Need help making college list!!!

College Search & Selection
1

I am currently a junior at a public high school in Kansas, and I’m trying to make a list of colleges that I might apply to in the fall. I personally would love to go out of state (especially big cities), however my parents would prefer for me to stay in the Midwest area. We are an upper middle class family, and most likely will not receive much if any financial aid, so I would like to apply to colleges where I am pretty much guaranteed some merit based scholarships. Also, I want to major in biology, or possibly biomedical engineering on a premed track, so I would love some suggestions on colleges that have high acceptances into med school.
Here are my stats:

gpa: 4.4 weighted, 3.88 unweighted
ap/honors: all honors classes freshman & sophomore year, 4 APs (apush, lang, chem, and calc ab) this year (junior), on track for 5 APs (bio, stats, lit, psych, and gov)
I also took a lot of science courses such as anatomy & phys, advanced biotech, & genetics as my electives since it’s my favorite subject.

act: 32 (will retake to try for a 33 or 34) sat:
1400 (most likely will not submit this)

extracurriculars
-national honor society (applied for leadership position, not sure if I got it)
-student council (currently an executive board member, but possibility for higher leadership positions next year)
-DECA member
-wish club member
-yoga (planning on getting my certification to teach soon)
-possibly link crew (a program where a senior is assigned a small group of freshman to mentor and help them adjust to high school. I plan on applying to it, and will most likely make it in)
-art classes for the past 8 years
-hobbies: baking and drawing

college list so far:
-ku- safety (guaranteed admission)
-wash u & u chicago (both are most likely reaches due to the low acceptance rates)

I most likely will not be receiving any aid from wash u and u Chicago, so it would be helpful if you could suggest some colleges that would be a match or a safety based on my stats, that would also possibly offer me some merit aid.
Thanks in advance!

2

Have a look at Lawrence University (Appleton, WI), Rhodes College (Memphis), and the College of Wooster (Wooster, OH) . These are small, selective (but not super selective) colleges that award competitive merit aid packages in relatively large average amounts (~$20K - $25K) to relatively high percentages of incoming students.

3

I forgot to mention this in my original post, but I prefer colleges that are mid sized or large. @tk21769 thanks for the suggestions, however all of these schools have an undergraduate enrollment smaller than that of my high school, so I am not sure I would like that very much.

4

^^I meant the undergraduate enrollment is smaller than the total number of kids in my high school, sorry if that was unclear

5

First, you should talk to your parents to find out how much they can afford per year. It is hard to get large merit aids that would be significant enough to lower the OOS tuition cost or you have to aim very low. Also, the living cost in big city would be very high too.

6

@billcsho my parents have told me no more than $30K per year

7

^^for total cost of attendance not just tuition

8

extracurriculars I forgot to add:
250+ hospital volunteering hours
50+ physician shadowing hours
hospital internship with physician set up for next fall

9

You could try the cal states in CA (CSULB and CSUF are the best ones imo), for out of state it’s under 35K in total, and maybe you could apply for scholarship/aid? Your grades and everything are good enough for the UCs, I think you have a chance for UCLA, but regarding your budget I don’t think that’s a good idea (it’s 60K+ for out of state in total), I just wanted to put it out there for you. You could also try state and city universities in NY (the SUNY and CUNY systems) and both systems are under 35k in total out of state as well. I don’t know too much about them though. And in Kansas I’m sure you could look at Kansas state or Wichita state. The universities in Kansas are not that hard to get into compared to universities in other states. I really feel like you could do better, but of course you need to take into consideration tuition costs for being from out of state. If you plan to go out of state, your best bet is to really just apply to as many scholarships as you can! Good luck!

