<p>Today, I received a notice of deferral from my Early Decision school. Although I'm really confused (my superscore was 90 points above the attending student average, but my GPA and rank placed me in the bottom 13% and 2%, respectively) and obviously really upset and don't want to go anywhere else, but as of right now, I have applied to three other schools, none of which I particularly want to go to and even if I get in, none of them meet 100% need like my ED does.</p>
<p>Obviously, I have less than a month to apply to wherever else. What do I do? And how do I up my chances at the ED, where I have gone from being in an applicant pool with a 77% acceptance rate to being an applicant in a pool with a 43% rate? I cannot afford to attend a school that will not meet full need.</p>
<p>How much need do you have? Do you have any in-state commuting-distance publics that you could afford? Do you qualify for any of the guaranteed merit-based scholarships listed in the guaranteed aid threads in the financial aid forum? If you don’t get in anywhere likable and affordable this year, are you willing to take a gap year and work on a new list befor applying next fall?</p>
<p>Union College in New York?
(I checked his old threads.)
Awesome school. I’m really sorry :/</p>
<p>What need percentage do the rest of your schools meet? My top choice (Muhlenberg College, somewhat similar to Union) claims to meet only 94% of need, but they’re still really awesome with financial aid. I would say if your schools meet need in the 80s/90s, you shouldn’t be TOO worried.</p>
<p>What are the three other schools?</p>
<p>You don’t need to answer these questions if you don’t want to, but I can’t really help much without answers.</p>
<p>Once again, I’m sorry! I wish you the best with the next round of admissions.</p>
<p>Wait, this isn’t matching up. You said your GPA put you in the bottom 13%, but your other post said your GPA was 3.6 and Union’s Common Data Set shows 17% of freshmen had between 3.5 and 3.74, while 31% had higher than 3.74. So how does that put you in the bottom 13%???</p>
<p>One more thing, Union is not need-blind in their admissions. So they probably deferred you until the next round to see if they have enough FA money available. This article on the Union Admissions website gives a really good explanation -
Need blind vs. Need Aware: the realities of helping families finance college</p>
<p>“as of right now, I have applied to three other schools, none of which I particularly want to go to and even if I get in, none of them meet 100% need like my ED does.”</p>
<p>You have time to still apply to some “true” safeties – ones that 90% likely to admit you and which you can afford. Many will have deadlines beyond Jan 1st. You should have a sit down w/your guid counselor and get laser beam focused. Put your 1st choice out of your mind and research other options. Right now, you don’t have the luxury of saying “X was my dream school. Boo hoo” If you stay in that state of mind, you’ll be sitting around next September w/no school to attend while your friends have moved on. </p>
<p>I don’t mean to be sharp with you but you’ve got some real work ahead of you b/c you hadn’t planned well enough for this real contingency. If your parents are able and inclined, get their assistance too – now is not the time to be proud.</p>
<p>I am sorry for your disappointment, but whether he was “sharp” or not, T26E4 is exactly right. You need to spend time this weekend finding other universities or colleges where:</p>
<ol>
<li> you are pretty sure you can get in, and</li>
<li> your family is pretty sure they can afford the cost, and</li>
<li> you are pretty sure you can be happy and successful there.</li>
</ol>
<p>Moreover, if you are going to spend time searching this weekend, *before *the weekend you need to talk to your guidance counselor (and others) about where you might look. Fortunately, once you’ve found one or two such schools, you can find more by looking at their overlaps with other schools. The Fiske guide (and other sources, too) include a helpful feature that tells you, “Students who applied to X also applied to Y, Z and W.”</p>
<p>I might need to clarify my earlier statements:</p>
<p>So my other three schools I’ve applied to are Rhodes College (TN), Howard University (DC), and Morehouse College (GA). As of tomorrow my application for Temple U (PA, 10 minute subway ride from my house) will be submitted. Considering my deferred status from Union (soft rejection?), I’m going to assume that Rhodes is a tossup but leaning toward defer/soft rejection. I can obviously get into Morehouse and Howard (my SATs are well above the 75th percentile, my uw GPA is above average), but HBCUs are notoriously bad with financial aid. </p>
<p>I suppose Temple, at this point is the only realistic option considering that I can commute, but my mom sounds intent on not allowing me to live at home. My EFC is 0 and my family has no money to contribute to putting me through college (paying 11k to send my sister to school this year was like 1/3 of my mom’s salary and we struggled). Considering that I don’t actually have 10k to live anywhere, I have no idea what I am going to do.</p>
<p>Did you use some of the resources posted above to find other full-need or really generous schools to apply to? Did you talk to a guidance counselor? It’s not too late to apply to other schools!
