I think **you** should chance me

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographic
US Citizen
Minnesota
Public, Government funded
Female
African-American
First Generation, overcame significant circumstances to be where I am today.

Computer Science

3.88 (UW) 10-12 ONLY I got a 3.2 freshman year due to my circumstances at the time.
top 1% class rank
32 ACT
4.59/4 (W GPA)

Coursework

1 AP, Four Honors, 15 College Classes, around 20 (or 60 credits) by graduation
Spanish 4 (would’ve been sent to AP this year)
Prospective math level: Calculus?

Awards

Maybe I will win a research competition this march.

Extracurriculars

Student Initiative internship, robotics, coding, DECA, and Debate.

Essays/LORs/Other

Strong LOR
Strong Essay

Cost Constraints / Budget
(High school students: please get a budget from your parents and use the Net Price Calculators on the web sites of colleges of interest.)

My family cannot contribute anything towards my education, only me. $0

Schools

Betting on Scholarship or financial aid otherwise I’ll have to go to my state college (University of Minnesota) I will be able to automatically transfer in regardless so that is my #1 safety (I can get into any MN state school. Because of Transfer Agreements! Yay :D)

Stanford
Brown
U Mich
FSU
UW-Seattle

These are all ‘hope’ schools :slight_smile: I have my safeties secured and locked down.

What are my chances? What other schools based on my stats should I be able to get into? Is there anything I should change for the 2023 admissions cycle?? If so, please let me know.

and for reference I am pretty much only interested in schools in bigger metro areas. I love the big city, and I’d prefer to get the hell out of the Midwest! Just looking for prestige, networking ability, and reputability, as well as good financial aid.

Thank you :smiley:

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Have you completed the NPC for the schools on the list? Have you completed the FAFSA? Is your EFC $0? Or are they unable/unwilling to pay the EFC? Being accepted but not being able to pay for it is worse than being rejected, IMO.

No one can predict acceptance chances at hyper selective schools. At best, your chances would be their minuscule chances. They turn away highly qualified applicants because they just do not have enough space.

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Consider Emory?

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Three universities on your list are publics who give very little FA to out of state students. You might get in, but it sounds as if there will be no way to pay for it.

As for Stanford and Brown, you don’t say much about why your grades were low. All colleges will be interested in those reasons. I am not sure how accurate your GPA is because you have posted two separate GPAs.

I think your app will get a strong look. I’m concerned about the lack of rigor in high school, but I suppose some of that is offset by your dual enrollment classes.

I think you need to scrap some of the public’s and add privates that meet 100% demonstrated need.

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Congratulations @rokuraaa on overcoming your circumstances and preparing yourself academically to launch into college. Now it’s time to learn as much as you can about how many great colleges are out there, which ones might be helpful to your budget constraints, and which of your preferences you’re willing to give up.

First thing first - how high is UMN on your list? I would assume the OOS public universities on your list are not going to get any OOS applicant down to $13K/yr. $13K is your (full) PG+DSLoan. Because of that MI, FSU and UW are probably going to be unaffordable. Assuming Stanford and Brown don’t admit, we (and you) need to know at what point are you going to choose UMN over a school that might get down to that magic $13K/yr (or less.) EDIT: if your FAFSA EFC is not $0 (zero) you will not receive the full Pell Grant and will have less than $13K available from PG+DSLoan your first year.

Of course, most of the T25 are meets-full-need institutions and will probably meet your financial constraints. And of course most students would be happy to attend, but the reality is 90+% of all high-stats applicants to those schools will not be given admission. The question you have to answer is what if schools ranked 80-130 are the ones to meet your budget? What if schools in suburban or smaller areas are the ones to meet your budget? What if the schools that meet your budget are not the ones you currently recognize as being “prestigious” (even if in reality they are prestigious to companies that will hire you after you graduate.)? What if it’s a smaller school, a Liberal Arts College that meets your budget?

Would you accept an affordable offer from Lehigh over UMN? Would you accept an affordable offer from Reed College over UMN? Would you accept an affordable offer from Manhattan College over UMN? Would you accept an affordable offer from Kenyon over UMN? Would you accept an affordable offer from Elon, or Rhodes, or Macalester, or U New Mexico (should be in your budget) or Loyola MD over UMN?

Go get Fiske’s Guide To Colleges 2022. It lists the top ~320 colleges/universities for Americans. It should be available at your local library - they may not have the 2022 edition but they should have the 2021 edition. All of the schools listed will provide you with a quality education. Spend some time reading about those schools and deciding at which point you would choose UMN over an affordable option.

UMN is a very good university, so you will have to decide how highly you value the opportunity to live and learn in a different part of the country. It may be that the school that offers you an affordable option is on the same prestige level as UMN and/or in a city with 100K people instead of a bustling metropolis.

If you’re a HS senior, you should hurry with the process of learning about more colleges. You’ll want to apply Early Admission to most of these schools and that deadline is as early as Nov 1 for many schools, Nov 15 for others, and a couple of weeks later for others.

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How would you pay for these schools? They don’t meet full need for all, and you aren’t likely to get a full free ride.

