@Mom2aphysicsgeek Yeah she actually started research in her first semester at UMich, but we know it’s really competitive and stuff so we can’t count on it for sure
@thumper is correct. The advice is very good and you would be wise to listen to it. It is a solid path to graduate school.
Oh come on. If you were at MIT, we would not be having this discussion. At all.
Like I said, younneed to realistically look at YOUR. Admission profile. It’s not a strong one. Work with what you have, not what you wish you have. Pick realistic places to apply…that you can afford.
I live in New England. UVM is a fine school. But it’s just a flagship university. Nothing more. You are making it sound like UVM is some special place and if you stay there you will be able to transfer anywhere you want to go.
This is simply NOT TRUE. It’s a fine public university. Your courses will transfer. But your courses from a community college will transfer too.
You are being very penny wise and pound foolish.
How much In loans will you have for just this year?
@thumper1 I posted it previously, I think it’s 5k
And yeah we know UVM is not that great compared to MIT but top 200 vs top 500 or unranked really doesn’t count for anything? I mean yeah the courses should transfer from many places but maybe it’s more rigorous at a top 200, Idk. Isn’t there a reason for the higher rank?
Btw I’m not really that concerned about the rank myself but my mom is and I just don’t know what to tell her
She thinks a good grade from a higher ranked school is worth more for the reasons I mentioned
Where is your dad in this discussion?
@thumper1 My dad is kind of clueless, Idk he was never really involved in school stuff. He himself never went to college and just kind of does his own thing. My mom basically runs the household.
http://www.eckerd.edu/news/index.php?f=detail&id=3589
Eckerd has a Quest transfer scholarship for science students, $8,000 a year. Finish out the year at UVM and then research transfer merit opportunities in FL (or elsewhere if feasible).
Show your mom that Eckerd has produced several Goldwater scholars, maybe it will make her “approved schools” list.
You really need to seek out the best opportunities for you.
You need to talk to admissions yourself. Ask if UVM is better than a FL CC. Within the state of FL, articulation agreements might work in your favor. If that is true (I am not in FL, so I do not know. But some states guarantee admission to 4 yr universities with a certain GPA) that could work in your favor. Your high school record will hurt your admissions to any 4 yr school requiring them.
we are all responding as if OP’s family was rational about finances. It’s not (for instance, OP cited his mother paying the bills by winning at the casino… an unreliable, irrational process if there ever was one). His mother places a higher premium on keeping up appearances than on debt. Therefore, she’d rather have her son at an expensive flagship OOS than at a lower-ranked, cheaper college. She’s the one paying so OP has to conform to her wishes, as financially unsound as they appear.
Another caveat is that OP, by his own reckoning, has no knowledge of the family’s finances. It sounds as if the family is freelancing, perhaps real estate agents (the mother may have sold 2, or 4? houses). There are many unknowns, including the fact OP’s family may not make 60K (OP mentioned that perhaps his mother made 5K from selling houses, which shows the numbers he puts here are not reliable.) The real numbers, the numbers given by OP on his thread, and the numbers given to FAFSA may all be different.
While I would strongly encourage this OP to apply to USF, at least (FIU is actually more selective than FAU and apparently neither would be acceptable) plus a few universities including Eckerd, Stetson, Rollins, etc, as those are reasonable, plus FSU and NCF on the off chance he might get in, I think a “sleep away, OOS” university that can be spinned off as higher ranked will be more palatable to OP’s mother than a FL college. Therefore, if the goal is to transfer to a cheaper school, we need to find OOS universities that cost less and that OP’s mother will agree paying for. Since UVermont is one of the most expensive public universities for OOS and is ranked in the top 100, there should be plenty of public universities with similar or higher ranking that cost less. Hence, win-win: an acceptable university for OP’s mother, and less debt for all.
As for transferring: if your goal is to transfer to FSU, you can join TCC2FSU and be guaranteed admission. You can attend Santa Fe CC and have 2/3 odds of getting into UF.
If your goal is to attend a university in the North, UVermont will serve you well. Your credits will transfer fine. Credits from FIU to transfer to another university would have transferred fine too but that’s water under the bridge. Yes, you’re right, the course content is more thorough at UVermont and the students’ general level better than at FIU, but an A is an A.
Steps:
1° find universities where you can get admitted that are ranked at least like UVermont or better (this isn’t super hard)
2° find universities where your net price as a transfer will be lower than UVermont (not as easy)
3° “sell” those universities to your mother
In short, worry about your mother’s reaction ONLY AFTER you’ve been admitted to some universities AND have received the FA package.
For reference, universities that are ranked as high as UVermont and cheaper include:
UAlabama
SUNY Buffalo
SUNY ESF (you share a campus with Syracuse at public prices)
SUNY Binghamton (reachy)
University of Iowa
UMiami-Oxford (your mom may like the fact there’s “Oxford” in the name)
UDelaware
Virginia Tech (reach for you)
UMinnesota, Twin Cities
Pitt
UNC Asheville
St Mary’s Maryland
SUNY Geneseo
Rowan
Truman State
University of Northern Iowa
Grand Valley State (this is in MI; you could sell it to your mom as a stepping stone to UMichigan)
UNCWilmington
Appalachian State
UMinnesota-Morris (in case you don’t get into UMN-TC; no OOS tuition but I don’t know if there’s FA; after a year you could transfer to UMN-Twin Cities and be eligible for transfer scholarships, as long as you do well)
SUNY New Paltz
U Wisconsin La Crosse
SIU- Edwardsville
SIU - Carbondale
U Wisconsin- Eau Claire
The last ones would be harder to “sell” but are the ones where you’re most likely to get in.
