<p>BTW, check out U of I pathways:</p>
<p><a href=“http://pathways.engineering.illinois.edu/”>http://pathways.engineering.illinois.edu/</a></p>
<p>First come first serve but Howard in DC (great school, large city) would do a full ride for that score if it comes with a high GPA.</p>
<p>Thank you alll for the replies and suggestions. After this semester i will have a weighted gpa of 4.185 to go with my 32 ACT and top 12% of my class. I am planning to work this summer and next and hoping to come up with approx 10k total with my parents trying to pitch in. My goal is to not have to take out huge loans…I cant see owing 80K plus upon graduating…thats
just crazy. Ive been in cross country and track frosh and soph years but took junior year off to focus on studies and the AP classes and ACT. Ihave been dancing with a dance studio and doing performances at senior homes and hospitals and other places the last 2 years. I will be back with my cross country and track teams my senior year and will continue dance as well. Someone mentioned that certain majors will get you more or less money…will it work against me if I am undecided? Would english or history or international studies fall into any better or worse categories? Thanks again. Everyone has been so helpful. I hope to return the favor after I get through this whole college process!</p>
<p>Tuition is one among the prices of a post-secondary education within the U.S. the full value of faculty within the U.S. is termed the value of group action or the “sticker price” and additionally to tuition it will embody space and board, travel expenses, books, fees, and alternative expenses like computers.</p>
<p>Austria, Chile, Netherlands, Republic of South Africa, the USA, and also the Britain all have “up-front tuition policies."[2] These policies usually embody a tuition fee that’s massive enough that it provides oldsters “a responsibility to hide some portion of their children’s instruction prices."[3] The parental responsibility inherent to the present kind of tuition will build it troublesome for a low-income student to attend faculty while not facilitate from some quite assistance from grants or loans.</p>
<p>Tuition changes at completely different rates from one kind of establishment to successive. web tuition indices mark a rise within the “relative real burden” for payments at numerous varieties of establishments for instruction. within the amount between 1980 and 1995, this burden enhanced by more or less eighty p.c for college kids at public universities and by 148 p.c for college kids at personal universities.[4]</p>
<p>Most students (and their families) WHO buy tuition and alternative education prices do not have enough savings to pay fully whereas they’re in class.[citation needed] Some students should work ANd/or borrow cash to afford an education. In the U.S., student assistance is accessible to pay the value of a post-secondary education. assistance and tuition go hand in hand. “Financial aid is often thought to exert the foremost influence in [attendance], once admitted students take into account whether or not to enter in an exceedingly specific establishment.”[5] it’s typically the case that the lower the value of the college, the additional possible a student is to attend.</p>
<p>Developed countries have adopted a twin theme for education: whereas basic (i.e. high-school) education is supported by taxes instead of tuition, instruction is sometimes given for fee or tuition.</p>
<p>luna999: fill out the “request info” forms for St Olaf and Gettysburg, since they’re among the easiest schools among the 100% schools (they’re not “easy” to get into but if you compare to Harvard, etc, obviously… :p) In addition, you could get merit too due to your stats, but indicating interest is very important. If you’re both first-gen and URM, look into “diversity fly ins” to visit colleges and increase your odds of admission.
Going to community college would make you lose out on scholarships - look for the thread “did I really cost myself thousands of dollars?” by a student in your exact same circumstances.</p>
<p>if not already mentioned, look up Temple’s scholarships. you said you Prefer a campus in a large downtown city. Temple is just north of dowtown philly. unfortanately, it’s in the hood of Philly but there is a subway and regional rail on campus to safely help u travel around soem parts of philly. for hs grads for classes of 13 and 14, scholarships were automatic based on GPA and test scores and ranged from a few thousand to full tuition. not sure about your class but if you get on Temple’s admission page, there is a link to their scholarship criteria. sounds like Temple might have a lot of what you want. and there have been some comments about generous aid for some of the top schools. That is true. our income is higher but not much higher than yours and my kid looked like he would have qualified for a lot of need based aid at several of the “top 25” schools. Penn is also in Philly and there are schools like Haverford, Bryn Mawr that I think are in Philly suburbs. so is Swarthmore but that may be too far away from philly for your liking. For Ny, Fordham might have a lot of merit aid. st johns does but it;s way out in Queens and does not seem to be as well regarded as other places. don’t overlook schools in northern New Jersey and Long island as both can have easy train rides to NYC. Good luck, let us know how it turns out. </p>
<p>It’s not in a city, but Louisiana Tech has an awesome full ride scholarship … my niece is majoring in English at LA Tech, and it’s a heck of a deal. She included it as a financial safety, and it ended up being the best deal she had. She got into more impressive schools, but they would have been too difficult for her family to afford.</p>