10

You could try the cal states in CA (CSULB and CSUF are the best ones imo), for out of state it’s under 35K in total, and maybe you could apply for scholarship/aid? Your grades and everything are good enough for the UCs, I think you have a chance for UCLA, but regarding your budget I don’t think that’s a good idea (it’s 60K+ for out of state in total), I just wanted to put it out there for you. You could also try state and city universities in NY (the SUNY and CUNY systems) and both systems are under 35k in total out of state as well. I don’t know too much about them though. And in Kansas I’m sure you could look at Kansas state or Wichita state. The universities in Kansas are not that hard to get into compared to universities in other states. I really feel like you could do better, but of course you need to take into consideration tuition costs for being from out of state. If you plan to go out of state, your best bet is to really just apply to as many scholarships as you can! Good luck!

11

Look for a mix of safety, matches, and reaches. You can look for colleges by criteria with http://www.collegeview.com/collegesearch/index.jsp

12

@fearforthefuture thanks for the suggestions!! I may apply to a uc even though it is a bit out of my budget, as my parents say that if I get into a good school they will find a way to “make it work”. I will definitely look into the cal states and nyc schools.

13

You will get no aid from a UC. You might get merit from Ohio State, especially if you can gain a couple points on your ACT.

14

I’m originally from Kansas too (nice to see another Kansan on here!), and I’m currently a senior in Washington. When your time comes to apply, I would recommend applying to KU for a scholarship (I had similar stats and they gave me tons of money), and make that your safety school, but forget applying to the other Kansas schools, its mainly a waste of time/money since KU is way better.

If I were you, I also would apply to:
-University of Michigan
-University of Florida
-University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
-University of Washington (best public school in US for medicine)
-UC’s (if you can stand California)
-Ivy League: See if you can get in!

Best of luck to you! :slight_smile:

15

@Wolfblood Did you get any kind of aid from UW? This list seems like a list that will mostly just be expensive. OOS publics mostly are not the best bang for the buck.

16

I would not put any school on the list without checking their NPCs. The list from @WolfBlood is mostly a waste of money and time to apply. They are mostly reaches and financial reaches for OP. Don’t expect any aid from UIUC and expect to pay $50k+ per year. If OP’s parent can afford $30k a year, then they are likely exceed the need met family income limit of $90k with less than $50k asset at UMich. Their CoA is $60k-$65k per year and OP would need to pay most of it. OP would not get merit aid from them either. Not to mention the Ivies.

17

@billcsho Yeah, I don’t think my parents will be able to afford any of the colleges mentioned from @WolfBlood … Does anyone know how much merit aid is offered at schools like Purdue and Baylor?

18

Although many of the Cal States will have COA in the $35K/year range, some will cost more due to the high cost of housing in the surrounding areas ex. San Diego. Most Cal States only guarantee 1-2 years of living on campus, so off campus costs along with transportation could amount to around $40K/year. Cal States also do not offer any financial aid to OOS students, so expect to be full fees like the UC’s.

As emphasized by many posters, run the Net Price calculators first before considering and applying to any of these schools. If you are OOS for CA, I would look at the CA privates instead where you might have a better chance for FA.

St. Marys, Occidental, Santa Clara, Loyola Marymount, University of San Diego, University of San Francisco might be some options but are not large schools.

19

Purdue does offer a lot of merit scholarships. You can find it on their website. However, the top 2 main ones (Trustee’s and President are still only $5k-$16k per year. Anyway, your stat is not likely to get you those. My D got the $10k one with 4.0/35 and they added another $10k later on four years ago.
https://www.admissions.purdue.edu/costsandfinaid/freshman.php

20

I would stay away from any OOS publics that don’t offer strong merit-based aid, because they will be out of your budget range.

A few that do offer merit are:

  • Pittsburgh
  • Ole Miss
  • Alabama

A handful offer decent need-based aid to OOS students – like Michigan, UVA and UNC – wouldn’t hurt to run NPC to check.

In fact, before you rule out other highly selective private schools, I’d run NPC to confirm whether they really are out of your budget range. I’m talking about the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Northwestern, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Rice, Emory, CMU, etc. – universities that give a lot of need-based aid.