Schools That I Should Look Into?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hey All,</p>

<p>I'm hoping for some college suggestions to help me find more schools to which to apply. </p>

<p>Here's what I'm looking for:
- NorthEast (Although I expect to be criticized for it, I want to be no more than a 4 hours' drive from my girlfriend, who is currently at Yale (New Haven, CT). I really like Boston and the outskirts of New York City - Connecticut and Pennsylvania are also free game).</p>

<ul>
<li>Biochemistry/Computational Biology/Molecular Biology departments or sub-departments. Bonus points if they have Neurogenetics.</li>
</ul>

<p>Here're some schools I'm already looking at:
-MIT (This is the big one, and one of the only schools for which I'm willing to pay a good bit)</p>

<p>-Boston University (Trustee Scholarship is definitely a reach, but they have fun topics so ill give it a shot)</p>

<p>-Clark University (LEAP Scholarship is nice)</p>

<p>-Temple University (Safety 2)</p>

<p>-SUNY Stonybrook (Safety 1)</p>

<p>Facts About Me:
I think I have a decent application that will give me a shot at just about any school you can throw at me. I am drum major for the marching band, president for debate, president for math club, & do genomics research at a local university 3.9gpa, 35ACT.</p>

<p>Thanks in Advance!
J</p>

2

<p>"(Although I expect to be criticized for it, I want to be no more than a 4 hours’ drive from my girlfriend, who is currently at Yale"</p>

<p>big mistake to choose a school this way. </p>

3

<p>Harvard’s been 1-5 in bio for a long time. Rutgers is strong in Biometrics. Yale’s no slouch in molecular. Nor is Princeton or Hopkins. UMass is up there, too.</p>

4

<p>@zobroward - Thanks for the insight</p>

<p>@jkeil911 - Rutgers was a new one, and I should probably give UMass a shot too. Really helpful - thankyou!</p>

5

<p>de nada. OP, you write as if you’re very much in charge of your college selections, so I’m going to ask if you might be overlooking talking to your parents about what they can contribute each year? have you run the net price calculators? are you going to go need-based or merit-based? </p>

6

<p>I was going to suggest Hopkins. Probably almost as worth the money as MIT, and strong in your preferred areas. You might want to think about adding it.</p>

7

<p>@intparent, what do you think about the competition in bio with the pre-meds at JHU? I’m sometimes hesitant to recommend Hopkins to bio kids who’ve little or no interest in med school. OP could be a kid who thrives on mind-numbing competition, but I hesitated to rec JHU to him for that reason.</p>

8

<p>I would actually suggest Northeastern. My friend actually chose NEU to study biochemistry, even though he probably could have applied for some more competitive schools. It’s co-op and internship program makes getting out there and getting some job experience much simpler. It offers merit scholarships up to 25K known as dean scholarships, national scholarships worth up to 30K, and a University Scholars program (limited to 75 students, a girl from my school got it last year) which are full rides.</p>

<p>So I think, even if you aren’t sure you can get a merit scholarship, apply. It’s in a great environment, with many opportunities. If you are MIT worthy, then I certainly think you can do well at Northeastern.</p>

<p>On a sidenote, although relationships will change and you shouldn’t pick your college just because of one person, relationships have been shown to last longer with more intimacy and opportunities to see one another. So if this is something serious you want to pursue, I think it is nice that you are considering your girlfriend while making your decision. The northeast is a pretty big range anyway, and there are plenty of good schools up there.</p>

9

<p>Just coming back to this thread now, I’m pleasantly surprised. I didn’t expect it to get much attention, but these last few responses were really insightful. </p>

<p>@jkeil911 Yes, certainly a few months ago I was overlooking talking to my parents - around now, I have been talking money with them more and more. We are in one of those weird situations where we have just begun making slightly upper-middle class amounts of money again after being poor for a few years and exhausting our savings. So top schools like MiT, if I used the calculators correctly, will be willing to give me ~half tuition in need based aid, and I’ll be shooting for a combination of need-based & merit aid at schools like BU and Clark.</p>