Do you qualify for need based aid? If not, the others won’t be affordable either.

It doesn’t matter what your parents WILL pay…it matters what the colleges calculate they CAN pay. Have you run a net price calculator for any of these colleges? Do that if your parents aren’t divorced, don’t own real estate other than your primary residence, aren’t self employed or don’t own a business.

You will only get the full Pell Grant if your FAFSA EFC is $0. Is it?

You say you have safeties all set…have you received full free rides already with acceptances to these safeties?

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Are you willing to share the section scores of your 32 ACT exam ?

Consider adding Yale University to your list as a reach.

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You have a very interesting story, and I think will be of interest to many colleges. The GPA needs to be explained in your application. Preferably also confirmed in your guidance counsellor’s letter.

Since you’re looking for prestige, good financial aid, and a big city, consider the following:

UChicago Odyssey Scholarship
Barnard
UPenn
Rice
Emory

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I think you misunderstood the Articulation Transfer Agreement. Usually the agreement is that any public MN school that ACCEPTS you will ALSO accept and transfer your college credits.
The first step is getting accepted. So make sure you apply and have the acceptance in hand.

You seem to have good grades, you should include all years 9-12 to arrive at your GPA.
Fill out your FAFSA if you haven’t already so that you can see your EFC,(expected family contribution). Once you have that, let us know and we will be able to help more.

As others have said,Out of State publics will likely be unaffordable and not worth the application, unless you are going for a school specific, high dollar scholarship.

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Congratulations on your achievements.

Please run the net price calculators on the websites of Stanford and Brown. You will need your parents to complete FAFSA, and CSS Profile where required, even if they can’t contribute towards your education. We need to know your estimated cost of attendance at the meet full need schools like Stanford and Brown, to help you.

Have you filed FAFSA yet? If so what is your EFC? Do you qualify for a Pell grant?

U Michigan and UW are likely not going to be affordable, so drop those.

You say you have your safeties locked down…what are those schools? A safety has to be affordable to be a safety.

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I agree with others that you should run the NPC for Stanford and for Brown.

I am not quite 100% certain, but my vague recollection is that Stanford will not care about your freshman year of high school. If I am remembering this correctly, this should help you. If the NPC shows it as affordable, I would leave it on the list.

Doesn’t the University of Wisconsin have some form of tuition reciprocity with Minnesota? If so, then it might be more likely to be affordable compared to other out of state public universities.

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OP Emory doesn’t consider freshman year grades.

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Agreed, Barnard College at Columbia Univ (in NYC) does look beyond standardized tests and grades to identify high-potential young women. If you have a compelling story about overcoming challenges, they might take notice.

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UMich does offer need-based aid to low-income OOS students; OP should run the NPC to see whether that aid would be sufficient.

FSU does offer some big merit but the chance of a full ride does seem dubious.

UW Seattle will be straight-up unffordable, plus odds of direct-admit to CS are terrible, so that’s a lose-lose.

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Yes, especially since they don’t consider freshman grades. Emory checks the big-city and prestige boxes. If OP decides to apply, the question is then whether to apply to main campus only, or maximize chances by leaving the option of the Oxford campus open (first two years on the smaller satellite campus that is definitely not urban). As long as it’s not ED, there’s no harm in applying to both.

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So, you’re a junior this year, correct? (“2023 admissions cycle”) Are you planning to apply to Questbridge? That seems like the ideal way to hit all of the high-prestige, generous-aid, super-reaches on your list.

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Questbridge is a good option if this is a low income family with a very low EFC.

We don’t know if the family is low income or if they are contributing $0 but might have a higher EFC. This is important info for this poster to understand. If the parents have the means to contribute but won’t, that is very different in terms of need based aid and things like questbridge than if the family is low income with a low efc.

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Oh, absolutely. OP should run the NPC for Stanford, to see a best case scenario in terms of need based aid. If that doesn’t produce affordable numbers, then we’re looking at a whole different application strategy.

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Congrats on your accomplishments!! Are your College credits from a high school program with high school teachers or on a college campus? That matters to the elite colleges you are looking at for full need based aid.

Giving us your 4 year unweighted GPA and your FAFSA EFC or where the Net Price calculator came to on a couple schools will help us help you.

If your EFA comes out to 0 or close to it then there are some good options to consider. The well endowed private schools will have more options as folks have stated.

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I think FSU for you is a safety and with OOS tuition waived. So it’ll be $20-22K a year. UW I can see but you won’t get aid. I don’t see Michigan, Stanford, or Brown as possible. As you are CS, you might look at a school heavily populated by men - RPI for example.

UMN is outstanding btw!!

There are plenty of schools such as American, W&L, and Pitt with diversity scholarships.

Assuming your EFC is $0, then you should apply to 100% meets needs schools. But run an NPC at a school like Stanford because just because your parents cannot or will not contribute doesn’t mean that the colleges don’t say they can’t afford to.

Even UMN will have a cost, etc…

Good luck.

Here’s Every College That Offers 100% Financial Aid (prepscholar.com)