Growing up, I never considered my family exceptionally wealthy and always thought we would qualify for substantial financial aid. However, within the past year I’ve discovered that that’s probably not gonna be the case considering the fact that my parents have a combined income of about 200k. My parents have a lot of financial responsibilities (we support a lot of my family in Nigeria financially but apparently we cannot declare them as dependents because they aren’t American citizens) and I don’t want to be a burden on my parents financially. Combined with that, my parents really don’t want me to have any debt as an undergrad because they anticipate med school being super expensive. I plan on applying to all of the following:
Harvard
Stanford
Yale
Princeton
Brown
UPenn
Cal Berkeley
Georgia Tech
Duke
MIT
Columbia
UGA
Auburn
Johns Hopkins
Northwestern
University of Southern California
It would suck to get into one of these schools and not be able to attend because it’s not financially feasible. I am a dual Nigerian and American citizen. My current GPA is 4.0 UW and 4.620 W (+.5 for Honors and +1 for AP) and my SAT is 2230 (740 CR 780 M 710 W). I run varsity track and plan to run varsity cross country. I am also in some other extracurricular activities with leadership positions and also hold a job at Taco Bell and volunteer weekly at my church for around the last 5 years. Are there any outside scholarships both big and small that I can look into to make my education economically possible?
Look, there are just not a lot of foundations looking to give funds to upper tier income people. They are looking for low income people who would not otherwise be able to attend college at all, so you are not going to be in the running for a lot of the big foundation scholarships. You will have to search and scramble by yourself to find merit scholarships that you can qualify for. But remember a lot of scholarships are only for one year and you need a 4 year plan. This forum doesn’t hunt for scholarships for individual students. There are thousands of them with differing qualifications.
Given your stated goals, your list doesn’t make any sense. Not merit giving for the most part. Be sure to run the Net Price Calculator to see the amount your family would be expected to pay and discuss with your parents what they are ready to pay for you college. It may to impossible to cobble up the remaining cost from. Surely at that income level they have planned for you to go to college? Just maybe a more affordable college.
So on your list USC gives half and full tuition but very competitive. GT gives Presidential. Dike has some. Don’t know about UGA Auburn. Stanford only recruited athlete. Ivies no merit. Berkeley doesn’t give big merit you will likely be full pay at 57k per year but 2 to10k are given to OOS students occasionally. So you do qualify for big aid if you pick the right colleges.
Let me be clear. I’m not looking for anyone to do the work for me. I understand the advantages and disadvantages of my parents’ income level. It’s a reality I can’t change. However, just like many so-called “financially disadvantaged” students, I’m determined to not let my financial situation determine the kind of schools I am able to apply to. My list of schools is based on the type of educational experience I hope to have and now I need to find a way to foot the bill. I simply wanted to know if any other students with situations similar to mine have found a way to overcome the one gap I see in helping kids afford colleges: families that make too much to qualify for financial aid but not enough to be able to afford $65k+ a year.
Best of luck to you! Let me know if you figure it out. I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a way to pay for three kids to go to college that doesn’t involve debt. The best solution I’ve found is to look for schools that offer great merit aid for high stats kids. Are you likely to get National Merit? If so that can really help at some schools but likely none on your list.
Have you looked into honors colleges at schools that will give you large merit awards? They may give you “the type of educational experience” you are looking for.
There’s a possibility I could be a NMSF. I scored a 223 on my PSAT and in my state it’s around 5-8 points higher than the cutoff has been in the past few years
All your top schools listed only offer financial aid, no merit. You would be full pay for those. USC will give you 1/2 tuition if you’re NMF. Assuming you are OOS for UCB that will cost $55K/year. You’ll get merit aid at UGA, GT and Auburn though I don’t know how much.
It won’t determine what kind of schools you can apply to (though it would be foolish to waste money on applications to schools you can’t afford), but will certainly determine what kind of schools you can attend. Time to get out of the prestige trap, accept the realities, and plan accordingly. If you make NMF, there will be a lot of fine schools you can attend.
