Need a List of Schools

College Search & Selection
1

Okay so August 1st is not only the date that the Common App is officially out, but also the day my dad has set for me to have my list of schools. Small problem- I still don’t have one!

I would greatly appreciate some advice and maybe a list of schools you are applying to even though I know every person is going to be different. I just feel very overwhelmed at the moment.

Me 101:
I’ve been touring campuses since freshman year, but they’ve mostly all been top tier schools like Stanford, Duke, and UCLA that I won’t get into (sorry dad). My list is allowed to be up to 10 schools, and I want a good mix of safeties and reaches.

Major: completely undecided!!!
School size: I think medium- like less than 30,000 greater than 5,000 but then again I think I could go big or small- there are advantages to both. I want to have small class sizes but a lot of resources and research/internship opportunities
Location: (I live in IL) anywhere but the deep south (not a fan of very conservative hot places). Somewhere with a college town vibe, not a big city or a rural area but with things to do
Price: my parents refuse to give me one, so I’m just gonna assume that my limit is $50,000 in total cost of attendance per year- that being said, I’d really like to receive some merit scholarships (pretty sure I won’t qualify for financial aid)
Public/Private: no preference

Stats:
uw GPA: 3.947 (out of 4.0)
weighted GPA: 4.395
ACT: 33 composite (34 superscore)
PSAT: 1420- I don’t think I’ll qualify for NMS
SAT Subject Tests (out of 800):
Chemistry: 740
Math Level 2: 760

Leadership Award in orchestra (given to one freshman in orchestra)
NCTE Award (writing competition)
honorable mention for the National French Exam thing (2015)

Class Rigor: other than regular freshman biology- all honors and AP
Freshman: AP World History (3)
Junior: AP Chemistry (5)
AP English Language (5)
AP U.S History (4) (I think I’ll be an AP Scholar with Honor)
(this year) Senior: AP Lit, AP Physics 1 & 2, AP French V, AP Calc BC, PLTW (Project Lead the Way), Symphony Orchestra

ECs (by the time I graduate): not great
2 years of debate (JV) -got a couple awards
4 years of Topcats -mentoring program at an elementary school
3 years of Track (JV)
2 years of Interact (volunteering group)
2 years of FBLA: placed at regionals, 9th in state for Business Calculations
violin lessons- 9 years
NHS
currently work as a hostess at Baker Square- planning on continuing through next summer ( I also dog sit frequently and volunteer for H.A.S.R.A- an organization that transports dogs from kill shelters in Alabama up north to forever families, neither of these are very significant but I love dogs)

Scary to see my entire high school career written out here but if anyone has any words of wisdom, I’d like to hear what people have to say!! Thanks so much.

2

A parent who refuses to give a budget sometimes can’t (or won’t) pay their EFC. Maybe run the NPCs at a few schools, and ask if your EFCs are okay. If this doesn’t work, and you’re upper-class, you should focus on merit aid.

-Marist College
-Temple University (Full tuition)
-Villanova University (Near Philly, but chance for merit)

3

Thank you!!!

4

Even though you say you have no list, what schools are you currently considering? Knowing that might give us more to go on. Although you’re undecided, are you looking for a First Year Experience or similar type of program to help you decide? Preferences as to East or West Coast, or X number of hours from home?

Based solely on your stats and desire for non-urban schools with a college town vibe and potential for merit or institutional aid, I would suggest:
Kenyon, Skidmore, U Puget Sound, U Oregon (no aid here), Oberlin, Mount Holyoke, Goucher, Whitman, Bryn Mawr, Lake Forest, U Vermont (some aid available to OOS), Bard, Colorado College, Occidental

5

http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/
Check the schools’ web sites because the scholarship parameters may have changed.

6

Are you allowed to apply to ‘free to apply’ universities on top of the 10?
Go to your public library tomorrow and borrow College’s that change lives, the Fiske guide, The Princeton Review 's best colleges.
Unfortunately you live in Illinois - super high instate costs, lousy financial aid, selection per major, huge budget woes, and
For safeties, look into UScranton, Ithaca, Beloit, UPugetSound, WKU honors, unc Asheville honors, Appalachian State (watauka and honors), Unc Wilmington honors, cnu presidential leadership, SUny Geneseo. All give good merit aid. Run the NPC’s, fill out the ‘request info forms’, read through the websites. (For all colleges, but start with safeties).
Temple U, Ohio U, Miami Ohio, UDelaware are all good pick in the North - if their merit scholarships don’t change your odds of admission are excellent.
For matches, look at St.Olaf, NCSU, Denison,
Reasonable reaches: Smith, Mount Holyoke, William and Mary, Kenyon, Colby.

7

I don’t see why you don’t think you can get into schools like Duke and UCLA. Your GPA, test scores, course rigor and ECs make you an appealing applicant. You obviously need safeties and targets, but applying to 4-5 reaches like Duke, UCLA, NU, Cornell etc…certainly won’t hurt. What is your intended major? If you are uncertain, mention a few potential academic tracks that you are willing to entertain.

