Safety Schools?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I completely forgot about getting a suitable list of safety schools. Here's my stuff:</p>

<p>UnWeighted GPA: 3.91
Weighted GPA: 4.53
Rank: Top 10% (specifically, I'm about 13-14 in my school)
SAT: 2010
ACT: 32
ECs: National Honors Society (20 volunteer hours), National Science Honors Society, 100 hours volunteer work at Arnold Palmer Hospital.
APs: Human Geo (4), World History (4), US History (4), Chemistry (5), Biology (4), Statistics (3), Lang and Comp (4), Psychology (5), American Government (4).
Others: NMSF, National Hispanic Scholar, low-income bracket.</p>

<p>Target school: UNC-Chapel Hill
Reaches: Duke and Dartmouth
Safeties: So far only UCF (most likely the honors college) and UF. Not passionate about either of them, they're just convenient. </p>

<p>If anyone knows of any good safeties for me I'd appreciate it.</p>

2

<p>You don’t really say much about what you want, but Bucknell came to mind for some reason. You might want to look at liberal arts schools that are interested in diversity and likely to give financial aid ----Grinnell for example. Only very slightly easier to get into than Duke and Dartmouth, but I highly recomnmend Middlebury.</p>

3

<p>Might look at Holy Cross-nice campus 1 hour from Boston.</p>

4

<p><em>smacks forehead</em> I want to go to medical school eventually so I’d like a school with good biology and chemistry programs that will help get me into a good medical school (UNC-Chapel Hills medical school is my goal, Duke and Dartmouth are reaches so the same as college lol). I’d like the school to be in an area more to the north (I live in Fl and I’ve always hated the heat) and a decent student to teacher ratio.</p>

5

<p>Pitt for a safety. I’d probably add a few more Ivies and some top LAC’s like Williams, Amherst, and Grinnell that play on your URM status and meet 100% need.</p>

6

<p>Does Pitt stand for University of Pittsburg lol? And Amherst is a safety for me!? And about the 100% need, they’d really pay all of it!?</p>

<p>One more thing, it’s not absolutely required but I’d really like it, if the college accepts AP credit that’d be FANTASTIC!</p>

7

<p>Amherst isn’t a safety at all. I think a place like Boston College would work well for you and be reasonably safe.</p>

8

<p>University of Rochester, especially given your NMSF status. Perhaps Case-Western, though it doesn’t have as much of the study hard/party hard feel that I’m seeing in some of your other choices (Duke, Dartmouth). Tulane and Rhodes if you’re willing to stay in the south. </p>

<p>If you want to apply to Pitt, do it NOW. It’s a rolling admissions school, so the earlier you apply, the more likely you are to receive aid. The school will be an admissions safety but not necessarily a financial safety. </p>

<p>One off-the-cuff possibility would be Muhlenberg, a LAC in Allentown, PA. They’ve got a good record of placing their students in med school, and with your stats you’d be a good bet for some significant aid. However, it might not be a good fit if you’re looking for a more ethnically diverse school.</p>

9

<p>Here is a better way to choose, I think. Answer the following about your preferences outside of academics and it becomes easier to narrow the list:</p>

<p>1) Size of school, undergrads (0-2,500; 2,501-10,000; 10,001-20,000; 20,000+)
2) Location (Highly urban, suburban, rural)
3) Geography (are there parts of the country you prefer or some you will not consider)
4) Weather (prefer warm, snow…?)
5) Sports (looking for competitve Div. 1, don’t care…?)
6) Greek scene (thinking about joining, want to avoid even a whiff of it, or in between)
7) If female, are single sex schools an option? (I am assuming, though, Jason is not female, lol)
8) Anything else that you might think is important to you personally (you ride horses, like rock climbing, active arts scene, whatever).
9) Not really about atmosphere, but very important. Will you need Financial Aid? Are you hoping for merit scholarships?</p>

10

<p>Low income gets great aid but usually only are the hardest schools to get into. Look at schools that meet full need based aid and see if you are in the stats ball park. Privates usually give more money and less loans that publics. Pay everything? definately.</p>

<p>Where are you instate for again? Your one or two safetyschools ought to be ones you’d like. Otherwise keep looking.</p>

<p>NMSF is great for your prospects.</p>

<p>Are you Hispanic? if so, great for your prospects. Hispanic students are URM at top privates that give great aid.</p>

11

<p>I’m in Florida and yes I’m half Hispanic (though I’ve always marked everything as being Hispanic)</p>

<p>1) 0-2500 would be great but 2500-10000 is acceptable too.
2) As long as I’m not in the middle of nowhere I’m good.
3) I’d like to be more to the north.
4) I’d like it to be colder than Florida lol.
5) Irrelevant to me, but going to a good game (especially football) every so often would.be nice.
6) I don’t think ill have time for a fraternity.
7) I’m a dude lol.
8) Good biology and chemistry classes, good rep with med schools, it’d be great but not required if they accepted AP credit, a good amount of prestige, and hopefully somewhere I could stand out a little.
9) Yes, I definitely need financial aid, and a merit scholarship would be great.</p>

