Just a Another Highschool Student who needs help!!!!!!!

Paying for College
1

<p>Hi my name is Isaac, a highschool studnet, who needs help. I live Mississippi and went to terrible schools. My GPA which I got is easily is 3.95 and ACT Score is a 30 (May turn into a 33). I have not taken the SAT. I am Korean and 3rd in rank out of 30 in my past school when I was a junior. I will go to a public school now in Hattiesburg, Oakgroove. Please, KIND PEOPLE I need a full schlorship to a college. (Preferably a IVY or high ranked college) My parents make less than 24,000 a year and we have green cards.</p>

<p>HELP!</p>

2

<p>Did you take the PSATs? If yes, do you think you’ll qualify for National Merit Finalist?</p>

3

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<p>IF (and I mean IF) you get accepted to an Ivy, and what you are reporting for family income is accurate, your financial aid will be excellent. However, you do need to realize that these schools accept 10% or so of students who apply. That means that 90% or so are not accepted. There are very very well qualified applicants to these schools who do not get accepted. SO…they are not a sure thing…for ANYONE. </p>

<p>Apply to an Ivy or two, or other schools that meet full need. BUT you should also consider looking at your own instate publics. Doesn’t Ole’ Miss have good financial aid for low income/high stats students? It’s worth checking.</p>

4

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<p>First some stuff that applies to any college that you might decide to go to:</p>

<p>If your parents make less than $24K/year, then your FAFSA will very likely be $0. That means that you will qualify for the maximum Pell grant, which I believe is about $5000/year. [Please parents—correct me if I’m wrong here!]</p>

<p>You’ll also be able to take out Stafford loans each year. For freshman year, the maximum amount will be $5500, of which $3500 will be subsidized, which means the government will pay the interest on the loan until after you graduate or leave school. The other $2000 will be an unsubsidized loan, which will begin accruing interest right away. Each year you are in school, the Stafford loans will go up slightly. If you take out maximum Stafford loans for four years straight, you’ll have about $28K to $30K in Stafford loans.</p>

<p>You are likely to also be awarded so-called work study money regardless of where you wind up going to school. Work study money is money you earn by working at a campus job. You can use it to pay for day-to-day expenses and, except for your first semester, you can use it to help pay for books.</p>

<p>Now in order to make college work, you’ll need institutional grant money to pay for absolutely everything else. In other words, if a private or OOS college costs about $50K/year, you will need the college to give you at least $40K/year in grant money since your Pell and the maximum staffords will only be about $10K. Now at Ole Miss, they list the COA for in-state students as a bit over $19K, so if Ole Miss were to give you at least $9K of grant aid or merit aid, then the federal aid (Pell grant and Stafford Loans) would cover the rest of the bill each year.</p>

<p>Now, the good news is that the Ivy league schools promise to meet full need for all their students. Some of them (HPY) will meet that need without making you take out a dime of Stafford loans. Many other super high ranked colleges and universities will meet meet your full need, but may or may not throw in Stafford loans into the FA package. [The exceptions that keeps getting mentioned here on CC that immediately come to mind are NYU and Boston U, neither of which promises to meet full need for all students and both of which seem to be willing to gap even very poor students.]</p>

<p>The bad news is that getting into the tippy-top schools is extremely difficult for even the best students. Your current ACT is low, but as a poor Korean with a green card living in Mississippi, you might as well apply to a couple of Ivies since MS is typically an under-represented state in their application pools. But while you can hope that you will win admission to an Ivy (and thus not need to worry about financing your college education), you cannot expect to finance your college education in this fashion.</p>

<p>So—in addition to looking at high ranking colleges that are known to meet full need for all students, but that are also very difficult to get into, you need another strategy for finding a school that you (a) want to go to and (b) can afford to go to.</p>

<p>You can start by looking at <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html?highlight=automatic[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/848226-important-links-automatic-guaranteed-merit-scholarships.html?highlight=automatic&lt;/a&gt; and <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/951725-institutional-full-ride-merit-scholarship-list.html?highlight=full-ride[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/951725-institutional-full-ride-merit-scholarship-list.html?highlight=full-ride&lt;/a&gt; and <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html?highlight=full-ride[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/148852-what-ive-learned-about-full-ride-scholarships.html?highlight=full-ride&lt;/a&gt; for lots of information about full ride scholarships based on admission stats. Your ACT score and your HS GPA are likely to make you qualified for at least some of these scholarships. You might also want to start hanging out on the Parents Forum too since full-ride scholarships and FA is talked about there a lot. [And we enjoy the students who join us!]</p>

<p>Finally, you will also need to look at the Mississippi public university system. Yeah, Ole’ Miss and Mississippi State, and University of Southern Mississippi ain’t ivy league or on anybody’s top-ten list of prestigious universities. But they are that terrible either. You’d qualify for the Honors College at Ole Miss.</p>

5

<p>Cast your net far and wide. Financial/Academic safeties, matches and reaches. You never know how the journey will end. What major are you interested in? </p>

<p>A few notes on the University of Mississippi. First, The University is very generous to students from families with low incomes. Check out their website. It might be a very good match/safety for you. However, don’t think that admissions into the honors college with a 30 ACT is a given. Plenty of students with higher ACT/GPA scores were denied this year. Things are changing rapidly at Ole Miss. Depending on your intended major, this may be a viable option for you. For certain majors, this University is a hidden gem…and the honors college offerings are top notch.</p>

6

<p>I live Mississippi and went to terrible schools. My GPA which I got is easily is 3.95 and ACT Score is a 30 (May turn into a 33). I have not taken the SAT. I am Korean and 3rd in rank out of 30 in my past school when I was a junior.</p>

<p>Unless you get your ACT to a 34+, you probably won’t have a chance at an ivy. </p>

<p>Just to give you an idea…Here’s the stats for the middle 50 students at Yale…</p>

<pre><code>Middle 50% of
</code></pre>

<p>First-Year Students Percent Who
Submitted Scores
SAT Critical Reading: … 700 - 800<br>
SAT Math: … 700 - 780<br>
SAT Writing: … 700 - 790
ACT Composite: … 30 - 34 </p>

<p>As you can see, the top 25% of Yale students have a 35+ ACT or 2380+ SAT. That doesn’t mean that those with super stats have a “good chance” at admittance since the ivies have to reject lots of kids with super stats. Some say that Asians have a harder chance at the top schools since so many Asians have perfect/near-perfect stats.</p>

<p>What was your PSAT score? Will you be a likely NMSF?</p>

<p>You have good choices within your state as back ups. Don’t get hung up on rankings. You’re in a tight spot. You have good, but not super stats and great financial need. </p>

<p>If you get an an ACT 32+, you will have other mid-tier choices. </p>

<p>What is your likely major and career?</p>