@MYOS1634 Thanks for the recommendations
Also my weighted HS gpa is 4.6 if that helps, I only wrote my unweighted
I know UMich considers unweighted from what my sister told me but how are my chances for FL schools with my weighted GPA?
Also what if I retake the SATs
Yes, that weighted GPA helps for all FL universities, and mitigate your very average SAT score. It also shows a very rigorous curriculum - did you prepare IB or AICE exams?
Yes, you should plan on retaking the SAT since you’ll be a freshman transfer.
4.6 on what scale? You stated that you took numerous APs. Which APs and what were your scores? What classes did you take 1st semester and what were your grades in each subject?
@MYOS1634, I am sorry, but how is U Alabama and U Pitt cheaper OOS than UVM with merit? OP said that he pays $5,500 and parents $24k at UVM. That’s about $30k net price.
What is UA tuition, fees, r&b OOS without merit? And Pitt? I know Pitt is at least $40k. He would not get any merit there.
Also are SUNY’s under $30k OOS? Even if he looked at the list of schools under $25 k OOS that would only save a few thousand a year. The family supposedly has an EFC of under $1,000.
If the mom continues to be unreasonable about Florida schools both kids might end up with debt and no degrees.
Who is taking out these loans? Students or parents?
The sister needs to graduate on the four year plan. If she wants to do research, she should look for a paying job doing research. Or she could apply to grad programs and pay herself…and do research there.
The OP needs to think realistically about his options.
I wonder how a person can go from a 2.7 unweighted GPA to a GPA above 4.0. The OP needs to know…many schools will compute his GPA using their own formula. And also, many schools don’t look at weighted GPAs computed by the HSs because the formulas for computing these vary so much.
That is why I asked about on what scale. The only way I can imagine a 4.6 would be on a 6 pt scale.
ETA: The sister could take more hrs per semester and apply for an REU for the summer. Applications just opened up. (I know bc my own physics major is working on them over the break.). That way she could push to graduate on time. She could also take a couple of humanities courses this summer while working an REU. (There are lots of online options these days.)
This student GPA was not sufficient to qualify for any level of Bright Futures. This implies to me that this GPA is not sufficiently high for schools like Vanderbilt, and Michigan…and most any other school that guarantees to meet full need.
There aren’t any suggestions we can make to solve this problem. He doesn’t want to go to any of the schools he’s qualified for ( he would not have been admitted to UF or FSU out of high school, didn’t get in at New College, rejected all the other perfectly fine schools as not good enough for his mother).
His question is whether there are scholarships available at high ranking schools that will be cheaper than attending UVM. No, there arent. There aren’t independent scholarships available either. There are cheaper schools, mostly in florida, but he doesn’t want to go to those.
If he can get in at Michigan, great. He thinks he’ll get the same deal as his sister. Worth a try but none of us know because we don’t know the finances, don’t know the gpa, don’t know if he’s thinking of transferring right now, after freshman year, after sophomore year (sounds like sister did 2 years at another school, although I hope it wasn’t a low rated Florida school! because that couldn’t possibly have worked out as we’ve suggested them and OP has said they don’t work out).
FIU is a good school. Several of my daughters’ friend attend. They were good students, not outstanding, but good solid students (probably Bright Futures eligible, higher gpa than OP’s). The FA was generous, overall costs low, and they are happy there. Their parents were more concerned with a good education than rankings in a magazine.
I don’t think there is any convincing the OP that he’s spending more than $5000 per year on his school.
Typically, the Florida system means AP/IB/AICE classes get +1, Honors classes get +.5. When high schools don’t calculate with this system, the Florida publics recalculate GPA with this method.
OP, is that your situation? Is your scale 5 or 6? 4.6 out of 5 opens up a lot of Florida schools, but 4.6/6 doesn’t.
(I agree that going from 2.7UW to 4.6W seems unlikely with that scale, but a student with a lot of AP classes in addition to AICE would be able to stack a lot of points.)
I don’t know if UA, Pitt, or SUNYs will be cheaper than UVermont for this student. Perhaps he can get similar Pell and SEOG from them, and since they’re lower cost to start with, it may work out.
The family’s currently paying 30K for UVermont. The SUNYs at least should be cheaper - direct costs are 32K OOS and with Pell and SEOG, this student would save 6K compared to UVermont, without any scholarship from the university.
A difficulty will be for OP to be admitted to SUNYs acceptable to his mother.
Thumper: I agree, neither Vanderbilt nor Michigan are realistic. The odds are basically nil (I’ve posted this three times now but OP keeps speaking of those, so I’m not wasting my breath repeating it). Even FSU is a reach and OP’s mother wouldn’t even accept that.
However, the test score threshold for Bright Futures has become very high even for the most basic award, considering it’s supposed to help students fund their education. The GPA requirements are not onerous and OP met that, but OP doesn’t have 1170CR+M, which only 25% students achieve nationally (and fewer in Florida, meaning that about 80% HS students in Florida are excluded from state aid, regardless of financial need.)