<p>@intparent Hopkins is definitely one to put on the list since I am planning on going to Medical School. MiT gets priority because I think that I’d rather the hands-on, innovative personality of MiT as an undergraduate and then shoot for Hopkins as a graduate student. </p>

<p>@shawnspencer A close friend of my dad’s actually recommended Northeastern for the same reason. I looked at it for a little and dismissed it as a business-oriented university, but you convinced me to give it a second look. It’s now on my CommonApp list. & Your sidenote about relationships is comforting - it’s always good to know that someone with an outside/unbiased perspective can support my decision. </p>

10

<p>Are you aware that many colleges don’t stack merit with need based aid? If you get merit, they knock it off the need based aid and your cost of attendance stays the same. Sometimes they will reduce your loan amounts, though. You need to check this out for each college where you are thinking you could get need based and merit aid to see how they handle it. Even outside merit is treated this way at many schools. It isn’t always obvious from the website, you have to ask the financial aid office at a school if it isn’t apparent.</p>

<p>I am going to guess from your post that your parents maybe haven’t saved a lot for your college. Can they truly afford what the calculators are showing? Remember, you personally can only borrow a total of $28,000 for your whole undergrad experience over four years. You might consider adding a true financial safety to your list, someplace you know will be affordable due to your high stats. You don’t want to be stuck with only schools that turn out to be too expensive when the FA packages come in. Here is a link to schools with automatic scholarships:</p>

<p><a href=“http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/”>http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I don’t think you said what state you actually live in, so maybe you would have in-state tuition at Stoneybrook and you know for sure that is affordable.</p>

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<p>@intparent I remember seeing that as a disclaimer on a few college’s websites, but it was pushed into the back of my memory. I’ll make sure to keep that in mind in the future when I start worrying more about money, though</p>

12

<p>See… you are missing the point. I bet 90% of the students out here find that money IS the limiting factor in their college decision. Waiting to worry about it is not a good approach to take. You are a senior, right? The time to worry about money is now, before applications go in. We see too many students out here in the spring who have been admitted, but can’t afford the schools on their list. The Net Price Calculators make financial info more available that it has ever been before. It is more fun to look at classes offered, dorm choices, research opportunities, social life on campus, etc. But the crux of your decision will come down to finances, especially for a family who recently started making more money and has limited savings. You need to look hard at this now.</p>

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<p>@intparent - Okay, I’m on board now then - but how do I go about finding out about money at this point? I’ve run financial aid calculators on various schools that I am interested in, and most of the time they are doable but not easy. My parents can do 20k a year, but only if its well worth the money since lower-level in-state schools like Louisiana Tech would give me a full ride + stipend just for my ACT score. So then that leaves looking at which merit scholarships (if any), such as BU’s Trustee and Clark’s LEAP, I am offered (if I am accepted) and then comparing those to financial aid packages of other schools I am accepted into with academic quality in mind, right? </p>

14

<p>Students in your situation often end up at in-state universities. Are you saying you live in Louisiana, or just that you picked them off the automatic scholarship list? </p>

<p>Financial aid calculators are certainly the first step. Finding schools that you know you can afford and are willing to attend is really what you have to start with. You can shoot for some of those big scholarships at schools like BU and Clark, but they are very competitive. Think of it as adding a high reach school to your list each time you put on one (it isn’t a match or safety if it is unaffordable without the scholarship).</p>

15

<p>@inparent - Yea, I’ve heard that it’s common and certainly don’t think that ending up in an in-state school would be a disaster - I’ve always been told that just about any college is good with enough motivation.
However, I would probably prefer a safety school up north, such as a SUNY school or schools such as Fordham and Temple who have generous merit aid.
And yes - I live in Louisiana. We don’t have many automatic scholarships, but we have various programs (TOPS, taylor opportunity program, being the biggest one) that do a surprisingly good job of making school very affordable for anyone with decent schools in-state. </p>

<p>And I’ll make sure to take a closer look at money when looking at those schools from now on, then. Thanks for your help</p>

16

<p>First, your girlfriend didn’t use distance from you as a limiting factor when she made the final decision to go to Yale. What does that tell you?[Turkey drop](<a href=“Urban Dictionary: turkey drop”>Urban Dictionary: turkey drop) is a very real thing and you shouldn’t limit your college choices based on a high school girlfriend.</p>

