Need schools to apply to... HELP

College Search & Selection
1

<p>So I just got rejected by my top choice and early decision school today, and now have to frantically apply to more safety/fit schools for regular decision. I would like to remain in the mid-atlantic region or the east coast, or california but i'm not opposed to elsewhere. I really want to go to a school that is good in academics and sports, especially football and basketball, but i have no chance of getting into Duke of stanford or vanderbilt, etc. Please help me generate some good safety, fit, and maybe low reach schools, I have maybe three weeks to apply to all these schools if i wanna go to college now haha whoops</p>

<p>GPA: UW: 3.72, W(out of 5.0): 4.42, (but my transcript is a complete upward trend. the only reason my GPA is so low is strictly due to freshmen year, basically straight A's throughout the rest of high school.)
No rank, but definitely top 10, if not 5th%, also counselor marked schedule as most rigorous in school on secondary school report</p>

<p>SAT's: 2050 - M-720 R-670 W-660 Essay-10
ACT: composite - 32, W-31 M-29 R-31 S-33 Essay - 11
AP Scores: NSL (3), APUSH (5), World (3), Bio (4), Psych (4), Calc AB (5), Lang (5)
Senior Year Schedule: Ap stat, Ap BC calc, AP Chem, AP Lit, honors anatomy, student internship for calc AB</p>

<p>EC: National honors society, national science honors society (treasurer), national medical honors society, creator and acting president of pre-med club, habitats for humanities, Advanced placement program, leader of student body sports organization, lacrosse, swim, captain of Relay for Life group (raised over $3000 for cancer research), around 300 volunteer hours (animal shelter, soup kitchen, church, library, tutoring, etc.), summer internship/volunteer at Sibley's Memorial Hospital - johns hopkins sister hospital, work for restaurant for 4 years, Manna food shelter drive, holy cross blood drive, etc.</p>

<p>Recs: one from calculus teacher (AB/BC): AMAZING!!! we have a great relationship. two years of having me and i intern for him as well, like favorite student recommendation. one from ap bio teacher, also amazing. we had a really good relationship, not fav student but she is known for writing amazing recommendations so i know it'll be good, counselor is amazing as well, in a school of 2,300, she told me mine was one of the best ones
Essays: common app one is pretty darn good, a 9.5/10 maybe, i'm a very good writer, a 5 on lang, consistent good scores on standardized testing essays, and AP Lang student of the year, so supplements will be no problem
Low income: 25000-30000, chinese female in maryland</p>

2

<p>I like people who roll the dice with confidence, but I’d never advise anyone to do what you did :(( </p>

<p>one school should be either UMD-CP, UMD-BC, or another state public like St. Mary’s or Towson because it might be affordable to you or you might be able to commute. run the net price calculator at each. also take a look at the state scholarships offered by members of the MD state legislature for MD students who go to MD publics.</p>

<p>Non-MD publics are probably going to be too expensive and unwilling to give you aid. The exception would have been Alabama, where you just miss the SAT cutoff of 1400 CR+M. You could look at Temple, a public in Philly that offers lots of aid to OOS students, but I’m not sure what their cutoffs are this year.</p>

<p>your stats aren’t high enough for most of the meets full-need crowd, although you might try Scripps, Bryn Mawr, Holy Cross, Mount Holyoke, Pritzer, Smith, Trinity, Colby, Barnard, and Bates. Oh, and then there’s the midwest little big shots like Macalester and Grinnell.</p>

<p>another possibility is a small, distant LAC that would want you for your state of origin and you would want for their money. Bethany in KS, thomas Aquinas in CA, and Carroll in WI are meets full need. </p>

<p>If none of these matches your needs or you’ve missed deadlines, you can look at the list yourself: </p>

<p><a href=“Colleges with Need-Blind Admission for U.S. Students”>Colleges with Need-Blind Admission for U.S. Students; </p>

<p>and if that doesn’t work come back and see us. you know about the net price calculators, right?</p>

3

<p>Doesn’t really sound like the OP is interested in LACs, although I agree her stats are fit for a lot of those listed. I agree that UMD-CP and UMD-BC are good options fo ryou.</p>

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<p>well, OP has to have a school that will meet need or thereabout and that OP can get into. The midsize unis and OOS publics are not stepping up with that kind of money. If the OP doesn’t want an LAC, OP has far fewer options. </p>

<p>OP, try running the net price calculator at some of these schools. You’ll need your parents’ help. The NPC will give you a fairly accurate estimate of what a particular school will expect your family to pay if your parents aren’t divorced, don’t own a business, or have a second home. It is the only method to determine costs, and costs determine everything about where you’ll go to college. If your parents won’t give you that info, you’ll have to spend some time coaxing it out of them because eventually they will have to give the info to the colleges, state, and federal govts or you won’t get any financial aid. You can’t really say you have a college list if you don’t know if there’s a school on it that you can go to. Talk to mom and dad and make them part of the college process.</p>

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<p>@jkeil911 @intparent‌ I already applied to UMDCP since my brother goes there, and he received some financial aid through FAFSA rather than the school. Running the net-calculator, at most our expected cost of contribution is less than half of the overall cost. (my parents are divorced, my dad is not in the picture, and there are four dependents on my mom who is a single mother) are there any decent private colleges that you think i’ll be able to get into? because i know private schools have more money to offer and less people to offer them too</p>

