<p>I don’t understand why you think you’d have trouble getting in with your stats? And taking AB Calc senior year does not really make you one year behind (well, maybe it does at your school, but I know when I was in high school only the super geniuses started AP Calc before senior year). </p>
<p>With the women’s colleges it’s not always that merit aid is non existent it’s just that it’s very hard to come by. </p>
<p>Smith for example has a great merit aid program called STRIDE scholarships, which is a combination of a $15,000 scholarship per year for four years, and a two-year paid position as a research assistant to a professor (pays $2100 per year). So that’s an awesome scholarship. The catch is that it’s only offered to about 50 students every year, and an incoming class is usually between 600-700 students. And way more than 50 students in that class will be straight-A students at their high schools with stellar records, so the competition is incredibly difficult. </p>
<p>There is also the Zollman scholarship at Smith, which is $20,000 per year for four years (practically half tuition), but that is awarded to fewer than ten incoming students. </p>
<p>I don’t know what the other women’s colleges offer, but because merit aid is so hard to come by at these schools, the best thing you can really do is just apply to the schools you love, and then see what happens. You can’t influence your chances of getting merit aid at this point, and you are obviously already pretty meritorious, so you’ve done your best, apply where you can, and just hope that your parents will see the light of hope in your eyes and be willing to give a little more.</p>