Prospective English major looking for safeties

College Search & Selection
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Hi! Now that I need to seriously start thinking about college apps, I have been trying to create a list of colleges with a good balance of reaches, matches, and safeties, but I have realized I don’t really have any idea how to find a good safety school. If someone could give me a few suggestions, I would really appreciate it!

I’m currently looking at (in no particular order) Cal, Penn, Brown, Bowdoin, Pomona, Middlebury, Vassar, Wesleyan, W&M, and maybe some other LACs. I know for sure I want to major in English as I would like to be a writer; good creative writing programs would be great. A linguistics program would be a plus as well. Most important, though, is an engaged, passionate atmosphere with good academics. And, unfortunately, generous financial aid: suffice it to say I’d need almost a full ride. Not first generation or a minority, but good relationships with teachers mean, with luck, good recommendations, and I have strong writing skills and some interesting life experiences, so my essays will hopefully be a big plus in my application. :slight_smile: Now, stats:

Grade: Junior
GPA: 4.0 UW, 4.5ish W
SATs: January will be the first one, got a 214 on the PSAT without studying (72 reading, 68 math, 74 writing)
APs: World History (4) & Human Geo (5) last year; US History, Lit, & Calc AB this year; Gov, French, Lang, Calc BC and probably Physics next year
Rank: school doesn’t, but likely 4ish out of 49 (very small prep school)
ECs: Model UN (fresh/soph), litmag (all 4 years, editor in chief this year and probably next), some volunteer work, student gov (jun/sen), honor council (jun/sen), school theater (jun/sen), French honor society (all 4 years), ranked French nat’l exam (fresh/soph, hopefully this year and next year as well), 1st place essay contest @ Virginia Tech (fresh), worked over summer & hopefully a part-time job soon

Sorry for the novel of a post, but thank you!

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Look at University of Iowa, which has a well-known writing program.

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Do a google search for lists of the best schools’ for aspiring writers, for example: http://www.collegemagazine.com/top-10-schools-for-aspiring-writers/#card_735_10 Check out their criteria for selecting these schools and see if it matches your own.

Then check out the financial and merit aid. If you are serious about being a writer, you don’t debt to pay off when your graduate.

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Does this mean that your parents are low income, or that they are high income but won’t contribute anything to your college?

For the low income case, you can use colleges’ net price calculators to see what their financial aid will look like for your family financial situation. In either case, you can look at the large merit scholarship opportunities in the lists linked from http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1678964-links-to-popular-threads-on-scholarships-and-lower-cost-colleges.html .

The federal direct loan limit for you is $5,500; a realistic amount that you can earn by working during the school year and summer is probably around $4,500, so a net price of $10,000 or less would be needed (and lower is better). If your parents are low income and you go to a school on a large merit scholarship, you may also get a Pell grant in addition (for need-based aid, the Pell grant is typically included in the total grant aid).

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@N’s Mom – Thank you! That’s a great list; I’ll definitely look into some of those.

@green678 – Iowa seems like a good safety, except that as I’m out of state, I probably couldn’t afford it. I will keep an eye out for similar colleges, though.

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@ucbalumnus‌ – I am low income, and I don’t know very much about student loans or grants in general, so thank you for that information! I’ve run net-price calculators for all the schools I’ve looked at, and all were were doable for me except NYU (which then got kicked off the list).

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Kenyon, U. Mich., UVA, Iowa.

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do you have a non-custodial parent

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@LoveTheBard‌ – Thanks!

@mom2collegekids – No.

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What is your home state? UMich (for example) OOS could cost a mint. UVA does meet need for all students. Run the Net Price Calculators on all the school’s web sites to see what you are expected to pay.

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@ErinsDad – My home state is Virginia. I have run net price calculators on all the schools in my list, and thankfully they’re all very generous.

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@olivesofwrath is your PSAT score high enough for NM? That could open up some schools for merit.

Be sure to include applying to your in-state publics that have programs of interest. Limited resources may also perhaps have you look at schools in your geographic region, although if you can land a super great merit from a private liberal arts, that would be awesome.