<p>Second, glad to hear that you have a safety or three. The hardest part of the search is over.</p>

<p>Here are some other schools I’d recommend:
University of Miami
UPenn
Case Western
Duke
Vanderbilt
University of Rochester
University of Southern California
Brandeis (I think they’ve started giving merit)
Wash U St. Louis
Rice
NYU (likely poor aid but it’s worth a shot)
Pomona
Macalester
Rhodes</p>

17

<p>i agree with all the advice you’re getting here, OP. asking your parents for a number commitment is the next step. MIT has suggested that you would receive about 23K in grant aid, leaving your family and you with a balance of 38K. That’s a sizable chunk of change, and YOU can borrow only 5500 the first year and 27K total (of course, if the loan is already incorporated into the 23K that 5500 is no help with the money you and the family have to raise). </p>

<p>I think you’re probably wise to be looking at full tuition scholarships. JHU has some large merit awards but I don’t know anyone who’s gotten one. You can ask the Admissions office about those tuition/ride awards and how many there are, who gets them, etc. Do you thrive in ultra-competitive pre-med environments, OP? In general there’s not a lot of merit money in the northeast, but check out UPitt (where you’d be further away from gf but get a lot more money, perhaps as much as tuition/ride), UMass, Lafayette (tops out at a competitive 40K, leaving you with 24K), Rochester (great school for STEM but not as generous as some others). Bard (Distinguished Scientist), Boston College (Presidential), Case Western (several full tuition), Lehigh, Ohio State (VERY strong bio programs; 25 full ride; rank-dependent others), RIT (would cost you 21K loan-free), Syracuse (10-12 Coronats), Rutgers (would cost you 15K loan-free if you won the Presidential 24K), BU (20 Trustees), Mount Holyoke (if you’re a girl) have some full tuition awards. UMass will not be much help with the kind of aid you need. I think you’re a full tuition automatically at Miami of OH and Ohio U, altho neither is known for bio. All these are predicated on data from last year. You’ll have to be sure these schools still have these awards the way I remember them.</p>

18

I thought I’d re-visit this thread now that I’ve finished applying to schools. All of the comments I received were really helpful, and I think this thread was very helpful in expanding my knowledge of opportunities at different colleges.

**For anyone curious, here’re the schools I ended up applying to: **

Clark University - Accepted, half-tuition scholarship, information about full ride in March.

Temple University - Accepted, full-tuition scholarship

Northeastern University - Accepted, University Scholars and full-tuition scholarship

Louisiana State University - Accepted, Slightly less than full-tuition through multiple scholarships

Fordham University - Accepted, full-tuition scholarship

Stony Brook University - Accepted, pending merit aid
Bard College - Accepted, pending merit aid

Mass. Institute of Technology - Deferred Early Action
Yale University - Decisions in April
Harvard University - Decisions in March

There were others that seemed nice, like Wesleyan, BU, JHU, and Brandeis, but these are what I ended up putting my money into.

** Bottom Line: **

I’ll update this post again in May when I get decisions for MiT, Harvard, Yale, & merit aid from Bard and StonyBrook, but at this point I am leaning towards Northeastern even with the best possible outcomes from my pending applications. The University Scholars program seems like a wonderful community, the co-op program seems like a huge advantage if I end up applying for medical school, and the scholarship means that the school would be much easier to afford, leaving me a higher chance of being able to pay for a more prestigious graduate school.

Thank you @shawnspencer, for that suggestion. I had kinda brushed Northeastern aside, and am very glad that I ended up applying.

I’ll visit Northeastern in March to make sure the campus is as awesome as everything seems online.

19

Holy cow, nice dude! All those full tuition scholarships are pretty impressive. I’m glad I was able to help! Northeastern was my favorite out of all the city colleges I visited because it actually had a campus and green space in comparison to boston university and other similar colleges. Best of luck, I can’t wait to hear how everything turns out

20

Holy Cross has strong science program and great pre-med reputation. HC has JAN15th application due date.