Hey, I’m a junior working on my college list.
I need a few suggestions on the safety colleges I can apply to.
I wanna major in Economics.
I’m a US citizen living in India and my stats are:
SAT: 1550 (CRW 750, Math 800, Essay 7|6|7)
CBSE grade 10: 96%
IB Predicted: 42 or 43 out of 45 (Math HL, Econ HL, Physics HL, Eng SL, Business SL, Spanish ab intio)
Subject Tests: Will be writing Math 2 and Physics
Extracurriculars: Research with econ prof + will publish in a journal + will get a rec letter from him, director of the school’s community service club, student council (highest position 2 of 4 years), will try to get an internship for this summer, took an initiative to educate underprivileged kids in my neighborhood, several other minor ECs which the counselor will highlight in her rec letter.
Rec Letters: One each from Econ and Math teachers. 9/10
Essay: started working on them, hopefully, will end up good.
I was also wondering if I could consider NYU as a safety.
Feel free to ask me anything else!
Thanks for ur suggestions!
In addition to NYU, you could look into some top, but relatively less selective, schools for economics such as the University of Richmond, Trinity, NYU and BU.
NYU and BU have admit rates around 20%, imo they can’t really be considered as safety schools. Low match maybe.
OP, what kind of college are you interested in, and do you have any funding restrictions? It’s hard to suggest safeties without knowing these two factors.
What do you consider reaches and matches, if you’re putting NYU forward as a potential safety?
Coming to financial restrictions, I’m hoping that my safeties cost below $40K with opportunities for financial aid. (feel free to recommend ones which are more but with good financial aid)
I’m fine with liberal arts and non-liberal arts colleges. An option for a honors program would be good, also opportunities for research would be great to have.
I was speaking with my school college counselor and she suggested a list of safety and reach colleges
UCLA
Indiana-Bloomington
UIUC
Illinois-Chicago
William&Mary
Wisconsin-Madison
Washington-Seatle
UWash-St. louis
UVirginia
UMich-Ann Arbor
Babson
Boston College
Boston University
Duke
Northwestern
Barnard
Carnegie Mellon
A few other colleges I’m considering are
Emory
Williams
Amherst
UC Berkeley; ik these are high target/ low reach
In the end, I’d like to reduce my list to 10 colleges: 3-4 reaches, 4-5 target, 2 safeties
Have you considered what kind of school you want? You’ve got city and rural schools, huge and tiny. Seems like a student who loved Boston U would simply hate Williams, unless there is some other dimension that you’re using to choose schools that I’m missing, these seem almost random. Maybe your GC just chose a bunch of schools that might fit from a credentials standpoint but then you need to use your school preferences to decide which to actually apply to-what type of school do you think you’l like? Small, quiet and scholarly in the country? Big school with a lot of school spirit? The list suggests you have not considered how your life would differ depending on how the school differed on non-selection criteria.
Of the schools you listed, the only safety is UIC. You can’t consider any of the state schools as safeties because you are out of state.
A reasonable guide for identifying a safety is:
Admit rate of at least 50%
Your stats (GPA and SAT) are at or above the posted 75th percentile stats
The school must be affordable
And don’t forget to show interest – they might figure you view them as safeties and may protect their yield if they think they have no chance of landing your commitment.
That’s a long list of mostly selective schools. What kind of experience does your advisor have? I ask because you have a number of public schools on there which are (1) much more selective for out of state than in-state residents and/or (2) offer little to no funding for out of state residents.
Without going through every school on the list - some observations. For example, were you to get in to UCLA or UCB, you’d be full pay (~$65k per year). UIUC, UVA, UMich tend to be reaches for OOS. Looks like there are a couple that should be easier for you to get admitted (Indiana, UIC) and some that are more match than reach like UW, but not sure about aid from any of those. NYU is notoriously stingy with aid and if you look on their website you’ll note they say they do not meet full need - even without the <20% admit rate, it can’t be a safety for you if you can’t afford it.
In sum, it doesn’t appear to me that your counselor has drawn up a realistic mix of reach, match and safety colleges for you.
Have you run the NPC on the schools on your list? It is not clear to me whether any of the schools on your list are going to come in under $40k. It seems likely that something will, but I couldn’t point to any school on the list where I could say that you will get in and it will be under $40k.
If this is a strict budget limit, then at a minimum you need to run the NPC and you might want to have one or two safeties that are not in the US.
I agree with others that your list has a rather wide range of schools.
I would be mildly surprised if any of NYU, BU, UCLA, or UCB came in under $40k.
You’re going to have about $5k per year in international travel costs and health insurance. Is that part of the $40k or will your parents actually pay $45k per year to include those costs?
Most, if not all, of the schools on your list cannot be safeties even if you were accepted because their costs aren’t low enough, particularly if that $40k includes travel and health insurance costs. I’m not even sure that UIC would be affordable…the COA for an OOS student would exceed your budget.
You’ll need to apply to a couple of schools that will give you ASSURED merit amounts for your stats that will bring costs down to below $35k per year …Alabama is one…your net cost there would be about $20k per year including travel and insurance.
Your list in reply #5 contains mostly or all colleges whose list price exceeds $40k per year. Some may offer financial aid, but most publics do not if you are not a state resident. And many of the privates on your list do not have good financial aid reputations.
You need to go to each college’s web site and find the net price calculator. Use it to get an estimate of financial aid and net price from each college. Be prepared for bad news from most of your list.
For a school to be functionally a safety for you, it must offer reasonable assurance of affordability as well as admission. Most of the schools on your list aren’t even safeties admission-wise, and definitely aren’t guaranteed to come in under $40K/year out of pocket. Many on your list are guaranteed to cost $65K/year or more.
Look at schools like Miami of Ohio. It’s a public university with somewhat of a private university vibe - one of the so-called “public ivies.” (Compare with William and Mary, on your list, which is a reach-ier school in the same category.) The OOS cost of attendance, before merit, is almost 50K/year, but with your stats you would be guaranteed at least $20K/year of merit (up to a max of 36K/yr) so it would definitely hit your price point. https://miamioh.edu/admission/merit-guarantee/ They’re solid in your areas of interest, and you’d be virtually assured of acceptance. (Plus they have Early Action, so you could have that acceptance nailed down in December.)
Are your parents US citizens living abroad and filing US income tax returns each year, or are they international?
For your financial aid applications, you will need to file the FAFSA and possibly the CSS Profile and/or additional paperwork specific to the college/university itself. Take some time to check those out. The paperwork is not horribly difficult for people who file US income tax returns, but can be somewhat confusing for people who don’t. There is a lot of useful information for you in the Financial Aid Forum, so spend some time there. Check out the thread at the top of the forum that lists Automatic scholarships. If you follow the links, you can find out which of those have changed for your application year and which you still would qualify for.
Yes. Miami of Ohio may fit as an academic safety. It has a 65 percent acceptance rate. However it will be more selective for oos students. However not sure if it’s a financial safety. That is for you and your family to decide.
It has some things in common with w and m but wm tends to be quite a bit more selective.
This OP is interested in Finance. I believe the finance major is in the Kelley School of business at IU which is much more selective than the rest of the university.
Overall acceptance rates can be very misleading and all students should do more digging as to the acceptance rate for their specific major. That could easily move a school from safety to match to even reach (for example UIUC for CS).
These general acceptance rates also include all the instate applicants. Some schools’ OOS acceptance rates are much lower.
Not saying that there aren’t safeties on this list for this particular OP, but for other reading this thread, there is more to it than overall acceptance rates.