US citizen, VA resident, mid-tier public high school, white female. I intend to major in either accounting or finance. I am taking a gap year 2022-2023 for personal reasons.
3.96 unweighted GPA, 4.5 GPA (AP and honors coursework are weighted). School does not rank. 1390 SAT and I intend to retake this; I am hoping for a 1450 or higher.
My school does not have IB. I have taken 7 APs (microeconomics, psychology, human geography, U.S. government, statistics, biology and physics 1). My only decent score was a 4 in psychology, I got a 3 in biology and microeconomics and opted out of the exams for the rest of my courses. One dual enrollment (ENG 111/112). I took three years of Spanish. My only award is the AP scholar distinction from college board.
My extracurriculars throughout high school have just been hobbies, but my junior year I picked up poetry club and my senior year I participated in National English Honor Society and Society of Women Engineers. I also volunteered this past summer for six hours and intend on getting my hours up to at least fifty before applying to colleges.
My income bracket is $170k and my parents can afford to pay for schools that are $40k per year or less including merit and financial aid.
My results this past cycle: UVA EA deferred RD waitlisted, W&M RD waitlisted, tOSU EA accepted w/ merit, Miami OH RD accepted w/ honors and merit, WVU rolling accepted w/ honors and merit, JMU EA accepted w/honors, and VT EA accepted.
I don’t have a college list for this coming cycle yet, but I do plan to apply to all of these schools again except for Miami OH and WVU. I also hope to apply to more schools, and I would very much appreciate guidance for where I should apply. My only preference regarding colleges is for larger colleges (10k or more students). Thank you all in advance for the guidance.
So if they make $170K, you’re likely not going to get need aid - so $40K is not much - if that includes room and board. With our #s, you can get great merit.
U of Alabama, U of Arizona, Arizona State, Indiana, Florida and Florida State, South Carolina and Tennessee are also other great programs that might hit the # with merit - some definitely would.
Thank you so much! Yeah, from my experience this past year only top tier private schools would give me financial aid but those aren’t exactly an option. I will definitely look at the schools you listed here! Thank you very much.
Do you have any ideas about where you would like to live after college (i.e. what part of the U.S.)? A lot of accounting recruiting is done locally, so the colleges near where you’re hoping to live would probably have the strongest campus recruiting. That said, however, you are not limited to looking for a job with campus recruiters. You can certainly go anywhere in the country, but the networking is probably strongest regionally.
Also, if you’re interested in becoming a CPA, that frequently requires 5 years (150 credit hours). Is your family able and willing to pay $40k for 5 years ($200k total), or are they thinking $160k for your college education (so around $32k for 5 years)?
VA Tech and JMU have strong accounting programs
JMU has high CPA pass rate
“ It is hard to beat Virginia Tech if you want to study Accounting.
Virginia Tech accounting majors receive $16,000 more than the average accounting grad.
–from College Factual, March 2019 & 2022”
These are the schools that I think either will hit your price point, or may hit your price point with merit. They have at least 10k students and don’t seem too far away from some of the schools on your original list. Beside each one I have included the passage rate on the CPA exam from 2018, the most recent year I found available. I only included schools with passage rates higher than 50% (there were a depressing number of schools with passage rates in the 20s & 30s).
• UNC – Asheville: 80.8%
• NC State: 59.9%
• U. of Georgia: 72.8%
• Rutgers (NJ): 56.2%
• SUNY Binghamton: 57.7%
• West Chester U. of Pennsylvania: 55.3%
• SUNY Buffalo: 84.6% or 64.5%? (source had 2 listings)
• U. of South Carolina: 63.3%
• Appalachian State (NC): 54.4%
• UNC – Wilmington: 54%
• U. of Tennessee: 70.4%
• College of Charleston (SC): 63.4%
• U. of Arkansas: 58.8%
• U. of Kentucky: 57.5%
• Ohio U: 52%
• UNC – Charlotte: 63.3% (Charlotte could be a very interesting city as it has lots of banking & finance going on there)
As an FYI, I have listed the CPA passage rates for the schools you applied to this past fall:
• UVA: 80.7%
• William & Mary: 63%
• Ohio State: 60.5%
• Miami: 60.9%
• West Virginia U: 50%
• James Madison: 74%
• Virginia Tech: 61.1%
Why reapply? Call your regional admissions person and ask if you can defer your admission for a year (to any place that accepted you already). This seems unnecessarily complicated.
My rising sophomore is a finance major with possibly an accounting minor with similar stats (higher test scores), she got enough merit from UDel, UCONN, UMASS, Temple, Saint Joe’s, college of Charleston SUNY Bing to get costs under $40,000. Pitt and UMD were > $40,000. My oldest is a CPA, got through the 5 year MA in accounting at Rutgers in 4 1/2 years and passed her CPA first try.