Please recommend a junior safeties/low matches with merit aid

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>I'm a junior getting close to finalizing my list, and it looks top-heavy to me. Can people recommend me safeties (or low matches) that give generous merit aid to candidates like me? I doubt that my family is going to qualify for a lot of need-based aid, so I want some good financial fall-backs if next March shows me too many student loans. I want a school with a strong classics (Greek & Latin) program, preferably in a city. Universities and LACs are both fine.</p>

<p>Anyway, here I am:</p>

<p>Arizona
XX
*Other<a href="mystery-%20no,%20just%20a%20Caucasian%20brought%20up%20English/Spanish%20bilingual">/i</a></p>

<p>Numbers:
GPA: 4.0 uw, 4.86 w (I think, could be as low as 4.72 depending on how arts classes are weighted)
SAT I: 2400
SAT II: Biology E 800, Literature 800, taking Math 2 and Latin
AP this year: special circumstances explained below, taking 8-- Latin literature, Vergil, physics B, English literature, English language, microeconomics, macroeconomics, US government
AP senior year: chem, calc BC, art history, psychology, comparative government, 1 or 2 others TBA</p>

<p>School:
Charter magnet school (open enrollment)
No AP offered, but all non-arts classes are honors*
Rank: 1/55</p>

<ul>
<li>I am taking AP exams in order to get a year of credit out of my way now-- most of our classes in junior and senior year are close to the AP curriculum as it is. This is because I plan on taking a gap year, but want to graduate college with my original class.</li>
</ul>

<p>Activities (information in parentheses is for senior year):
Speech and debate (cocaptain, 4 years)
Varsity cross-country (captain, 3 years)
Varsity track (3 years)
Junior Classical League (president of statewide organization, other positions, 4 years)
Science Bowl, first team (likely captain, 4 years)
Violin lessons (8 years- school has no orchestra, I just take lessons)</p>

<p>Service:
Peer tutoring (4 years)
Write and direct Nativity play at church (3 years)
Volunteer for homeless housing project at church (3 years)
Translated and directed Greek tragedy for school's drama club (11 only)</p>

<p>Awards:</p>

<p>Academic: PSAT 236, will be National Merit candidate; paper on review for Concord Review (publishes high school history papers, accepts 8% of submissions); National History Day awards (district and state winner, natl finalist)</p>

<p>Speech and debate: state finalist, Academic All-American, highest national recognition (quintuple ruby), qualified to Extemp. Tournament of Champions</p>

<p>Athletics: all-region in both, all-state in 3200m in track (for small schools), local road races (might run in college, but not scholarship quality)</p>

<p>JCL: state certamen champion, oratory champion, exams, several essay contests</p>

<p>And here's the list so far:</p>

<p>Reaches-
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Columbia
Swarthmore</p>

<p>Matches-
Chicago
Barnard
Bryn Mawr
Michigan</p>

<p>Safeties-
Fordham
Smith
Arizona</p>

<p>As you can see, the final category is seriously lacking. I'm going to winnow the rest of the list to cut down on work and application fees, but the bottom needs to be expanded a lot. Please recommend away!</p>

2

<p>I don't know if USC would be a safety for you, but they offered me some nice monies.</p>

3

<p>Go to the financial aid forum and look at the stickies on the top. One is colleges offering good merit aid.</p>

4

<p>A number of the schools you're considering don't actually give you real credit for AP exams, so they aren't going to help you finish a degree in three years in all probability. (Some don't give any credit but do let your register for more advanced classes, others severely limit the number of credit you can apply towards your degree from AP work.)</p>

<p>You may find that public schools are more generous with awarding actual college credit for AP work, and you should be a very strong candidate for merit aid at any of them.</p>

<p>Since you've done JCL throughout high school, you might use the JCL resources to identify colleges with strong classics programs.</p>

5

<p>Thanks to all!</p>

<p>@ arabrab:</p>

<p>I have a solid idea of which schools have the best classics programs. What's less clear to me is how competitive those schools are for scholarship money, since there aren't numbers provided for that as there are for admissions. </p>

<p>Thank you for the warning-- I was surprised by that when I first started looking around at AP credit policies. But all of the schools I listed do allow you to take advanced standing by a year if you have enough exams. Columbia and Barnard are both kind of ornery about it, but even there it's possible.</p>

6

<p>You don't need more than one or two safeties. Arizona in-state tuition is cheap enough that you should be able to afford it, even if nothing else works out.</p>

<p>The question I have is why these schools? Smallish all-female colleges don't attract the same students as 40,000 student state flagships. Is this the best of the schools offering classics, or have you not looked beyond the top stratum?</p>

<p>If you want to target a couple of schools with good merit money options, look at USC (half-tuition for NMF) and Vanderbilt (an array of scholarships in the 5 to 20,000 range.) Washington University in St. Louis is another good option with a fair amount of merit money, and they love high SAT numbers.</p>

