New to the whole selecting college process.... Help?

College Search & Selection
1

Hey! First off, thank you so much that you are willing to help me. I really appreciate it.

Some basic things about me:

  • 17 Years Old
  • Rising Senior
  • Live in Michigan and have sibling legacy at University of Michigan- Ann Arbor
  • Love Biology (the physician side of things)
  • Indian American (Born in India type)
  • I am in STEM Biomedical (a part of PLTW that helps teach students hands-on skills in the field of science and the wonders of the human body)
  • Family income is around $75,000 (to help give an estimate of what my parents could pay)

My Scores:

  • 31 ACT (31 E, 33 M, 27 R, 31 S)
  • Have done the SAT but will not report it unless I do better in October. I got 1300 out of 1600. Shooting for a 1450ish.
  • UW GPA is a 3.61 and W GPA is a 3.71
  • AP Biology (4) and AP Chem (3)

I have lots of other honors classes and meet basically all high school class selection requirements but that will not make a huge difference.

Extracurriculars:

  • An intern for a Candidate running for US Congress
  • NHS Member
  • Almost 430 hours of volunteering from places ranging from a local hospital (220ish), through NHS (30ish), my internship (100ish), and my temple (80ish).

Things I am looking for in college:

  • Great biology and medicine program (pre-med would be cool but not required)
  • Large school (10000+ people)
  • My parents would need to take a loan and there would have to be financial aid to help pay for the college
  • No religious preference to the college
  • An urban feel for the college would be incredible but not required
  • The college can be anywhere in the US, but it should be reasonably affordable
  • Professionally oriented clubs would be awesome

Some colleges I already have on my list are colleges (these are all my reaches, matches, and safeties currently) like the University of Michigan- Ann Arbor, Michigan State University, and University of Southern California. Anything similar is what I am going for (although make sure I would have a fighting chance with their application).

Thank you so incredibly much for taking your time to help me! Honestly, just give me the names of the colleges that you think I might like and I could research them myself to save yourself some time.

2

Have you run the Net Price Calculators for the 3 schools you mention, or any others? You need to do this right away, as your parents may or may not be willing to take out loans for the amounts involved.

The financial piece is a huge part of this search process.

Next, use the College Match software on this website and input your variables and see what matches you. Then, if the choice looks good, go ahead and run those NPC’s to see if that is something you and your parents are comfortable with. Off the top of my head there are a number of large universities that would appear to match your criteria.

See what states Michigan has reciprocity with, as well. You want to avoid OOS tuition, especially if you are hoping for medical school down the road. You need to minimize undergraduate expense and debt.

Finally, once you have a working list, I would urge you to take some college visits to make sure you are comfortable with where you are applying/admitted.

Good luck!

3

I would recommend looking at one or two colleges or universities that break your mold too. Take a look at some private colleges with good biology/pre-med programs and give them a visit. Just like you can’t get a sense for whether a school will be a good fit or not without visiting first, you might find that once you visit a smaller school you actually like the feel there.

When considering the financial aid angle, make sure you understand the difference between loans, grants, parent loans, students loans, public vs. private loans, and subsidized vs un-subsidized loans. It’s one thing to see how many loans you will have to take out and its another thing to actually understand what the repayment options will be, how their interest rate works, and when you have to start paying on them.