This is fantastic! I will go through them all and be back with their net prices.
Side notes (not important, but interesting 
): My dual enrollment professor actually contacted one of her friends in admission at Knox informing them of my situation and they highly suggested that I apply. One of my closest highschool teachers teaches at Webster periodically.
Yeah, Missouri S&T is a strong option. They actually offered a scholarship this year that gave eligible applicants 100% need-based aid. Unfortunately, it does not say whether it will be available next year, but Iâve sent an email requesting confirmation on this.
Hereâs the list of MSEP reciprocity schools. I donât think the discount is going to bring anything down to the 10K budget range, and I donât know that thereâs anything here that would be preferable to your strong in-state options, but itâs worth looking over the list to be sure. Institutions | Midwest Student Exchange Program
You need a school that will accept you, that you can afford, that has comp sci (and other things, since you might change your mind). Community college to U Missouri works - 2.5k/semester in state tuition at comm college (total 10K for 4 semesters, live for free at home) plus <30K/yr for two years at U Missouri, total of 70K. Worst case scenario, family kicks in 40K, you borrow the max fed money you can, at least 31K, and youâve got your four year degree from U Missouri within your budget. Or you go 4 yrs at U Missouri, but the total cost is 120K, and youâre scrambling to close the 50K gap. Or maybe youâre lucky and they award you some financial aid and you can do 4 yrs at U Missouri within the 70K you can come up with from family money and federal loans. So sure, apply to U Missouri - itâs a match/low reach for you academically, and if they wind up giving you some fin aid, you might be able to swing it. And apply to Missouri Science and Tech (but it looks less selective, and much lower ranked than U Missouri - I donât know if itâs better for comp sci though, but it might not be). If it doesnât work, you have the comm coll with articulated transfer as a backup.
I understand that you want the options that a 4.0 UW GPA with rigor and a 35 ACT would have possibly given you, but you donât have that. The reality is that your GPA is brought down so far by that terrible freshman year, and your current ACT score is honestly surprisingly low, considering your good grades for sophomore and junior year. Your writing is coherent and grammatically correct; you even taught me a new word (myrmecology), and it sounds as if you have just zoomed ahead in computer science, so it makes me think that with a lot of focused self prep, you could bring that ACT score way up - but that hasnât happened yet, and you cannot count on it. If you had an ACT of 34 or higher, it would support the back story of a really bright kid who had an awful 9th grade due to online learning and other stressors, but who has had extremely high grades ever since in the most rigorous classes available to them (but not honors, not APs) in their small, rural high school. But you donât. You have no AP scores, and your ACT is low relative to your grades and your goals. This doesnât mean that you cannot get a great education that is within your financial means. But it does mean that youâre not going to get enough financial aid to go to selective places like Purdue for Comp Sci, even if you could get in, which is unlikely. Wash U would give you fin aid, but thereâs no way theyâre gonna take you - they have an acceptance rate of 13%. Same goes for Georgia Tech, except along with not taking you, they wouldnât give you the fin aid you need.
Honestly, the absolute best thing that you could do to increase your chances of acceptance is to do some very, very intensive self-prep for the ACT over the summer and retake it in late summer, to try to bring it up to 34 or higher. Did you not have enough time to attempt to answer all the questions on the ACT? You sound very bright. Your intense interest in comp sci and your niche interest in the study of ants (thereâs that new word for me, myrmecology) make me wonder if you might have an issue that would qualify you for extended time on the ACT. If the problem was not being able to work fast enough on the test (not that this isnât a problem for everyone with the ACT), you might be able to get 150% time, if you were diagnosed with ADHD and/or slow processing speed. Your parent would have to make an immediate written request that the school psychologist test you for this, but if you were found eligible, that extra time might make all the difference on the ACT. Youâd have to hurry to get approved for extra time for a late summer or early Sept ACT.
If you were to prep intensively for the ACT, in a very specific and focused way, you might be able to bring that score up to the range that would confirm your high grades for the last two years, in the most challenging classes available to you. That, together with your obvious intense interest in Comp Sci as evidenced by your ECs, might make a coherent story for a long shot acceptance to a more highly ranked private college that might fully meet your fin aid needs, which are very substantial, if the household income is only 60K/yr. You can get advice on here and on reddit about the best way to self-prep for the ACT.
As for explaining what happened in 9th grade - this is where your guidance counselor comes in. Go see her now, and another time, and again in September. Talk with her about what you love about comp sci (and myrmecology, too), about all your cool ECs in comp sci. Tell her what happened with you in 9th grade, how online just didnât work for you. She will understand; youâre not the only one, for sure. Then ask her to put this into her letter, how you had such trouble in 9th and got dinged for not sitting in front of a zoom class screen, and that your grades were knocked down for this, even though you actually did well on assessments, and how youâve done so very well ever since school came back to in-person. You use your essay space to talk about the things you love, your hopes and dreams, your ambitions, why you want to study what you want to study, what youâre hoping to find at college and what you want to do afterwards. Maybe you can tie in myrmecology (hey, I didnât have to look back and check the spelling this time) somehow in some clever way.
But donât waste your time right now trying to figure out how youâre gonna get massive fin aid at some highly ranked prestigious school for comp sci, with 2.85 and a 24 ACT. Focus on finishing this semester with the best grades you possible can, on getting extended time for the ACT if it is warranted, and prepping for the ACT in the most effective way possible to get that score up as high as you can push it.
@Kelsmom has the amount of the federally funded Direct Loan increased for the upcoming academic years? I thought the grand total for four years was $27,000 ($5500, $6500, $7500, $7500).