Ask your father to clarify the budget. Explain to him you cannot finalise your list unless you know the financial restrictions (if any), and therefore, the type of financial aid/merit scholarships you will require, as those vary widely from college/university to college/university.

8

Your grades and scores put you into UCLA and Duke range. Stanford is tough for anyone, but you should apply with those numbers.

The advice you’re getting here has schools with wildly different admissions standards. Kenyon, Whitman, Bryn Mawr and Colorado College kids are kids who can get into UCLA and even Duke. Again, Stanford it Stanford.

You could use a college counselor.

9

Seems like you need to pin your parents down a bit for cost. One problem is that they may not know what they are willing to spend until they see where you get in. So…I’d say show them the cost for your state’s flagship university and run the calculator. Show them that and ask if they can (and will) pay that. If so, you have a starting place. Any school that’ll cost more than that will mean convincing them that it’s worth more than your flagship. If it costs a similar amount or less, then you’re in a better place IMO.

The valedictorian at our local HS got into Duke, but will attend Univ of WA because his parents couldn’t justify the extra cost of Duke. The reluctance of your parents to set a $ amount suggests to me that you could end up like that student. Maybe have a couple Duke’s in your list, but have a couple schools where you are likely to get some aid to get the cost down to your in-state cost (or whatever the cost of the school your parents say they’ll pay for).

I just suggest being concrete, i.e. showing them the cost of your in-state flagship, rather than a $ amount since they probably have no idea how much college really costs now. 'Course if they cannot/will not pay for your in-state options because they are far more expensive than they expected, then your list is going to look really different.

10

Yes, show them the NPC and they might have fun with it.
Do you really have “no idea” about a possible major?

11

I’ve visited and am considering Miami Ohio, and IU. I went to UNC and UMich and liked those as well. I saw and did not like Northwestern and Notre Dame (I’m not religious).

My counselor recommended USC and and Santa Clara as well as Colorado at Boulder, University of NH, Universoty of Vermont and others because she is not an advocate for the UCs (due to their price and size). I’ve visited California multiple times and loved it but many of the cities are really expensive to live in. I’ve never been out east, but I’m not opposed to it!

and yes I really don’t know what I want to do. I hate social studies/history so that is out. I humored engineering but I feel like I’m too dumb/I won’t enjoy it-plus I’m scared I’d start a program and waste a year if I decided it wasn’t for me. I’ve thought about chem but I feel like I wouldn’t be able to contribute (I know that doesn’t make sense). I wouldn’t be against teaching children. Sometimes I think about creating a non profit dog rescue organization. I DONT KNOW
I honestly don’t have a clear idea I just want some of the knowledge I’ve gained in high school to be applicable to be future and (per usual cliche) I just want to be happy.

THANKS AGAIN TO EVERYONE WHO COMMENTED!!! I’m going to go research all those schools now!
(also financial update: my dad said the price doesn’t matter and that if I get in somewhere “they will make it work” that’s about the best I can do for a range so I’m gonna stick with my original estimate.)

12

So many suggestions are small LACs – the OP said she doesn’t want to go smaller than 5000 students. If you think you MIGHT want the LAC experience, look at the Claremont Consortium. Five small LACs all snuggled up next to each other, the campuses sort of fit together like Lego blocks. You can cross register at the different schools, and students often take classes and socialize at the other schools. How about Scripps (I think you are female)? It is right with the other Claremont Colleges, there are plenty of opposite gender students around. You might get some merit aid at Scripps, too. Or look at PItzer, also a Claremont College.

I assume you are applying to UIUC. U of MN - Twin Cities is relatively inexpensive out of state – going up some, but it is still a decent deal.

I would seriously ask your dad to run net price calculators with you on your 10 schools, at least when you provide him with the list – honestly, there is still time to adjust if you do this around August 1 :slight_smile: Do not let your parents take the attitude of “we will figure it out” without understanding what those numbers look like BEFORE you apply. He may not know about this nifty new thing called the Net Price Calculator that every college is required to have on their website that gives you an idea of what YOU might pay to attend there based on financial info you (or your parents) enter in.

Oh, and put that dog rescue work in your app. It is unusual, and assuming you put a fair amount of time into it, I think it is a good EC. It is not “traditional”, and that is GOOD in the college admissions process. Something that makes an admissions officer perk up and say, “That kid is doing something they are passionate about and that is kinda cool that other people aren’t doing.”

13

You would love IU if the cost is in line. The campus is gorgeous. You would have access to honors programs. The commute to IL is not too bad. Nothing against Miami of Ohio, but…

More seriously, I would not accept that feedback from your dad without some clarification. For example, the cost of attendance at Duke is ~$70,000 per year. The cost of attendance at Alabama (for you) is ~$0. Would your parents be able to make it work with a 4 year variance of $280,000?

