Match for my S24 for Political Sci - International Relation and Pre-Med [TX, top 15%, 3.85, 1340, 31, <$28k]

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics

  • US citizen
  • State/Location of residency: Texas
  • Type of high school: Small IB school
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity (optional): male, asian
  • Other special factors (first generation to college, legacy, athlete, etc.): None

Intended Major(s)
Political Science - International Relation & Affair, also want to start Pre-Med to try to go into Med school to be an Emergency Medicine Physician

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.85 (or 3.95 as he mentioned to me his French grade was not updated correctly, so if included it could be higher)
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): School doesn’t offer
  • College GPA (for transfers):
  • Class Rank: probably top 15%
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1340 on first try without study, going to take again

Coursework
IB Biology, Chem, Physic, History, Music, Math, Global Politic, and English (mix of HL and SL)

Awards
Not much

Extracurriculars
ModelUN chair
EMS (weekly)
Chair of School Health Club
Chair/DM of School D&D Club
Member of School Jazz Band

Essays/LORs/Other
He helps other band students afterschool on playing bass instructments, so his Music teacher likes him a lot.

Cost Constraints / Budget
As low as possible, under 28k (single income family as the wife became disabled last year, so we try to get as much merit/aid as possible.)

Schools

  • Safety
  • Texas State
  • Texas Tech
  • UT Dallas
  • University of North Texas
  • UT Arlington
  • Likely
  • UT Autin
  • Trinity University
  • SMU
  • Miami of Ohio
  • U of Arizona
  • Arizona State
  • Match
  • University of Houston
  • UT Dallas
  • Texas A&M
  • SouthWestern university
  • Austin College
  • Reach
  • Rice University
  • Emory
  • Duke
  • Tulane
  • Georgetown
  • Umass Amherst

He prefers warmer weather, but if there is enough merit aid, North and North Eastern schools are ok.

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He needs LOR from academic subject teachers. So…he needs to get those.

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I’m not sure if I agree with how you’ve classified the schools on your list. If your son’s not in the top 6% of his class, then UT-Austin becomes a reach. This is my very fallible sense of what your son’s chances might be for admittance to these schools. This does not include the likelihood of hitting your budget. I would make sure to run the Net Price Calculator (NPC) for each school and see what the price looks like. If the NPC asks for academic stats, then it is likely to include the minimum amount of merit aid that your family might expect.

This is a very eclectic mix, of huge state schools, very small privates, urban schools, rural schools, some with a big sports emphasis others with very little, some where Greek life is strong and others where it’s nonexistent. Does your son have any preferences? Has he visited any college campuses? If so, what were his impressions?

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • Texas State
  • Texas Tech
  • UT Dallas
  • U. of North Texas
  • UT – Arlington
  • Miami of Ohio
  • U. of Arizona
  • Arizona State
  • U. of Houston
  • UT-Dallas

Likely (60-79%)

  • Austin
  • Southwestern
  • U. Mass - Amherst

Toss-Up (40-59%)

  • Southern Methodist
  • Texas A&M (this is more because I can’t recall how difficult it is to get in if one is not an auto-admit, which I think is top 10% of the class…but double-check)

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • Trinity

Low Probability (less than 20%)

  • UT-Austin
  • Rice
  • Emory
  • Duke
  • Tulane
  • Georgetown
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You need to run the net price calculators on each of these colleges to check for affordability.

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What is the annual household income? Do you have assets other than your primary residence? Business assets? Rental property? One issue is whether or not you would qualify for fin aid, since this could shape his applications. A single income family is not the issue, since of course the working parent could have an income high enough to disqualify you for fin aid. If you don’t qualify for fin aid, then your best option is to go in-state public. If you do, and he can get his stats high enough to get into a private school that meets need fully, it might be cheaper for him to go to a private college than public, but since it sounds as if he didn’t take the highest rigor available all the time, and since he is not in the top 5th% of his class, those private schools that might take him and meet fin need would probably be in the T50 or under range.

Does he want to stay close to home? How far is he willing and able to go?

