<p>What about Indiana University? Campus is beautiful, great programs for Business, Public Policy, Psychology, Music, Journalism. Good sports and lots of kids coming OOS. Bloomington is not a big city, but not far from Indy and it is a good college town.</p>
<p>I was going to throw out some support for the VA publics. Both UVA and William and Mary are fantastic. As a native Californian, I have fallen in love with Virginia…and I would highly discourage you from attending a UC right now with the cutbacks. If you don’t care about weather I think Indiana is a great business school and Michigan is obviously one of the best public universities in the nation. Finally, I would say consider University of Texas. They are actually stealing a lot of the UC profs away and Austin is an amazing city…if you don’t mind a huge university. For undergrad attention in the liberal arts though, I think UVA and W&M are the best publics in the country. Look into having your school nominate you for the Jefferson Scholarship.</p>
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UNC, U Pittsburgh, UVA, U Wisconsin, and Rutgers might all work. Pitt is the only one of those where merit aid is likely, although you might get lucky with Rutgers.</p>
<p>Indiana and U Iowa might also work if you don’t mind slightly more remote locations.</p>
<p>Almost forgot - definitely look into UConn! It might be a tiny bit more rural then you’d like, but they give fantstic merit scholarships and have a great honors college. If you qualify for the academic excellence scholarship, they’ll cover half of your tuition off the bat (regardless of in or out of state). Also, the honors college has special smaller classes and more access in choosing classes. Just my two cents.</p>
<p>List of great public schools just in California alone: UCLA, UC Berkeley, UCSB, UC Irvine, UCSD, UC Santa Cruz. You cannot go wrong with any of the UC schools. Outside of California: Indiana, Univ. of Washington, Univ. of Oregon, Univ. of Texas, Virginia. </p>
<p>Sure there are plenty more that I forgot to list!</p>
<p>UNC gives OOS merit aid, as does UVa. </p>
<p>I just skimmed the thread, so my apologies if this has been mentioned before.</p>
<p>^ Actually UNC and UVA are the only publics I know of that meet financial need for OOS students. I’m not too sure about merit aid.</p>
<p>Wow I know this is a late post but thanks for all these suggestions</p>
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<p>The OP would be an international student, right?
You can check out the amount of financial aid given to international students (if any) in section H of each school’s Common Data Set (usually available on the web).</p>
<p>An international student who needs financial aid and wants to study English or Psychology (not engineering) really ought to investigate small liberal arts colleges. These schools often go unnoticed by international students. According to a few Common Data Sets I’ve checked, the average aid packages for internationals at some of these schools are quite generous. Compared to public universities, they usually offer smaller classes, less bureaucratic red tape, more geographically diverse student bodies, and a complete focus on arts and sciences.</p>
<p>A few examples:
Amherst
Pomona
Haverford
Wesleyan
Macalester (known for accepting relatively many internationals)
Occidental (where President Obama started)</p>
<p>^ I didn’t notice the OP was from Hong Kong. There is still a chance the OP would not be an int’l student, though.</p>
<p>In general, kids at the flagship publics are not unhappy. Many of the top ranked state schools have and large vibrant ‘college town’ cultures. U Michigan and U Wisconsin come to mind, but many others as well.</p>
<p>School … Average Aid Package to Internationals Granted Aid … Number of Internationals Granted Aid</p>
<p>University of Virginia … … (no aid available to international students)
University of Wisconsin … (no aid available to international students)
University of North Carolina … (no aid available to international students)
UC Berkeley … (no aid available to international students)
UCLA … $16,158 … 129 (student body: 26,928 undergraduates)</p>
<p>Amherst … $47,881 … 127 (student body: 1,697 undergraduates)
Williams … $48,259 … 133
Grinnell … $31,315 … 149
Macalester … $31,419 … 211</p>
<p>Source of aid figures: Common Data Sets.</p>
<p>I assume the figures for Amherst and Williams do not include merit aid (which they generally do not grant.) I don’t know about the others. If you’re comparing full price to full price, the public universities generally are cheaper than selective private schools, even for out of state students. However, even if you don’t qualify for aid, it may be significant to you that the LACs award so much of it to internationals. The numbers suggest to me that they may hungry for more international applicants.</p>