualify for NMSF, and from there to finalist, even in a place like New Jersey. This opens up a new set of schools which will be affordable.