<p>You gotta have that talk with the parents, OP, esp if you want anything accurate on safeties. For your parents to have to lay out only 3K and even if you lay out the max in loans each year (5500 first year), you will need close to a full ride at most private colleges. Only the poorest parents or the students who can add a 1600/36 to your 4.0 and ECs (and maybe inventing a solution to Washington gridlock) are going to see full rides. Your parents might want to pay that much, but they don’t understand the reality of college education costs. So show them a net price calculator for your big state university, have them plug in their numbers (they’ll need last year’s tax forms), and fully complete it with every possible detail, and then check out what their large state u says they must pay. This figure is the EFC, expected family contribution. Then run it for a private school that’s good at biochem and astrophysics, say, Cornell (which costs like a private if you’re oos). Schools don’t move off this EFC much, so if your parents cannot afford the EFC you’ll have to earn merit somewhere in the neighborhood of full ride or, if you can commute from home, full tuition.</p>
<p>You could reduce your total costs by attending community college and then transferring, but this raises other issues and so I’ll ignore this option. You could look at certain kinds of outside scholarships that I’ll ignore for now.</p>
<p>But if you insist on trying to to go the “college dream” route then you’ll need either a very generous grant-based financial aid package (possible because your parents are poor) OR a full ride/tuition merit package. Possible because you have a 4.0 AND a very high SAT/ACT (see above) AND great ECs. These latter two you can continue to improve, indeed, must improve.</p>
<p>So then you look at two groups of colleges: those that give out huge grant aid and those that give out huge merit aid (there are a couple hybrids: Vandy and Rochester come to mind). So look at the discussions about big grant aid schools and big merit aid schools.</p>
<p>Here’s a place to start on merit aid.</p>
<p>Best schools that give the most merit based aid</p>
<p>Automatic Out-of-State Tuition Waivers</p>
<p>Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships</p>
<p>Competitive Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships</p>
<p>You’ll quickly realize that your in-state universities have the lowest costs of attendance (and the OOS unis among the highest COA). But then look beyond their COAs to their aid; most in-state schools won’t offer much grant aid (because your taxes are holding down your tuition costs) but might offer their best applicants merit aid; and many OOS state unis will offer the best applicants outstanding merit and hybrid aid packages (some automatically!), including free rides and full tuition plus. Look esp in the south for these and at state honors colleges. These large state unis are also the schools most likely to have majors in both your fields of interest. Most of these merit scholarships are competitive and so the schools cannot be safeties.</p>
<p>But also check out the LACs for schools that offer great grant aid (the elite ones, usually, with the billion dollar endowments) or offer some full ride and full tuition scholarships. These are competitive, you can bet, so they cannot be safeties. </p>
<p>Hence the need for that talk with your parents. Good luck.</p>