Realistic Chances for my son's list. (WGPA103 / ACT36)

Chance Me / Match Me!
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My son and I are finalizing his college list and I would like to hear from everyone. We listed up based on his academics and test scores.

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ACT: 35 (36E 34M 36R 36S)
GPA: 99.8 UWGPA/ 103 WGPA
Rather competitive public school in NJ (We don’t have a ranking system)
10th: AP Euro (5) AP Stat(5)
11th: AP ush/ AP Bio/ AP psy/ Ap Lang. He is confident for all 5 but 4 for AP bio.
12th: AP Lang/ AP gov/ AP Mac/ AP Spanish/ AP phy

Extracurriculars: In-school
-Debate- Secretary
-Mock Trial- Jr. Captain
-Ethics Bowl- Secretary
-NHS-Secretary
-NSHS
-WLHS
-JV volleyball for 1 year and dropped due to a schedule conflict with another club

Extracurriculars: outside-school

  • Founded and running a local community-based project website with 6 other members
  • not many outside activities due to his academics and school clubs. He can only spend a few hours during weekends…To be honest I am having a hard time to understand other students who do many outside school activities…maybe my son is doing something wrong???

Regional debate: 1st place (x2)/ State octa finalist (x2) / Harvard invitational speech rank 22nd out of 129
Regional Math fair: 1st place
Regional research competition: 3rd place.
Prospective major: Not declared yet but any majors for pre-law related…

Family of 4
Single income source: $150K AGI
Home Equity: $450K
Mortgage: $400K
Line of credit: $60K
Mutual Funds: $65K
529: $38K

We ran every NPC for below colleges and avg EFC is about $50K
Does that sound fair???

Reach
-Yale
-Williams
-Amherst
-Swarthmore
-Duke
-Vanderbilt

Match
-Rice
-Tulane
-WASHU
-Emory
-UCLA
-Washington & Lee
-Univ of Virginia
Safety
-Rutgers
-SUNY Binghamton
-Fordham

I would appreciate honesty especially!


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and your son is NMSF…

how much do you want to pay each year?

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Hey @mom2collegekids, the post is from June. Any reason you went “live” now?

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Edit: ^^ Oh, good point - this is an old thread!!
Oh well, already wrote the post ¯_(ツ)_/¯

To me, it seems as if the focus should be on the fact that he cannot and should not choose a school that will cost 50K or more per year. How will he afford law school if he’s already in debt coming out of undergrad?

UCLA and all other UC’s are out of the question at 65K+/year, full stop. If he wants a shot at California, he should apply to USC where he would have a shot at a full-tuition National Merit scholarship. (Greater likelihood of half-tuition which wouldn’t make it affordable, but enough chance of full-tuition to give it a shot if he likes the school.)

It merits very serious consideration whether it’s worth even applying to full-need-met private U’s where he’ll get only enough aid to bring the out-of-pocket down to 50K. IMHO this is the wrong tree to be barking up for your son’s situation. He has the stats (and National Merit status) to get big merit at very good schools that will enrich his life and prepare him well for law school. He also has excellent and affordable in-state options. (Rutgers, TCNJ)

The wise strategy is to come up with an accurate projection of your out-of-pocket costs at Rutgers/TCNJ, and cap your budget at that level. Don’t even apply to schools that have no chance of coming in under that price. Instead, chase merit money at schools that have generous, albeit competitive scholarships, and see what he ends up with that comes in under the in-state budget.

I agree with the URichmond recommendation. Their PPEL program https://ppel.richmond.edu/major/index.html is one of the best pre-law paths there is. Another excellent PPEL program is the honors-only major at University of Arizona, where he could get a huge scholarship for National Merit. https://moralscience.arizona.edu/ppel-info

Claremont McKenna has a few large scholarships and an elite, tutorial-style PPE major. https://catalog.claremontmckenna.edu/preview_entity.php?catoid=17&ent_oid=730&returnto=1494 Big merit is low odds (in fact, getting in without applying ED is low odds, and ED is out of the question when merit money is essential) but could be worth a try. Denison would be a safety admissions-wise but would have to wait and see whether he’d get enough merit to make it affordable. https://denison.edu/academics/philosophy-politics-economics Rutgers, BTW, just launched a PPE minor https://www.dailytargum.com/article/2019/04/new-interdisciplinary-minor-at-rutgers-combines-philosophy-politics-economics

Consider the CTCL LAC’s https://ctcl.org/category/college-profiles/ and others like Sewanee. Overall, in your position, I’d put my energy into schools that have a fighting chance of being truly affordable. Law school is expensive, and once he’s in/through law school, the “trophy school” undergrad degree won’t matter, but the debt will still be with him. Don’t dig that hole when he can make his hard work pay off to subsidize the cost of undergrad.

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How does he have a 99.8 UW gpa…, considering he legit missed one question all of highschool UVA, UCLA, Berkeley would all be high matches/safeties. I have never seen a GPA that high.

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Here is where this poster stands now…

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/2168642-huge-efc-help.html#latest