7

<p>@ midwesterner--</p>

<p>My search is almost totally driven by classics programs. I'm likely to pursue the subject on the graduate level (in fact, I'm likely to take a significant number of graduate courses as an undergrad--the reason that only LACs in consortia appear on my list) and I need the strongest possible program in that area. At the same time, I don't want to attend a school that has an incredible classics program, but which is also very large and doesn't provide smaller communities to its students (ie Harvard houses, the Telluride house and Residential College at Michigan, etc). This is the reason that Berkeley, which is fighting Harvard for the position of the nation's #1 classics school, is not on my list. I don't want something that big unless there's a way to make it feel smaller.</p>

8

<p>Safety - Muhlenberg in PA will give you lots of merit aid.
Match - Brandeis in MA will give you one of their better merit aid awards.</p>

9

<p>Tulane awards about 500 merit awards of up to 24k. Reading CC posts, it seems that quite a few students got the 24k amount. In addition, they offer 50 full tuition DHS (Deans' Honor Scholarships), for which there is a separate application.
Apply early.</p>

<p>USC, as mentioned above, offers half-tuition to NMF students. Their full tuition scholarship is by separate application</p>

<p>I don't know about the classics programs at these two.</p>

10

<p>Actually, I think you have quite a good list, except that there is a gap between what you say you need (merit money) and the schools you have chosen. The Ivies, Smith and Bryn Mawr don't give merit scholarships (as I'm sure you know); Michigan is not generous to out-of-staters, etc., so where is the money to come from? Have you and your parents run the numbers through an FA calculator?</p>

<p>Many schools will be falling over you to offer merit money, so you don't want to spend a lot of time applying to schools which will give only limited aid and pass up the big money. You need to balance your list using the elements of savings, income and future expenses, like grad school. You only need to read some of the CC threads about disappointing financial offers to get an idea of how devastating it is to have a dream acceptance that you cannot afford.</p>

<p>While you are researching, look at the thread on "Swallows to Capistrano" for an introduction to FA. The complexities are probably beyond the grasp of most HS students, but they may very well affect your decision process. </p>

<p>Finally, if you are at all inclined to the U of Chicago, I would recommend getting in an EA application. It sounds like a very good fit for you, and they do have a few generous merit scholarships.</p>

11

<p>@ midwesterner-</p>

<p>Thanks for your post! The FA process is absolutely byzantine and I'm always glad to have help in navigating it.</p>

<p>As for specifics, the thing is that I don't absolutely <em>need</em> merit aid. I know that I'm not going into a high-income career, and that I definitely am planning on graduate or professional school. As such, I <em>absolutely</em> am not interested in taking out student loans. This is not a problem if I get into a no-loan school (HYP, Columbia, Swat), since my parents are able and willing to pay the 20-25k these schools would expect from us. </p>

<p>FA becomes a problem if and only if I don't get into a no-loan, because my family can't pay anything above the 25k mark. At that point, I need merit aid (and outside scholarships) to make up the other 20-25k. That's the reason I wanted suggestions for safeties and low matches; I figure that if I can't get into any of the five loan-free schools on my list, I also can't get scholarships except at safety and low match schools.</p>

<p>@ Native NJ-</p>

<p>Thanks for the suggestion of Brandeis! I hadn't considered it before, but their department looks very good and their scholarships very generous. It's definitely going onto my list!</p>

12

<p>Why do you need more than 3 safeties? A safety should be a place you're guaranteed to get into, so you shouldn't need to cast a wide net.</p>

13

<p>I think that money from USC for National Merit is no longer a guarantee. Out of my son's friends, I know at least one who is a National Merit scholar who wasn't even admitted to USC, much less offered money. Seems like times have changed some.</p>

14

<p>@ ee3ee-</p>

<p>I would be absolutely, wretchedly miserable if I had to go to Arizona. I'm applying only in case something horrible happens between now and when I enter college. That's why I need another safety (and the reasons above).</p>

15

<p>Runners2 --re USC NMF scholarships, thanks for the correction, although I see I'm not the only one obsolete here. The website does say now "will be considered". It is also important to note that they have a Dec.10 application deadline for eligibility for any merit scholarships. Also, NMF's must specify them as their #1 school with NMF.</p>

16

<p>Warning - no idea about their classics programs.</p>

<p>Michigan State would offer some pretty good money. And based on your test scores I would think that you could be an ADS winner if you took their test(full ride +). Although it seems your sights are set a bit higher.</p>

<p>I know that Scripps and Claremont McKenna offer some decent merit awards.</p>

<p>Emory, WashU, Vanderbilt, and Duke are top schools that offer merit awards.</p>