<p>Looking for suggested schools to look at for D who is a junior. Undecided about major but possibly biochemistry. It's likely she will also end up going to grad school of some kind. Coming up with reach schools is not the problem, lol. We can think of lots of those (Stanford, Pomona, Claremont McKenna, maybe HYP.)</p>
<p>We've run a bunch of NPC's and it looks to us like we are just above the income/asset level to qualify for FA. We can manage to pay full freight but we are also older parents who started a family later in life, and D has a younger sibling, so we are also thinking about 2nd child's college, first child's grad school and rapidly approaching retirement age all happening at once. Because of that we're also interested in schools with significant merit aid. Not necessarily a full ride but something to cushion the blow. D has a 4.0 (UW), approx 4.8 (W), 2340 SAT, likely NMSF (PSAT was 11 points above last year's state cutoff), rigorous courseload taking 4 AP's this year, a small number of EC's but great depth in those.</p>
<p>We'd appreciate suggestions of safety/match, and maybe lower reach suggestions that offer some significant merit aid. We're in AZ so ASU Barrett HC is pretty close to a safety (with in state tuition and merit aid) but D would like to go somewhere OOS.</p>
<p>Many state schools have generous merit aid, even out of state, if you select them as your first-choice for National Merit (and make Finalist, but that should be doable with the numbers you listed). If I recall correctly I received letters some time after taking the PSAT. With that GPA and SAT score you can also shop around honors programs in flagship schools, which also offer more resources and academic rigor.</p>
<p>Despite the low admissions bar at ASU, there are some top students there who eventually go on to top PhD programs in their majors. Note: PhD programs worth attending should be funded with a tuition waiver and living expense stipend, so you should not have to worry about funding that. But professional school (e.g. medical, law) will be expensive.</p>
<p>Start with the threads on Automatic and Competitive Merit-based scholarships that are at the top of the Financial Aid Forum. Your daughter qualifies for a number of true full rides that are automatic based on those stats, and is fully competitive for some of the other non-automatic ones.</p>
<p>There is a thread at the top of the Parents Forum that discusses institutions that are good with merit-based aid (but not necessarily full tuition or full rides).</p>
<p>Your daughter should also check out the women’s colleges. Most have excellent need-based aid, and others also offer significant merit-based aid. [The</a> Women’s College Coalition](<a href=“http://www.womenscolleges.org/]The”>http://www.womenscolleges.org/)</p>
<p>If she is pre-med, she will want to complete her undergrad with as little cost as possible so that there is money left over for med school. If she’s not interested in med school, and is likely headed to a Ph.D. program in the sciences, she needn’t look for the cheapest undergrad possible. A Ph.D. program in science, math or technology normally is fully funded by the university attended. </p>
<p>Wishing you all the best as you begin this adventure!</p>
<p>Case Western would offer her a lot. I’m betting they’d give her $30k a year, and they’re a good engineering school - especially for biology-related stuff.</p>
<p>Bad location though - Cleveland isn’t the best place to live.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the feedback so far and please keep it coming. D loved the Claremont Colleges so I’d like to check out LAC’s and smaller universities. Will take a look at Kenyon, Grinnell, Oberlin, Macalester. Although she prefers Pomona and CMC, we’ll take a look at Scripps as well. It would help if we knew she really wanted to go to med school, but I didn’t know what I wanted at 17 so I can’t blame her for not knowing.</p>
<p>ASU Barrett is a great program and D knows lots of people there now, and lots of her classmates will go there. The main drawback from her point of view is that it’s only 20 minutes from home.</p>
<p>You and I are in a similar boat, OP, except that my D has her apps in. Your child is going to have a lot of options and you have time to prepare those applications and a list of schools to get to know. You’ll benefit from being prepared for this process, knowing which schools give out big money early in the admissions process so apply early (Tulane, e.g.), which schools with money are rolling admits (Pitt, e.g.), which schools tie need to some or all of their merit (Claremont McKenna), which schools want to see interest and evidence that they are not just your safeties, etc. Getting your child on board with the idea that she might be able to get into Stanford but not be able to afford it and therefore won’t be able to go there will save some tears or confusion later. (Just yesterday D comes bouncing down the stairs to announce that “[small elite LAC] expects me to pay 50K to go there! Are they crazy?!” Yeah, you remember what they say about denial, right?) You’re also going to have a shot at ivies and some ivies are going to be good if not great with money, so do your research there. Vandy has gotten really hard to get into, but if your D has the ECs to go with her grades then there’s there’re several full tuition scholarships there, numbering about 250. WashU has a ton of money for students like your D and is a place where lots of parents in your situation look to for relief from the high cost of elite schools (like Pomona, Amherst, etc.) that don’t offer merit. There’s USC, a rising superstar with a lot of opportunities for merit and research, Emory, Duke, Richmond, Washington & Lee, Wake Forest, Then there are less prestigious schools like MiamiOH, OhioU, Ohio State, Syracuse, Rhodes, UAlabama, Lafayette, South Carolina Honors, New College of Florida, Agnes Scott, Hofstra, etc. that offer full tuition or something like it. I’m not ranking these schools, and anyone is welcome to insist that X Uni belongs in a different category. I hope this helps. ¡Feliz Año Nuevo!</p>