Some of the best advice we got from anyone - your son may be better suited to the ACT than the SAT. Have him download a free, retired ACT from the ACT’s website, and have him take it under timed conditions. He may feel, after that, that the ACT is better for him - it certainly was for my kid. My kid found that the English sections were very easy for them, since they’d read a lot, and had grown up in an educated household where correct grammar and a high level of vocab were just part of the daily conversation around them. It was obvious to them that the science was really just data interpretation, which could be easily improved with just a little bit of practice with old ACTs. The only thing they actually had to prep themselves for was the math. Whichever test your son feels he is best suited for, the most bang for their buck thing that they can do this late in the game, other than shooting for straight A’s this semester, is prepping themselves to improve their standardized test score. For some schools, this will unlock merit money, too.

Since you are lucky enough to live in TX, which has 5 excellent cheap public med schools, he’s already in a good position. Sure, he’d need a high GPA (often more attainable at a less selective, less competitive college) and a high MCAT, but he’s already doing the EMS, which puts him ahead of the game. LOR from teachers that like him, say he helps other students, mean a LOT.

I think all of the reaches you’ve listed are honestly out of reach, except for UMass Amherst, which is an academic safety for him. However, it might not be a financial match, even if they were to award him the max OOS merit money. It would still be over 40K/yr, after merit. It’s a great school, but I don’t think he should bother applying, since it’s far, cold, and will probably wind up costing too much.

Baylor? Texas Christian? New Mexico? Merit money may be riding upon whether he can prep and get a stellar SAT or ACT. Certainly, no one could accuse him of being a lazy student, with that very nice GPA, but a stellar standardized test score could make him a standout for merit money, or get him into a private that meets full fin need.

If he has heritage knowledge of an Asian language, that is very valuable in medicine. If he were to brush it up, he might be able to get clinical contact work that he wouldn’t get otherwise, since they’d see him as an interpreter, too, in clinical settings.

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For all of the Texas public universities, look up their automatic admission criteria. If the student meets the criteria, then the school is a safety if it is affordable and the desired major is not a competitive admission one.

UT Austin is generally a reach for applicants who are not in the top 6% rank in Texas.

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Well your list is off but in a good way.

U of A and ASU are safeties. But with a 3.75 U of A won’t hit budget. You have lots of safeties. UT is a reach if not top 6%. SMU and trinity are match, not likely in my pinion.

Add LSU, Arkansas, Ole Miss and if you get to a 1360 an Alabama for OOS that could work budget wise vs those out of state you list which by their scholarship estimators will show you that you can’t hit 28k (total cost including room and board).

You’ll have lots of in state opportunity with this list.
Good luck.

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Two schools that you may want to consider that offer :

Allegheny (PA ) with its Global Health Studies major has about 1600 undergrads with a 9:1 student/faculty ratio. Based off its net price for various income ranges, I suspect this one has a good chance of meeting budget. You can also read more about it on its Colleges That Change Lives profile, an organization of schools that named themselves after a book of the same name by a former education reporter for the NY Times.

Mercer (GA) has about 5k undergrads and also offers a Global Health Studies major. It’s also known for a lot of health-related studies/majors. Global Health could be a nice way of melding your son’s interests in pre-med and international relations.

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Based on published assured admission criteria, the following are assured admission for the student:

  • Texas State
  • Texas Tech
  • University of North Texas
  • UT Arlington
  • University of Houston

The following are assured admission, but likely too expensive:

  • Arizona State ($34k after scholarship, even if subsequent SAT/ACT is maximum score)

The following are assured admission, but may or may not be affordable:

If cheapest possible is the most important criterion:

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Thanks all.

I totally forgot to check on NPC. Going to seat down with the kid and run through NPC on each school.

We do have two rentals in Austin, but they are under my in-laws names and we mainly helped them managed, and they pay us 1/6 of the rental income. This amount to $1,500 a month of extar income. Annual household income was $80k. But I got my pink slip last week (entire Austin location close shop), so will be job hunting. Therefore, can’t tell how much income will be for this or next year.