As the above poster stated, you can’t have it all. If you’re going the med-school route then you don’t really need to go to an Ivy for undergrad at all. Plenty of smart people have been in your situation and gone to lower tier schools so unless you want to cough up well over $100K for your BS which will end up proving to be of nominal value, then you’re going to have to settle for a school like USC (which is a fantastic school by the way).
Also med school is super expensive. Expect another $200-300K in loans from med school. Do you want to pay over $400K for your schooling?
There are lots of students in this situation. Many top tier schools only give out financial aid. This is why many students from well off ( but not rich) families attend in-state universities. Read about the scholarships offered at USC, Rice, Duke, Vandy and UNC.
Your list is extremely top heavy…with expensive and competitive colleges. If your parents will not pay for you to attend these schools, you need to broaden your search to include colleges where you will get substantial merit aid for your stats.
Since you have UGA and Auburn in your list, how about adding University of Alabama where you would get guaranteed significant merit aid?
@thumper1 the thing is I’m finding it very hard to gauge how much I can spend on college because my parents won’t tell me what they can afford. They keep their finances very secretive for the most part but I do know for sure their income is around 200k. And yes I am a Georgia resident.
You know…with $200,000 of income, it is highly likely the colleges won’t give you a penny of need based aid.
Your list is top heavy with schools that do NOT give a cent of merit aid. Not a cent. The costs to attend the Ivies and Stanford would be well above $60,000 a year. Do your parents realize how much these schools cost?
There are other schools on your list that do give merit awards, but they are extremely competitive…because the applicants to those schools are mostly high stats applicants. No guarantees there.
Your stats are very good. There are plenty of colleges where you could garner merit aid that are far less competitive for admissions.
Like I said…you have Auburn on your list. University of Alabama would give you an excellent guaranteed merit award.
I would suggest you print out the cost of attendance pages at a few colleges. Show them to your parents. See if they are prepared to pay the costs for you to attend. Also run the net price calculators on the college websites. These will give your parents a decent estimate of their net cost for one year of attending these schools.
@thumper1 the whole financial thing has just been very confusing. My dad did the FAFSA calculator and it said our EFC was only around $24,000 which isn’t amazing but at least manageable and possible doable. But then again I never saw what numbers he put in. They aren’t very cooperative with letting me understand their finances and they aren’t willing to do the calculators themselves so it’s hard to get a good estimate without knowing the majority of the information the calculators ask for.
The FAFSA EFC is a relatively useless number for most schools. For need based aid, it represents the MINIMUM amount not the maximum you will pay. The maximum will be the COA.
If your parents will not share their financial data (many won’t) then you need to ask 1) what they are willing to pay per year and 2) that they run the NPC for each school and share the results with you. Without that, you need to assume that the need based aid is zero and that the only aid will be merit.
@noname87 the problem is they won’t do any of those things. They won’t tell me what they want to pay a year and they won’t go do the calculators. Every time I ask about these things, it turns into a lecture about things completely unrelated or they tell me to just worry about the cost after I get in. I think they expect me to win some big scholarship or something like that but I’m beginning to realize that’s not going to be an easy task. Even for the scholarships I am eligible for (which isn’t many), many of them have preference for financial need so I know that once I include my parents level of education I’m pretty much out. I’m not afraid of assuming some debt but definitely not a lot because I know med school will be an insane amount of money.
Well, change it around. You do the calculators with the information you know, which is ‘about 200k in income’, and just guess at assets. Your EFC will come out very high, and show your parents those numbers. “Mom and Dad, I’ve calculated Johns Hopkins will cost $65k per year and I will receive no FA. Is that do-able?” I think they’ll quickly want to have a better idea of how much it will really cost (and Hopkins and other schools with little merit aid will be in the full pay neighborhood). Other schools, like UGA or GaTech, may be a lot more affordable because of Hope/zell Miller, instate tuition, other aid. You could run a few schools with automatic merit, like Alabama.