For this student, $4000 could make a difference.
Other than thatâŠI fully agree with @parentologist above post.
I appreciate all the feedback and suggestions!
I was surprised when I did get my ACT score back, although I did have 0 prep. I do plan on retaking the ACT with actual preparation, but Iâm not sure how far thatâll bring me. I genuinely believe that with adequate prep, I can get a substantially better score. I would prefer to do many practice tests, but they take far too much time in one sitting. Also, when you spend hours identifying a species in your area on Google (painful), you see the word myrmecology a lot.
Towards the end of every section, I ended up incredibly rushed but that was my own fault. I would overthink questions and end up rereading them to find out they are easy.
You can print out some of the practice tests (or buy a study guide that has practice tests) and complete a couple of timed sections each night instead of completing entire practice tests. That takes about 20 minutes and doesnât feel as stressful. The study guides also help you with test strategies which help you can gain a couple of points just by working more efficiently. I believe you have to know math formulas for the ACT also, as opposed to the SAT where they are given to you. So I agree that with some prep, you can raise your score. You also might give the SAT a shot as you donât have to work as quickly, but the questions can be trickier so youâd need to familiarize yourself with the format and SAT specific test strategies.
Sounds as if you need both self-prep for content and a few meetings with a professional ACT tutor for test taking techniques.
Buy a copy of The Official Guide to the ACT. A previous year will be cheaper, and it has mostly the same tests. Then you do a section or two every day, do the corrections, and self-teach if you get something wrong. When my kid was self-prepping, they would do a hard one in the AM, and an easy one in the PM. For my kid, the two English were easy, the math was the hardest, and they were doing the science just to familiarize themselves with the manner in which the data was presented. My kid also got the two book series The Best ACT Math Books Ever (theyâre available used for cheap) and used that to self-teach the math they hadnât mastered or had forgotten.
After youâve gone through all the tests in the book (I think there are 6, plus there is also at least one free one on the ACT website), there are retired ACT tests that are legally in the public domain that you can find online and download.
The annual limits are still the same. However, because students donât always get through school in 4 years, and because some schools will use a borrower based award year (itâs a confusing thing that allows students to borrow more in a given year than they would otherwise be able to borrow ⊠not common), students will sometimes borrow more than the four years worth of loans. The aggregate borrowing limit for a dependent student is $31,000.
Thank you. It does sound like this is the exception and not the rule.
Take one released old ACT under test conditions (time limits, etc.), then grade it to determine which type of questions you have the most difficulty on, in order to determine where to focus preparation on.
But also, take one released old SAT under test conditions and grade it to determine if you do significantly better on the SAT than the ACT. You can see the concordance tables at https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/ACT-SAT-Concordance-Tables.pdf . For example, 24 ACT is like 1160-1190 SAT, so if your practice SAT with no preparation is substantially higher than 1190 (or the SAT equivalent of your practice ACT score if you also did that), then you may want to focus on preparing for and taking the SAT instead of the ACT.
The ACT has a reputation of having easier questions, but more time pressure, than the SAT. Based on the above, you could have a good likelihood of doing better on the SAT.
Are you enrolled in the A+ program at your high school? If not, I recommend you talk to your high school counselor about signing up before the school year is over. The A+ program provides 2 free years at a MO CC and additional scholarship opportunities for certain 4 year MO public colleges. See: A+ Scholarship Program . You could do your volunteer hours over the summer/fall (your counselor will help you find opportunities) and 25% of the hours can be earned through job shadowing. Also, check out this opportunity through MS&T w/ ECC and use of A+ program: Campus Connections â Future Students | Missouri S&T
I donât know about CS, but I did research a lot of Midwest schools looking for low prices. Missouri seemed to have the most options for us under $15K with automatic merit. SEMO, NWMSU, MO West, MO State, Central MOâŠDDâ19 went to Northwest Missouri State which is public but a nice size of about 6000.
Check out their Northwest Promise on this link which covers tuition if you meet the income and academic guidelines:
R&B on campus runs about $10K but can be much cheaper off campus after freshman year. DD '19 was able to cover a lot of her costs with savings and work.
Iâve looked into the A+ program. Unfortunately, my freshman year brought down my average attendance rate. Currently, it is around a 93% (must be 95%+) average attendance rate throughout high school. I also am not sure if I have time to do volunteer hours during the summer as Iâve attained a job to help offset college costs.
On another note, when calculating EFC and implementing it into my NPCâs, many other calculators determine it to be around $3,000, but the government calculator says my EFC is 0⊠(Federal Student Aid)
If my EFC is 0, which I doubt, that brings Missouri S&Tâs net price to ~$8,000.
Is this an automatic scholarship? - as in, do you receive it automatically if eligible, or do you just have a chance of receiving it if eligible? Currently, I already meet all of its requirements.
The FAFSA EFC calculator is used for federal aid purposes. You should use the NPC on each schoolâs site to get the best cost estimate for that particular school.
For the purpose of calculating NPC for colleges, some optionally request a EFC. Would it be more accurate to let them generate the estimated cost with federal aid based on financial info given or use the EFC given through the government site?
Use the EFC generated by the govât site at all state universities and universities that donât meet need (basically, all universities on your list - there are only about 85 universities out of the USâ 3,700 that meet need and they require the CSS.)
^^^
I do want to point out that to my knowledge no EFC (changing to SAI this Fall) calculators are updated for the many coming FAFSA changes this December (we all hope).
Meanwhile OP could manually calculate their SAI using the 2024-25 FAFSA draft document, accessed on this page: Regulations.gov