@alexkayon:
there’s sticker price (what you pay if your family makes 200K+) and net price (what your family pays, depending on your stats and your parents’ income.*
Some colleges “meet need”, so, if they cost 70K and your family can afford zero, they offer you a financial aid package for 70k (including 5.5K in loans and a job where you’ll have to earn 2.5K but still they offer you 62K in aid…) whereas some universities don’t meet need so they may cost 40K but offer you only 10K in aid, or zero, and thus cost way more.
OOS public universities don’t have financial aid for non residents, so if you’re not a resident of that state, they admit you to be a cash cow for their budget.
Since you’re a California resident, UC’s should be affordable (and, for financial aid, take Room&board into account -CSUs are supposed to be first for the local area students who they don’t.)
Univ of Washington, Ohio State Univ, Purdue, Texas at Austin,=> WILL NOT be affordable.
If your family’s income is under 30K a year, considering your stats, you MUST apply to 100% meet need colleges. These will offer you excellent financial aid packages
Apply EA to Dickinson (by December 1st) and Beloit.
Run the NPC on St Olaf, Grinnell, Muhlenberg, Connecticut College, TrinityCollege, Trinity University (<- not the same :p), Occidental, Whitman.
You’d use CommonApp and check “fee waiver” and tell your guidance counselor to check it on their platform, too.
You can still add them to your FafsA (but only after you ran the NPC to see which of these would be the 4 or 5 cheapest.
NPC = Net Price calculator - what YOU will pay for each college. Each college has different criteria so you have to run the NPC for each college.
Examples:
https://npc.collegeboard.org/student/app/dickinson
https://wp.stolaf.edu/financialaid/net-price-calculator/
https://npc.collegeboard.org/student/app/grinnell
https://app.financialaid.ucla.edu/FASEstimator/
- I'm simplifying.