Be sure to review the Kiplinger ( Feb 2015 issue, and can look at College Rankings | Kiplinger ) top 50, top 50 private, top 50 private liberal arts as well as publics that have great merit (or have low cost to attend with in-state). Your stats you want to be sure to apply where you can have a low COA with merit, need-based aid, good FA. Others can perhaps make some other recommendations. The magazine lists some good breakout statistics at the various schools on quality and financial measures.

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@SOSConcern‌ – Unfortunately no. I was hoping for it, but in Virginia it’s about 220. I will look at Kiplinger, though; that seems like a good resource I didn’t know about.

Honestly, though, financial aid isn’t really the main issue I have with finding good safeties. Mostly I just don’t really know where exactly to aim my sights, so to speak. Could I be confident enough of my chances at W&M to count it as a safety? When I asked my college counselor for advice, she suggested Roanoke College, which I’m familiar with since it’s 10 minutes from my house and I don’t like it at all. Till then I’d been considering UVA, Kenyon, and W&M my safeties, but that made me question my judgement.

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A true safety would have either:

  • automatic admission for your stats, and net price calculator shows a low enough net price.
  • automatic full ride or close to it merit scholarship for your stats.
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If there are some schools with enough financial aid (low enough net price) with early action or rolling admissions, you can apply to them early – if you are admitted early with assurance of enough financial aid, they become your safeties.

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@olivesofwrath you may be able to get a great scholarship at a school that unless you are in the pool to consider. That is why looking at schools that are a good match for you and where you will be highly desired as a student.

Have you toured some schools to identify if you like a LAC, large college, small college town, college in a big city? Sometimes students and families have a great feel on a campus and just ‘know’.

What do you plan to do with your summer? Perhaps some of the schools have a program/writing/english workshop etc so you can check the school out?

This is unfamiliar ground for me (your intended field of study) - however farther out, if you are a writer, the Iowa Writing Workshop is a program for aspiring writers (which you may know about). Oprah had some footage with her guest who wrote the book ‘The 12 tribes of Hattie’, and the author described how the workshop runs.

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For a low-income student, OOS public schools usually are not good safeties. In many cases, they aren’t good choices at all unless one has a guaranteed scholarship program that fits your qualifications. Otherwise, they tend to be too expensive and generally don’t give adequate need-based aid to OOS students. Besides, you have an excellent public university system in your home state.

Kenyon and W&M are worth considering, but they are closer to match than safety territory.

Most of the Colleges That Change Lives are less selective (although they have high sticker prices and generally good but not great need-based aid). Examples: Earlham, Centre, Beloit, Goucher, Hampshire, Lawrence. These schools may give you more of the atmosphere you seem to want than a typical big state university would. They may also have lower net costs (but run the online net price calculators to check). In most cases, they would not have robust linguistics departments (although at Hampshire, you could cross-register at other schools in the local 5 college consortium.)

For a family income of $50K (a little below the national median), the Earlham College NPC shows me that the estimated net cost of attendance would be $10, 905 after grant aid (but without deducting for loans and student work). This is probably a little lower than your net price to attend the University of Alabama with a full tuition merit scholarship. Your Mileage May Vary (as net price calculations are very sensitive to variations in income, assets, etc.)

http://www.ctcl.org/colleges/list

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In state for UVA and W&M is hard to beat. Excellent schools at a great price. I think your choice of Kenyon is good. I’d also check out Sewanee as a safety. They have an excellent English department, good FA and you’d likely get merit.

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For low income applicants, merit aid usually just offsets the amount of need-based aid that otherwise would be granted. If the OP’s family income is below the national median, it probably would take a very large merit award to result in a lower net cost than s/he’d get from need-based aid alone. Sewanee’s average merit award is less than $11K. That would be a nice discount for an upper middle class family that otherwise would be full pay. For a low-income student, it would not help if it only offsets need.

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Some schools will apply merit scholarships against the unmet need and student contribution (student loans and student work) first, before reducing need-based grants. But the OP should check each school on how it handles that situation.

http://admission.sewanee.edu/apply/scholarships indicates that there are 2 tuition + fees + room + board scholarships, 100 $15,000/year scholarships, and other smaller scholarships. It does not appear to say how students who get both scholarships and need-based financial aid are handled.