<p>UC's (Safety's):
UCLA
UC Berkeley
UC Irvine
UC San Diego</p>
<p>Common App (if not matched to QB)
Brown
Cal Tech
Columbia
Cornell (Maybe)
Duke (Maybe)
Dartmouth
Harvey Mudd
Yale
Williams
UPenn
Harvard
USC
Princeton
Stanford
MIT</p>
<p>Honestly, I would probably be comfortable with any of the schools I have listed. Also, because I am low income, I'll receive a lot of financial aid, so no worries there. Should I cut down a little?</p>
<p>Yes. Be selective and apply to the schools that are right for you. It should be maybe half the number on your list. This topic has been been discussed every year.</p>
<p>If you are indecisive and do a bland, generic essay about why you want to attend a school, it may show though. Research the schools in depth, see which are right for you for a particular reason, and narrow it down. For instance, Harvey Mudd is way different than, say Cornell, even though both have great engineering opportunities.</p>
<p>Saying you’re low income and will therefore qualify for a lot of FA may well be setting yourself up for a very nasty set of surprises come next April. Have you calculated your family’s EFC and compared that to what your parents are willing to pay? Are you focusing on schools that either meet a high percentage of need and/or will give a lot of merit aid to kids with your stats? </p>
<p>On a side note, the college selection and application process requires focus and engagement. In your posts, I detect a degree of nonchalance that will not serve you well. </p>
<p>Whoa yeah. I would pick 7 at the most. You still have some time to narrow it down. Maybe pick two or three from each catagory. The more research you do and the more visits you go on (if you can) the easier it will be!</p>
<p>You say you’re low income, so do you realize how much app fees are? You may get some help with them, but the ivy schools averaged about $80/app last year.</p>
<p>I believe that you get a number of free applications through QB, if I am not mistaken. Normally I would say cut your list in half, but with financial aid being required, my family is casting their net wide as well, and will have 13 schools as our total. Luckily the UCs require no additional work for the application, and you have already done a great deal of work for the QB apps.
I do recommend figuring out why you like a particular school. Do your research and a few may fall off the list naturally. Good luck with QB! Maybe you won’t have to worry about these lists after all.</p>
<p>How indecisive about major and career are you? If you are very indecisive, you may not want to go to schools which emphasize specific areas while maintaining other subjects only for breadth (meaning Caltech and Harvey Mudd, as fine as they are for STEM majors).</p>
<p>In terms of financial aid, generosity varies between schools. Make note of how much net cost after non-loan financial aid will be at each school.</p>
<p>Your safeties should be schools that you will get admitted to and will have an affordable net cost after non-loan financial aid for you. A community college is an obvious safety in this respect, and can be a useful option for an indecisive student, since there is much less financial and institutional pressure to decide on a major within two years. However, the disadvantage is that academic opportunities for an advanced student are limited (no junior/senior level courses that advanced students in four year universities commonly take as freshmen/sophomores). You also then have to apply to transfer to a four year university to complete your bachelor’s degree.</p>
<p>To reduce your list of schools to apply to, consider your safeties. Remove any school that you would not choose to attend over your safeties. I.e. if community college, UCI, and UCSD are your safeties, remove any school that you would not choose over one of these schools.</p>
<p>Also remove any school which will not be generous enough with non-loan financial aid to make it affordable for you. (Ask on the financial aid forum and check the schools’ web sites.)</p>
<p>Maybe I should have clarified more, but I thought QB would give it away. I AM LOW INCOME. I don’t have ANY substantial amount of money. My single parent is unemployed and for the past three years, our EFC is an automatic zero. I am applying to top schools because they give very generous and need-baised aid in which I require. Believe me, I would love to go to UCLA, but unfortunately, I can not afford it.</p>
<p>@annasdad:
“On a side note, the college selection and application process requires focus and engagement. In your posts, I detect a degree of nonchalance that will not serve you well.”</p>
<p>Okay? And what gives you the authority to gauge someone’s diligence and persistence? Especially, since you don’t know a single thing about me, other than some random posts all across this site. Whatever your detection methods are, you should cease to use them, because they are completely irrelevant and asinine. :)</p>
<p>I was thinking about majors today. Perhaps, double majoring in bio and astronomy, will not be such a bad idea? I don’t know, it doesn’t really relate, that is, if I want to go to medical school.
And minoring in art history? For interest sake?</p>
<p>Biology and astronomy (which is pretty much a branch of physics) do not have that many common courses. Pre-med courses are a subset of biology major courses, but it is not necessary to major in biology to take the pre-med courses.</p>
<p>Job and career prospects in biology and physics / astronomy are limited, but physics / astronomy graduates are often recruited into well paying other jobs that want them for their mathematical thinking abilities (e.g. finance, computer software, some types of engineering where PE licensing is not needed).</p>
<p>A school that you are unlikely to be able to afford is not a safety (you have it listed as a safety in the first post).</p>
<p>Your safety school(s) are the most important ones that you need to include. They should be safe for both admissions and affordability. Harvard, Stanford, etc. are safe for affordability, but not admissions. But it sounds like non-local UCs are not safe for affordability, even if they are safe for admissions.</p>
<p>Community colleges are likely to qualify. A local UC that you can commute to while getting Blue and Gold Opportunity need-based aid may be possible. A local CSU may also be a possibility.</p>