<p>What is your unweighted GPA?</p>
<p>hi again. You and my son have similar stats but you’re a first generation college kid which will work to your advantage. We also have “similar” family incomes although ours is higher. Question 1; what is your PSAT? Are you a minority? if your PSAT is super high, you may qualify for some full rides. 2) Consider retaking ACT and study your … off. My kid had a 33 and his merit aid ranged from nothing at Pitt to full tuition at Temple and St. John’s. he had a great shot at partial merit aid at way too many schools to list. Bama, South Carolina, are other schools who have robust merit aid and there are other schools out there too. 3) how many people are in your family or even better, get on teh FAFSA website to find out what your expected family contribution since it sounds like your parents are not in position to help. if your expected family contribution is around $15000 which sounds like it might be in ballpark, you have an issue cause you can’t come up wiht 15000 on your own. you may want to start off at a community college. Seriosly consider applying for Ivies and I think Vandy and other schools are very generous on need based aid. Admittedly, your chances of getting into Ivy are low but you have good enough stats to have a chance. Had my kid applied and gotten into Yale, our out of pocket would have been $7000 to start. Yours would be less cause of our differences in income. The rest of the Ivies would have been between 12K to 20K for our family. USC i’ve heard is good with merit aid. our income was a little too high to benefit from it but yours is lower so they’d be another good school to apply to. as i think of more schools, i will post more and def look at links others have given you. </p>
<p>Thank you all again for the posts.Im starting to get a bit discouraged. To answer some of your questions… My unweighted gpa is 3.7 but my counselor told me that schools look at the weighted…that was the point of taking AP. My parents do not have any money although they will be doing what they can. My first choice would be a big city school but at this point I would go just about anywhere. I know what kind of student I am and I will work hard and challenge myself where ever i end up going. My education is important and I will do everything I can to get it. I am hoping to get 4s or 5s on my AP tests so that I can possibly save some money from those credits transferring. And I am white female.</p>
<p>Not sure if you’re interested at all in HBCU’s, but many of them will give a full-ride to someone with your stats. Some good ones to check out are Hampton, Howard, and the Atlanta University Center which includes Clark Atlanta, Spelman (all female), and Morehouse (all male).</p>
<p><<<
Parents income under 80,000.
My parents do not have any money</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Your parents income is too high for a Pell Grant.</p>
<p>what is your career goal?</p>
<p>You need to run your EFC. Or at least the Net Price Calculators. If your parents make that much money how come your parents don’t have any for you at all? Basically you are saying they can’t meet the EFC? What is it? Working one year will just help for one year. Then what do you do? Better to choose something you can afford for 4 years. Getting full ride is a gift, you are lucky you will have a few options that you can afford. I don’t think USC is realistically one of them. Your major shouldn’t matter much. Sure some college have department awards or give an extra stipend for engineering, but most just give awards based on you being at the very tippy top of the applicant pool, the type of student they may not get otherwise. If you are smart you will take it and make the best of it.</p>
<p>don’t be discouraged. You have options. Full rides are very hard to come by but full tuition deals can be found. and really stress in your apps you are first generation college kid. that is a big issue to a number of schools, Your drive, just from i’ve seen in your posts, is great so figure out a good way to get colleges to know that. Are there any big cities you are especially interested in? </p>
<p>@luna999 You have a lot of options -it’s just a matter of maximizing them, so don’t be discouraged! Glad you’re not waiting till the beginning of senior year for this.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.collegesimply.com/guides/32-on-the-act/#.U5OLByjJ0n4”>http://www.collegesimply.com/guides/32-on-the-act/#.U5OLByjJ0n4</a></p>
<p>Just to give you an idea of target schools. Run the net price calculators on some of those. A lot of them have merit, a lot have great financial aid. Ignore the out of state publics -you won’t get much money there. </p>
<p>@luna999 Sorry! Ignore the out of state publics unless they have good merit aid (ex. University of Alabama).</p>
<p>Right or Pitt (a decent number of full-ride scholarships for their honors college) or MSU (also a few full-ride scholarships).</p>
<p>Pitts full rides are very hard to get. There is a pitt forum on cc with some discussion of those schoarships. I want to say kids with 1500 on the 1600 sat were in the running for them. To Pitts credit they are a school where there are full rides</p>
<p>You need to talk to your parents about the tuition credit that they can get on their taxes (does someone have a link?). </p>
<p>ask your parents if they can give you that money towards college. I’m not sure how much it is, but it may be a couple thousand. </p>
<p>Even if you get the “free tuition” scholarship at Bama, your parents will still get that credit because Bama pkgs the award as just an unspecified presidential award (to be used for anything…not specifically tuition)…so you still get that tuition tax credit. 
So, technically, the award could go towards room, board, books, etc…</p>