A deferment is not a soft rejection. It is a “maybe” - they want to see how you stack up against other applicants in the RD pool and figure out what % of them have a lot of financial need.
Do you have any requirements in terms of majors or anything else?</p>
<p>From the list of “meets full need” schools: Trinity College (CT), Gettysburg, U. Richmond.
Also research Holy Cross, Bates, Colby, Macalaster, Washington and Lee - to see if your stats are in the ballpark.
The more FA you are looking for, the more you need to cast a wide net. You can’t predict which schools will turn you down because they can’t meet your need. The fact that you are an URM may mean more to some of these schools…</p>
<p>SAT Scores are 1310 CR+M, 2030 w/ writing superscored
I would have applied to more of them, but with my unweighted GPA being as low as it is (2.7, the fact that my weighted GPA composed of mainly regular classes just speaks to the insane grade inflation at my school), combined with my low rank (372/610) rules me out at all of these schools. Union, in part was my first choice because 13% of accepted students (according to their CDS) fit within my GPA range, but only 2% meet the rank part (which confuses me more considering that 65% of accepteds went to schools that didn’t report rank). The fact that I’m not an athlete probably doesn’t work in my favor.</p>
<p>Part of why I was deferred probably has to do with the fact that I’m taking 3/4 of my AP classes, as well as an IB Class (My school switched my language’s curriculum from AP to IB a few weeks ago) my senior year. Honestly, I think my best bet at this point is to just go to a CC. Anybody who thinks otherwise is free to say why, because at this point, I feel hopeless.</p>
<p>The counseling department at my school is also not particularly adept at anything (my counselor nearly missed the deadline for sending my transcripts out though I’d talked with her about sending them out over a month in advance), so they can’t be of much help. I’ve looked at all the schools that meet 100% and I fare pretty well for them in everything else but GPA + rank. And since those are the things that matter (and almost certainly the reason I was deferred), I don’t count on having too much luck.</p>
<p>Oh, I thought the 3.6 was your unweighted GPA
Hmmm…Still, invest the time to look at the Common Data Sets (section C) of the full-need schools to see if there are any where you have a shot. Not everyone cares about rank and some put test scores ahead of rank (this info is in the Common Data Set too) and that would help you. You can’t predict which school might throw you a lifeline. You can’t assume that similar schools will treat your application the same way, each one has its own FA budget to deal with, and its own goals for racial/socioeconomic/geographic diversity.
But if you don’t try, you will never know!</p>
<p>dc2013- going to CC is not a bad route-- I speak from first hand experience. </p>
<p>The worst part about it is delaying gratification of going away, no bragging rights and you do not have the freshman year expereince- which you will learn next year many of your friends will hate and come home often. </p>
<p>I used the 2 years I stayed home as an opportunity to visit friends at other schools and to make & save alot of money waitressing while attending CC. I had terrific professors in CC. They were so interesting in comparision to HS that it made it not so terrible.</p>
<p>Ultimately, I went to my dream school, joined Greek Life, loved it & I paid for it myself. If you wait 2 years you will bring up you GPA & see where you have a shot. You have to work hard to make this happen and you are Intelligent but have to back it up with more work. There are no magic bullets. It is what it is, make the best of it.</p>
<p>Alternatively, look up on College Confidential schools with automatic scholarships - It’s a link I forget the author & see if your stats fit in any of those public colleges. Again, I can tell you are very intelligent- keep chipping away at this equation! Good luck!</p>
<p>You do not need a school that meets. 100% of need for all students. You need a school that will meet 100% of your need. Think of it that way.</p>
<p>There are several threads in the financial aid forum on guaranteed merit aid. Look for the one started be BobWallace because it has links to most of the others. Some of these places will look at your weighted GPA rather than the unweighted one.</p>
<p>I suggest adding some rural Midwest LACs known for good financial aid: Ripon, DePauw, Wabash (all male), Beloit, Knox. Your regional diversity will help your application too. If you’re an URM, that will help significantly re: financial aid/merit too.</p>
<p>Are you actually in Philadelphia? Neighborhood high school? By any chance, are you in Philadelphia Futures?</p>
<p>If not, that organization prints a guide to college admissions every year. Guidance counselors and Free Library branches are supposed to have copies. It’s designed for students from low income households who want to go to college, and I suspect there are lots of useful ideas there. If you can’t find a copy, you could call their office in center city and ask where to find it.</p>
<p>I’m not sure exactly what they do, but there’s supposed to be a city-sponsored Access to College office in the Gallery. I suspect that, if you call 311, someone can help you find it.</p>