<p>Thanks jkeil911. Fortunately D does not have her heart set on any one school. Right now she’d probably say Pomona is her #1 but it’s also one of the very few schools where she’s actually visited and taken a campus tour. She’s legacy at Stanford and CMC but we know that counts for little. She also has mentioned a classmate’s older brother at Stanford who came home from break and said “I’ve never worked so hard to be so mediocre.” That made her stop and think about that facet of being at a super selective school (assuming you can get in).</p>
<p>We looked at the Claremonts and UCLA, but then I figured out that we would get nothing in terms of merit aid or FA from UCLA (or Pomona). Thanks to CC, I also figured out that USC offers quite a bit of merit aid (good thread on this on the USC forum started by Madbean). The fact that USC is a one hour plane flight away appeals to me as a parent. OTOH, I think a smaller school might suit D better.</p>
<p>Anyone have comments about Rice (difficulty of admission, merit aid)? Its smaller size and southwestern location are appealing.</p>
<p>*If she is pre-med, she will want to complete her undergrad with as little cost as possible so that there is money left over for med school. *</p>
<p>OP…Is your D interested in medicine? If so, then going to a good undergrad for as cheap as possible might mean that you can help with med school costs. That’s what we did. We hardly paid anything for S2’s undergrad, so now we’re paying for med school.</p>
<p>Yes, she has mentioned medical school as a possibility. That’s one of the prime motivators behind my question. If it were just a matter of 4 years undergrad, then her dad and I would definitely suck it up and pay full freight for the best school (that’s a good fit) she gets into. We may end up doing that regardless but we’d rather have options.</p>
<p>Rice has some highly competitive big scholarships–full tuition, if memory serves me correctly. One of D1’s classmates (HS class of '11) snagged one.</p>
<p>For a safety school, I recommend Agnes Scott College in Decatur - very small women’s college, but they have a biochemistry & molecular biology major and very generous financial aid. They are likely to give your daughter at least a full tuition scholarship, if not full merit aid (both I and a friend from high school had lower stats and got large scholarships there). They also have a beautiful campus and a great science center, and focus on science education for women. (I grew up in metro Atlanta and went to HS in Decatur).</p>
<p>UGA also has the Foundation Fellows scholarship program; your D will probably be competitive for that, and they like to take OOS students as UGA is trying to raise its profile. Bama is perpetually on the scholarship list because they do give great OOS scholarships.</p>
<p>If she’s interested in small LACs, you want to look at the U.S. News list and take a look at the ~#30-60 colleges for some safeties with merit opportunities. There are some really great colleges where your daughter would be in the top 10% of applicants, but still surrounded by intellectual and ambitious young people. (Any rankings will do…they don’t have to be USN, they just happen to be the most well known.) Suggestions are Kalamazoo, Hendrix, Lafayette, New College of Florida, Rhodes, Lewis & Clark, Lawrence, Colby, Bates.</p>
<p>Be careful with schools that appear to be safeties by stats, if there is no stated automatic admission or automatic merit scholarship criteria based on stats. Many of them consider “level of applicant’s interest” in admissions, an indication that they do not want to be used as safeties by high stats students who are unlikely to attend. A high stats student applying to such a school should play the “interest” game (have a visit recorded, email questions to admissions, check the admissions portal regularly, apply ED if it is the student’s clear first choice and there is no need to compare financial aid offers, etc.).</p>
<p>Let me reiterate what ucbalumnus says: even in schools that say interest plays no part in their decision-making, our experience would suggest otherwise. Do something more than visit the school to keep the AO reminded of your interest or you might find your safeties are denials as we did.</p>
<ul>
<li>Essay on “why [this college]?” – make sure it is about that college specifically, as opposed to characteristics that are shared by other, more selective colleges that the applicant has a reasonable chance of admission to.</li>
<li>Question “what other colleges are you applying to?” (and related list of colleges on FAFSA forms). There have been other threads on how this plays into “level of applicant’s interest” and such.</li>
</ul>
<p>Thanks for the cautionary words. Ucbalumnus: can you link to one of the threads on the “what other colleges are you applying to” question and level of interest. I tried searching but no luck. But I understand the general concept of not taking so-called safeties for granted, and using the essay to make it clear why that particular school is someplace the student will be very happy to attend.</p>