Our daughter is a junior in a Texas public school. She has a 3.6 unweighted GPA and a PSAT of 189. She is ranked in the top 12%. She is taking her SAT in March and ACT in June. She has taken 9 AP classes through her junior year and her other classes are honors and dual credit courses. She is also Hispanic. Our EFC is high and all of the net price calculators I run, we do not qualify for any need-based aid.
I have been following the college search forums closely for ideas. I am wanting to put a list together of colleges that are matches and will provide merit aid. We can afford about $30,000/year, including room/board. Is it possible to start building a realistic list without SAT and ACT scores yet?
On our list we have Trinity, Southwestern, Hendrix, Eckerd, Arizona State (Barrett Honors College). Are those schools realistic? She prefers schools that are not heavily Greek and not in a rural setting. We will start our visits this Spring and Summer. Any other schools we should investigate? She does not want an all women’s school and would prefer to stay either within driving distance or an easy plane ride.
Does your school use Naviance? It provides fairly easy access to information about merit scholarships, what % of students get them, and how much they get. It also provides admissions data so you can see where your daughter falls. If she’s in the top 25% of admitted students, merit aid is likely.
You can find this information other ways (common data set) but Naviance is more efficient.
Does Texas participate in tuition exchanges with neighboring states, like WUE? That might also provide discounted options.
@txstella I will check into the University of Arkansas. I wonder if they have an honors program that might make the campus feel smaller and give her smaller classes. @mamaedefamilia We do not use Naviance, and I am not familiar with tuition exchange programs, but will look into them. She is still undecided on what to study. It will not be anything STEM related.
Well, you can do preliminary searches using the PSAT to estimate expected SAT, but be prepared to revise after getting the real SAT and ACT scores.
At $30,000 per year, is she interested in any Texas public universities, which should cost less than that at list price for Texas residents? Class rank (possibly in combination with SAT or ACT score) should provide a number of automatic admission safety options at Texas public universities.
We are looking at some similar schools and at the recommendation of another poster, have added Rollins to the list. It is in Florida. Not sure how your daughter feels about large public universities in Texas. Our daughter crossed most of those off the list as they are too big for her. With the exception of if she gets into an honors program at UT.
I don’t know how you define “heavily Greek”; but you might want to look at Rhodes College in Memphis, TN. It is about 50% Greek, but still might merit a visit to see how it feels to your junior. Lots of Texas kids there, also.
Thank you all for the suggestions. I think 50% Greek is too much for her. She wants to stay away from Greek life as much as possible (is that realistic?) and says she likes kids who are down to earth. She doesn’t want a very competitive environment. Regarding size @txmom11, she would be fine in a large school, if it provides some smaller honors type college with smaller class sizes.
Are Catholic schools ok? if so, look at schools like Springhill, Loyola New Orleans, LMU, etc. U San Diego is heavy Greek, and I wouldnt say the kids are down to earth.
@mom2collegekids Thank you for the suggestions. I will look into those and talk to her. She doesn’t want to be somewhere where attendance to chapel or other type of religious service is mandatory. Will look to see how many students are Catholic and whether a non-Catholic might feel out of place.
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attendance to chapel or other type of religious service is mandatory.
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I don’t think any of the Catholic schools require church attendance…except maybe Franciscan Steubenville or Ave Maria. The other many, many Catholic colleges don’t care what religion you are…or aren’t.
Thank you @mom2collegekids. I wasn’t sure if the PSAT score could be used to begin our college search. I will reevaluate after she gets her March SAT scores. She’s not sure what she wants to study at this point, except to rule out STEM majors/careers.
I think the suggestions to look at the SLAC (Southern Liberal Arts Colleges) is a good one. Trinity in San Antonio is a great school that offers merit aid.
You might run into the problem that your DD will be awarded $17-20,000 scholarships but that the COA is still over $30,000 per year. I know the numbers are shocking because my family is in a similar financial situation. My DS is very seriously considering a Catholic university and we are not religious.
Check out the GPA and test score requirements for instate tuition at Arkansas. And I have heard nice things about UNT Denton. Another idea is Truman State in Missouri. My relatives have loved this school. Check out the info about scholarships for OOS kids.
I don’t know much about it, but is the National Hispanic Scholars Program still a part of the new PSAT/SAT? With her PSAT, she might be eligible to apply for that and it could serve as a resource for schools that are looking for students with her stats.