14

I agree with everyone else about the need to nail your parents down about how much they can actually afford. “We’ll make it work” really isn’t an okay answer. If you get NO merit aid, then a private school will cost around $60,000 a year. Are your parents seriously saying they will be able to write that tuition check? Or are they expecting that they’ll take out massive loans? They may regret that later on. Not that they don’t have the right, as your parents, to take on massive loan debt, but if you really don’t have a strong preference where you attend, then taking price into account only makes sense.

Also, as others have said, stop being so down on yourself. You have VERY GOOD stats and your ECs are perfectly fine. No, you are not a superstar, but very few people are. You are probably a long shot for Stanford but I don’t get the sense that you are yearning for a top 10 school in any case.

So bearing that in mind – how do you feel about Urbana/Champaign? You didn’t mention it at all, and yet it’s the most obvious choice for an Illinois resident with your stats. I think it should at least be on your list, unless you totally hate it.

Grinnell, Kenyon, Oberlin, are also obvious choices, though they may be too small/too rural. Macalester? Too small/too far north? Also, although you are a match for these schools, that means you may not get merit money which could be a factor if your parents are not ready to shell out that $60,000/year.

The OOS public schools you’ve mentioned don’t seem like good options – you’ll pay OOS tuition (unless some of them offer merit aid? UNC might do that since your stats are so good, but it doesn’t seem likely that UMich would). Again, if you want a big public, why not U of Illinois?

(If I’m talking about Midwestern schools, it’s because I think that all else being equal (as in, you honestly don’t have a preference for another geographic area of the country), you might as well stick close to home. You’ll save money and hassle on travel, and if you’re back at home after graduation looking for a job, prospective employers will at least have heard of your school.)

15

Why does your list have to be 10 schools? It’s REALLY restrictive for a student Other your stats.
Another issue, which I tried to express before being cut off (:p= not at home), is that you live in Illinois. Your flagship can’t be your safety unless you apply to College of Liberal Arts and Science, plus perhaps College of information Technology, college of media… It’s very selective and due to budget woes admit hundreds of international and oos students who pay more. On top forbid, for an undecided student: They admit by college and even by major and make it almost impossible to switch. Your best bet would be to apply DGS but it may make selective majors harder to get into. As for your directionals, they suffer from terrible budget problem, and, as you know, the state bankruptcy or lack of budget has meant some had to close and most couldn’t deliver on the scholarships they were supposed to give out.
Right now your best bets are flagships in other states.
Forget California. MN, WI, IA, Indiana all have decent flagships that would countbas one safety. However they’re much bigger than pu’re looking for. And most colleges will be smaller than 5,000 (sizes would be : about 1,500; about 2,000-2,500; 2,800-4,000 = all three groups of very small, small, and medium comprise most colleges out there. Then the flagships are 15,000-45,000, which would be large to very large. The intermediate size of 5,000 to 10,000 roughly, tends to include Catholic universities and directionals, especially COPLAC schools. Because most students think this is the size they want, Goldilocks -like, the private universities in that group have less reason to discount and/or tendnto be higher priced than counterparts.)
I agree with everyone above: "we’ll make it work " almost always results in parents telling the kid in the spring that they can’t afford the colleges kid got into, and it’s now too late to apply to affordable colleges.
Run the NPC on uiuc and on Stanford. Show your parents the results and ask for a number they KNOW they can pay.
Without a financial number, it doesn’t fair to limit our to 10 colleges. You need affordable colleges before you can add 'dream schools’and schools the cost of which isn’t taken into account.
Look into Elon- getting to be South, but not conservative and not too hot. I agree about adding Scripps.
What about researching college’s that have therapy dogs? I agree the rescue program ou’re part of is unique and speaks highly of you.

16

I have trouble agreeing that a “limit” of 10 schools is restrictive.

17

For an example of a school that has students involved with service dogs, look up TUSTEP at Tulane.

http://admission.tulane.edu/livecontent/news/342-leaving-a-legacy-tulane-grad-21-started-servicedog.php

18

10 is restrictive when the parents have expectations of " reaches for everyone " and do not give a budget. For all she knows, all her universities will be unaffordable.

19

Agree that 10 seems like a reasonable number. And I doubt the OP can run net price calculators on her own, her parents sound like they don’t share much family financial info with her. Worst case, print the tuition/room & board/fees page from their websites, circle the out of state costs if they are public, and give them to your dad. If he says, “Oh, you will get aid” or “Oh, we/you can borrow for it”, then you have to get him to the NPCs.

If you want a state flagship type of school, Ohio State offers some merit.

And it was mentioned above, but get a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges if you don’t have one yet. A copy a few years old is ok, the description parts are still valid.

20

A solid safety school for you, possibly a financial safety as well, would be Drake University in Des Moines. With your ACT score you’d likely qualify for merit aid. The total cost, before any merit aid, is about $20,000 less than many of the other schools mentioned above.

  • Total of around 5,000 students, 3,000 undergrads.
  • Around 70 majors
  • Small class size
  • Urban-like environment
  • Many internship opportunities