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<p>No one actually gets financial aid through FAFSA. It is a form you fill out to determine if you are eligible for federal aid, though, like Pell Grants and federal student loans.</p>

<p>When you say your dad is “out of the picture”, what do you mean? Many colleges want financial information from both parents, and even expect divorced parents (and any new spouses of either parent) to pay as well. If you have contact with your dad at all, it may be difficult to get a waiver from that.</p>

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<p>@intparent oh wow thanks for the clarification, I can’t believe I didn’t know that. So my brother was able to receive about half of UMCP’s cost through applying to FAFSA, i think they were all grants. And we don’t know his whereabouts, and when applying for financial aid at the school i ED’d at, even thought i got denied, they accepted my noncustodial parent waiver petition</p>

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<p>Okay… it is pretty late in the game to be finding schools (not sure why you didn’t make a list along with your reach ED school a while ago). But looking forward…</p>

<p>Apply now to UMD-BC if you haven’t yet.</p>

<p>Look at the Temple website for information on merit scholarships per @jkeil911’s suggestion. Then there are smaller schools (so won’t have big-time athletics, but if you want that go to UMD-CP if you get in…) suggested by jkeil also that you should look at: Trinity, Holy Cross, Bates. Several others on that list were women’s colleges – I like Mount Holyoke a lot. Dickinson meets 96% of financial need, so they are another good choice on the East Coast (one of my kids went there and loved it). The big sports schools are going to be mostly OOS publics, so not affordable for you as aid is usually pretty poor for OOS students. Boston College might be a match for you, though, and they are Division I and a school that meets need.</p>

<p>Go look at the websites for all these schools and run the net price calculators. Make sure you understand what they are telling you – what they say are grants that do not need to be paid back, what amount is federal loans and what type of loans. You need to educate yourself in a hurry on financial aid topics so you are well positioned to compare packages when you get them.</p>

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<p>geez, OP, read my #1. :-?? </p>

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<p>@intparent i’ve already applied to a bunch of schools under early action, such as umcp, umbc, u of miami, u of michigan, colorado college, BU, penn state, NYU, and a few more, but after getting rejected by my top choice i’m not feeling very confident and feel as if i might not get into any schools and need a few more to apply to, thats why i needed the suggestions because i don’t really know of any other schools outside of the ones i had already applied to</p>

<p>@jkeil911 i did! thank you. what does LAC stand for?</p>

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<p>liberal arts college.</p>

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<p>Holy Cross(don’t have to be religious) has very good academics and decent Division1 sports program that plays against most Ivies in football and basketball. HC has tremendous alumni network and school spirit. Holy Cross meets 100% demonstrated financial need and has beautiful campus 1 hour from Boston. HC website is informative.</p>

13

<p>

Do you have an actual safety? One which you would be happy to attend and can afford? You certainly won’t be able to afford Penn State or NYU so I have no idea why they were on your list.</p>

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<p>@"Erin’s Dad"‌ right now, i’ve mainly been focusing on getting into the school, my mom told me we’ll worry about the cost later after i’ve gotten into schools and have options and financial aid offers to choose from. Based off of NPC’s and FA, i know that our family income will get us pretty decent aid’s at most schools. UMBC and penn state are safety’s, in the terms of getting into the school. UMCP is the most practical choice right now seeing as it’s a match school, I like almost everything about it, my brother goes there, and the in-state tuition is affordable. I guess I want more options like UMCP, in case things don’t work out but like I said I haven’t been letting the sticker price of schools stop me from applying, but obviously if after FA i can’t afford a school then I won’t attend</p>

15

<p>This is not the best strategy, OP. You need to persuade your parents to talk about money NOW. It is possible you would find yourself in April with no admissions you can afford. It happens. Get your parents’ help to run the net price calculators so you can apply to schools you can afford.</p>

16

<p>What about Wake Forest, Syracuse, Pitt, Temple, Butler, Tulane, SMU, Villanova, Butler, and public colleges in MD? Some of those private colleges might not be affordable, but they also might offer you decent aid packages. Most have good D-1 sports (especially basketball).</p>

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<p>A school is not a safety if you can’t afford it. You aren’t going to get enough aid for Penn State or NYU even if you get in, so forget about them. You need to go run net price calculators with your mom so you have AFFORDABLE options in April. Spending a couple of hours doing that will save you from putting a lot of pointless applications.</p>

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<p>Please understand, all you will get from Penn State is an offer of $5500 in loans. They don’t have good FA to start with and certainly won’t offer it to an OOS student. That is not a safety. That’s a waste of application money.</p>

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<p>@woogzmama thanks for those suggestions, i think i will try pitt and syracuse!</p>

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<p>@jkeil911 @intparent @"Erin’s Dad"‌ that is a good point, even though i received fee waivers for all these schools it is a waste of time and energy, i ran the NPC at some private schools with a sticker price of around 60k and the estimated amount of grants was over 50k for each, at public schools it was only around 8-10k</p>