<p>ACT 30 (34 english 32 math 31 reading 24 science)
3.884 GPA
5 AP chem 4 AP history
varsity letters in swimming and cross country skiing
All state solo vocals
school choir accompanist (piano)</p>
<p>I want to go to school in new york, and right now I am looking at Binghamton, but it really seems like they don't give out much. Average financial aid for them is like 6k a year. They are also really vague about who qualifies for scholarships.</p>
<p>What are some schools in new york with:
1)good engineering
2)good music programs and singing groups like a capella, etc
3)affordable for out of state students (generous aid, cheap tuition, etc)</p>
<p>parents make about 55k a year. </p>
<p>I know my GPA and test scores aren't that great, but I just want to look.</p>
<p>Also, please post any other schools outside of state of New York if they have/are:
1) good student body diversity
2) in a city </p>
<p>Schools I already applied to:
1)University of Alabama (I can get free tuition)
2)University of New Mexico (A lot of scholarships, but I've read some pretty bad reviews about the school)
3)University of Alaska Fairbanks ( Some scholarships, probabaly the cheapest because it's in state for me)</p>
<p>What about URochester? They have great science and music programs and generous merit aid. Rochester isn’t exactly NYC, but’s it not in the middle of nowhere like, say, Ithaca.</p>
<p>You might want to have your parents do an online EFC calculator to make sure what they qualify for.</p>
<p>Tufts might be a great fit for you, engineering plus 8 a cappella groups including the Beelzebubs ('Bubs for short) who starred on the first season of the Sing Off. They have produced many albums and provided arrangements and backing vocals for the “Dalton Academy Warblers” on Glee. check out their website:
[Beelzebubs</a> of Tufts University |](<a href=“http://www.bubs.com/]Beelzebubs”>http://www.bubs.com/)</p>
<p>Being from Alaska actually might give you a little boost in admissions at schools that try to get all 50 states represented in their freshmen class ;-)</p>
<p>I agree with U.Rochester. If you want a bigger city then consider BU, Northeastern, Case Western, CMU.</p>
<p>If you want to be closer to NYC, look into Manhattan College. The school is located in Riverdale, NY. They are good for engineering and you could qualify for a good bit of merit aid.</p>
<p>While it’s not in New York, you should apply to University of Wyoming. You’d get WUE + merit and it has a good engineering program and at least two acapella organizations.</p>
<p>If your parents make 55K, U Rochester will not cost you 40K (unless your parents have a lot of assets perhaps?). It sounds like you only considered merit aid (not likely to get any with a 30) instead of need-based aid. URoc is very, very good with need-based aid. It could end up less expensive than Binghamton. It’d be worth an application to see.</p>
<p>Wow, that makes no sense to me. Did you mean 55K per parent or 55K each?! I ran it (using 55K as adjusted gross income, with 10K savings as a guess) and got much better numbers, but there was still a gap. Also you can recalculate based on projected merit aid, did you do this? Merit aid does not show up in the initial numbers they show you.</p>
<p>I think you need to broaden your horizons beyond NY and focus on schools that meet 100% of need, using the links provided above. Otherwise you will end up with a list of great schools you cannot afford
Finances have to be the main criteria. Then worry about if they have a cappella - if they don’t, then be the one to start a group on that campus. Also use this tool to find schools with generous merit aid, such as WPI, RPI and Clarkson (not in a city though).
[Best</a> Values in Private Colleges, 2012-13](<a href=“http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/privatecolleges/]Best”>Kiplinger | Personal Finance News, Investing Advice, Business Forecasts)</p>
<p>Union College in Schenectady is an ABET-accredited program, and at least back in the dark ages when I was in college they had a really outstanding choral ensemble. Not sure how generous their FA would be, but you could look into it.</p>
<p>Re Rochester: I think highly of the school and it definitely fits the bill academically and musically, but I have to say that they offered S the least amount of $$ of any school, and they were his safety. This even though they gave him a specific $10K per year merit scholarship. He was an NMF, and I thought I read somewhere that they offered significant extra $$ for that also, but we didn’t see it in his offer, which included the aforementioned merit plus a pathetic amount of need-based aid. (Our income at the time was significantly lower than the OP’s.) If it was a screw-up of some kind I don’t know, because we never bothered to pursue it since he preferred other schools.</p>
<p>SUNYs like Stony Brook are not that expensive, but are probably still out of reach on a $55,000 annual income. You can try the net price calculators on their web sites, but do not be too optimistic.</p>
<p>If you want cheap out-of-state cost of attendance, there are places like South Dakota State (about $16,000 per year) and South Dakota Mines (about $21,000 per year).</p>
<p>Your stats should get you a full ride at Prairie View A&M (3.50 GPA and 26 ACT needed) as well as the full tuition you already know about at Alabama - Tuscaloosa.</p>
<p>In the NPC, make sure you don’t enter $55K as YOUR income, but as your parents’ income. It makes a huge difference.</p>
<p>Also check this EFC calculator. No guarantees but if you got into a “meet full need” school it can give you an *idea *of what you’d pay: [FinAid</a> | Calculators | QuickEFC](<a href=“Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid”>Quick EFC - Finaid)</p>
<p>I ran it with family size 3, 1 student in college, student income $0 and parents’ income $55K and it came back with an EFC of just over $5K. </p>
<p>A 30 ACT is a great score for a lot of schools - my S got a full tuition package at a private school with a 28 - and your GPA is high if that is unweighted. Some nice ECs, a geographic advantage for many schools…you should be able to get some nice private school FA or FA-merit packages.</p>
<p>thank you guys for your response. And my parents make combined income of 56k. And yes I did the merit scholarship for U Rochester. With my dad’s savings (100k) it’s like 42k a year.<br>
And for the private schools that “meet full need” I don’t think I can get in with an ACT 30. Do you guys know when the deadline for the test score is for all schools so I can decide if I should retake the test? Next one is first week of february. </p>
<p>And OHMOMof2, which school gave full tuition with 28 ACT? I’d like to look into it.</p>
<p>If I were you, I’d still send an app in to Roc. You never really know what your geographical diversity might be worth to them. I suspect it might be the 100K in savings that is skewing your results as I’ve never seen anyone with 56K income getting that high of a gap.</p>
<p>Since it seems that Roc is not standard with what they offer (they were the cheapest for my guy, beating UA’s free tuition offer - he had high stats though, but others on here said they had high stats and got little), I’d toss in an app and see what the spinner lands on for you. If they like what they see, you could end up there and afford it. If not, you didn’t lose much.</p>
<p>Otherwise, you could try Clarkson, but I don’t know what they have for music… I know SUNY Potsdam (same town as Clarkson) is great for music, but I don’t know if you could combine the two schools.</p>
<p>If your dad has these savings just sitting around as available cash he might want to put it in such things as Roth IRAs, which can be used for education without penalty but don’t count against you in FA calculations. If the money is already in retirement savings you may have entered it incorrectly. I would suggest that HE visit the financial aid forum here and ask for some advice, pronto.</p>
<p>But one of the reasons we got such a bad package from Rochester was probably that we “own” an asset that we cannot touch in terms of raising money, and the ostensible value was the same as your dad’s savings. Some schools expected us to liquidate it–although we really could not and still can’t–and use 25% of the money towards tuition each year. Even considering that, Rochester gapped us. It may have been because they assumed S was using it as a safety…I don’t know.</p>