12

<p>Tufts and Holy Cross have an 85% acceptance rate into medical school.</p>

13

<p>Have you run an EFC calculator? If not sit down and do it. This site has one and the Federal Govt has an estimator. Needing aid and wanting aid are not the same thing. If you are qualified for need based aid AND you get in a school that guarantees to meet it AND you even get into a school that gives grants and no loans then you do not need merit aid.</p>

<p>Publics and Ivy schools don’t usually give merit, some exceptions. You will get a better deal from top privates. Make your list top heavy but be sure to have two safe schools where you will be able to afford it. That means instate. Did you look at OOS cost for UNC yet?</p>

<p>Half Hispanic is good to go on the check box and will help you at privates, because, unfortunately, Hispanics in this country are a smaller pool of applicants to college.</p>

14

<p>^^ wow, 85%? That’s amazing. </p>

<p>Ill do one of those calculators tonight. I’ll definitely qualify for aid (I’m in the 0-30k bracket) I just don’t know if it will be in scholarships and grants or loans. And yes I’ve looked at the OOS costs for Chapel Hill but the government website I went to with the average net costs of most, if not all colleges, said the average cost in tuition per year on average for people in my income bracket wad about 2,000 a year with all aid.</p>

15

<p>then you need to focus on private schools if that if EFC and you have good stats. they give more grants, less loans which is important if you are trying for med school.</p>

16

<p>Holy Cross has great pre-med with new $70 million science building. HC has Div1 Patriot League Sports-competes against Harvard, Dartmouth, Brown, and Yale in most sports. HC has very good alumni network for internships and jobs.</p>

17

<p>Sounds great but what is the financial aid like?</p>

18

<p>You state on another thread that your parents are divorced and your words suggest that your dad won’t be contributing.</p>

<p>That will be a problem at many schools that require the financial info from BOTH parents.</p>

<p>I know that your mom and family is pressuring you to go to elite schools. However, you need to tell them that those schools will expect your dad’s income info.</p>

19

<p>Grinnell and Middlebury are not safety schools.</p>

<p>Your stats make you eligible for the full scholarship package at University of Georgia - I know you’re looking towards the Northeast, but you’re also looking at UNC so I’m assuming Georgia’s not too bad.</p>

<p>You might look at some of the SUNY and CUNY colleges - Stony Brook for the SUNYS immediately came to mind; Hunter College and City College for the CUNY schools. They’re really affordable even for OOS students - tuition at the CUNY colleges would be just over $6,000 a year for an OOS resident taking 15 credits - that comes to a COA of less than $20K per year. The SUNYs are a little bit more expensive, at around $25K per year. Hunter College and Stony Brook in particular have pretty good reputations (There are other SUNY and CUNY campuses with good reputations, too0. You could also join the Macauley Honors College.</p>

20

<p>Hmmm… this is a really interesting thread.</p>

<p>Jason, you need to take some time this weekend to understand how financial aid works. Only then can you narrow your target list.</p>

<p>1) IF BOTH parents have adjusted gross income on the 1040 tax return of a combined amount less than $100k, you’ll get very generous financial aid from many privates.</p>

<p>2) go to collegedata.com, <a href=“http://www.collegedata.com/cs/search/college/college_search_tmpl.jhtml[/url]”>http://www.collegedata.com/cs/search/college/college_search_tmpl.jhtml&lt;/a&gt;,
search for the school you have in mind (e.g. Holy Cross), and go to the section called “Money Matters”. There you will see whether HC is a 100% need school, or a 92% need school, etc. Then look a couple lines below that to see how much of the aid they DO give is in the form of loans. In the case of College of the Holy Cross, you will see from the above link that HC meets 100% of need, and that about $7,000 of that help (or about 22%) is in the form of loan+work study. By looking up each target schook you see how generous the school is.</p>

<p>Contrast HC with Villanova. Per the same web link above, Villanova meets 87% of need on average. That’s a BIG difference. And the need that Villanova meets is equallly about 20% in loan/work study.</p>

<p>Contrast that with NYU, which per the same link meets a paltry 71% of demonstrated need. It has a reputation for being stingy with financial aid for that reason.</p>

<p>Contrast that to Colgate University, which also meets 100% of need, but the work study/loan amount is only about $4,100, or about 12% of their average package.</p>

<p>3) There are MANY schools that will waive all or most of tuition for a NMSF, and even more for a Finalist. For example, Auburn and Alabama both do this, as does Arizona and quite a few more names you will recognize.</p>

<p>Your stats are probably just below the midpoint for admission to some schools that are “100% need” and also “need blind”. </p>

<p>4) As to med school, my feeling is the smaller the undergraduate college, the better the preparation for med school. This is because smaller schools tend to have a more intense student/Professor interaction, which leads to good research and letters of recommendation. They will also tend to have better pre-med advising. If I were you I’d be all over Williams, Amherst, Pomona, Haverford, etc… the elite LACs that are 100% Need, Need Blind.</p>