Male high school senior looking for safety California college if I don’t get into UCLA USC Berkeley or Pepperdine.
34 ACT 2150 SAT 3.8 unweighted GPA Top 5% of class 5 on AP Calc and Language 4 on US His EC’s good but not great.
Family makes about $130,000 and wants to add about $20,000 /year to my college so I’m looking for something more affordable. Would you please recommend the best schools that I would be accepted without a doubt. Thank you for any input that you have
Cal Poly’s and CSU’s like SDSU and Long Beach.
Use your ACT score.
See if you can get FA from USC, USD, Chapman, Loyola Marymount, Santa Clara since you are already applying to Pepperdine.
Pepperdine has a significantly religious environment (Disciples of Christ). Is that what you prefer, or consider acceptable?
You may want to add UCSC, UCI, and UCSD to your UC application (if their net price calculators indicate affordability), since they all have economics majors suitable for pre-PhD preparation (i.e. with more math).
If you UC-weighted GPA is in the top 9% of historical UC-weighted GPAs at your high school, you may get an admission offer to UC Merced if you do not get into any other UCs that you apply to.
Pepperdine would be great. I actually go to a church of Christ which is what Pepperdine is but I don’t think that helps you to get into Pepperdine.
Does it?
http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=1121 says that religious affiliation / commitment is “very important” at Pepperdine. You may have to check the college’s web site or ask the college to see how this is determined.
A safety has to be affordable. So, if your parents will only pay $20k per year, when their EFC will be much higher than that, that means that a safety would have to be a school that you know FOR SURE will give you enough merit so that the NET COST will be about $20k per year.
There aren’t many schools in Calif that have ASSURED merit for stats.
Does the safety have to be in Calif???
What is your major and career goal?
Would like to study medicine or economics and I would consider out of state but prefer California
well, since you seem to want to be open to medicine and your parents won’t pay their EFC, what is your plan to pay for college??? You can only borrow $5500 for frosh year.
If you decide on the premed route, you won’t want debt for undergrad.
The UCs will cost over $30k.
Look over the list of schools that will give you ASSURED large merit for stats.
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com
Alabama would give you free tuition for your stats…remaining costs would be $15k per year. Alabama has Econ in both A&S and in the B-school. Although if you wanted to keep premed options open, I would suggest doing the A&S route. Gorgeous school, strong academics, over 1000 Calif kids there, very good premed advising…and the school DOES write Committee Letters (which the UCs do NOT do). You’d have to apply before Dec 15th to get this assured award for your stats.
The school app is easy…only takes 5 minutes…no essays, no LORs… just send scores and transcript and you’d have admission and full tuition award in a couple of weeks. Safety in the bag.
University of Redlands, Occidental, Loyola Marymount, Chapman, other UCs, University of San Diego.
Good Luck!
If your family will slap that $20,000 each year into savings while you attend a California CC, then you could consider following the CCC to UC transfer route as a rock-bottom safety option.
However, with your stats you do have a lot of options if you are willing to go out of state, so check the list that mom2collegekids posted, and check through this one as well to see if anything is worth the application process for you:
http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/
Why wouldn’t you consider UCSC, where you would almost certainly get in? They have excellent life science departments, and would be affordable. Davis is probably a solid match for you (my son got in, from out of state, with lower stats).
Thanks mom2collegekids. I will be accepting your wise advice. Roll Tide!!!