I also forgot the top 6% for UT Austin. Thx AustenNut for correcting me.

The list of schools were his initial choices and how he “felt” if he could get into.

We have visited Austin College (but Sherman is hard to swallow), Trinity university (he loves it), SouthWestern (he likes it a lot, and few of his school mates from previous years have gone there, and few of the MUN conferences were held there).

For bigger schools, we have visited U of Houston, Baylor and SMU. He neither likes or dislikes them. He felt Houston is ok and he had talked with one fo the student in their Honor College, which had left him a good impression. He said meh on Baylor and SMU.

Only school we haven’t visited was A&M. But he has been communicaitng with one of the recruiter for Bush School of Government and Public Service there.

After talking to his school about the French grade being missing in the report card, they fixed it and his unweighted GPA is now 3.95.

He is not into Greek life at all.

He is planning to ask his Music, English, and Chemistry teachers for LORs before end of school year.

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A 3.95 UW puts U of Arizona back in play as it’s $30k in merit and gets you to $28k.

Good luck.

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I will talk to him about U of Arizona more, i know his gf’s sister goes to Arizona State.

Due to his recent mental distress, he has dropped his swim practices and not going to compete for a while, and he is scaling back on MUN and Health Club duties. He is actually learning to delegate tasks now, so he won’t be overwhelmed again.

He is willing to go out of state, and one of his senior friend was accepted into Tulane Tap-TP, so he is not ruling out going to LA (LSU, Tulane, Loloya) . But cost wise, will have to run the NPC first.

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Just to clarify - was his French grade corrected from a 0 to an A?

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With your financial situation, he could be eligible for a lot of fin aid at private schools. If he can just get that standardized test score up, and get straight A’s this semester, he’s in a good position to get a nice amount of merit and fin aid at 3rd tier private schools. He also is in a position to get accepted to T50 schools that would meet full need - and you’re gonna qualify for fin aid. Private T50s that meet full need would likely wind up as cheap as, or cheaper than in state publics for your high achieving son.

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It was changed from 3-70 (C-?) to 7-98 (A)

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Gotcha.

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One consideration you may want to think about is health insurance. I understand that you are currently in-between roles, but some health insurance coverage is only for in-state while others have wider (usually national) coverage. If your health insurance doesn’t cover out-of-state, then that can be several thousands of dollars more in expenses to get coverage if your son goes out-of-state. Just something to think about as your family considers the costs of college and any health insurance plans that may come with future jobs.

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It’s a varied list you have there, but we had a smaller budget and were chasing big merit as well with our kids so it makes sense. We had varied lists too and all three of our kids ended up choosing between affordable acceptances at big U’s and small schools.

I think he’s in at Southwestern and Trinity (assuming you mean Trinity in TX and not the other one?) although it will be harder to hit the budget at Trinity.

I have/had kids at three of those schools. One kid is a Southwestern grad and is doing a PhD now at Arizona. Southwestern is a wonderful small school. Study abroad is great there too. Kid visited Trinity and it also seemed great, but didn’t get their top scholarship and it was just out of budget. Our budget was smaller than yours.
The Arizona schools are big. We’ve come to really enjoy Tucson. We tried to talk kid (two of our kids actually) into UA for undergrad but it was too big for that student at that time. It really impressed us when we visited. Kid is happy there now in grad school.
Also have a music kid at North Texas. Your kid is certainly getting in there and the price will be in budget. UNT is certainly great for a jazz musician but you’d have to ask what music opportunities are available for a non music major in jazz, if he is interested in that. Denton is a fun college town. The university is well run but I don’t know much about pre med or majors besides music there.

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Ah, I hadn’t thought of health insurance. Thanks for the info.

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SouthWestern is a nice small school, and checked many of the boxes. We will just have to see when he applies if he can get good merit. Or hopefully I can find a better job so I can help him with tuition.

UNT was initially on his list, but I remember after he talked with one of his friend’s brother who is a student there, he decided to cross it out. I will have to ask him what was the reason.