<p>My friend has a 3.2 unweighted, top 14% of class (weighted), 28 ACT. He has two D's and three C's (in science classes) on his transcript, mostly B's, a few A's in all AP/Honors classes. He is a very talented artist. His family lives below the poverty line, and they have five kids, so he is in desperate need of financial aid. He's white and first-generation (immigrant parents from Romania) and his little brother has Down Syndrome. I have suggested a few small liberal arts colleges to him, as I believe they will provide him with decent need-based aid (unlike our state schools in Illinois) as his stats are not very good. He will certainly be studying art (so a strong, intimate art dept. is important) and probably double majoring in something in the humanities/social sciences (I assume). </p>
<p>So far I've suggested:
Beloit
Earlham
Knox
Wooster
Lake Forest
Cornell College
Kalamazoo
Ohio Wesleyan</p>
<p>He asked me about Grinnell and Oberlin because he knows they are two of my own top choices, but I told him that I thought these two would be enormous reaches for him.</p>
<p>Could a strong art supplement positively affect his admissions chances? Thanks for your help.</p>
<p>Has he run the net price calculators at each college to get financial aid estimates?</p>
<p>No, his parents are super religious, and they don’t even really want him going to college. They make like 20k a year though, so I doubt his EFC is any higher than few thousand… Whatever he gets from a need-blind school like Beloit will be so much cheaper than UIUC or something similar.</p>
<p>He needs to find out whether or not his parents will provide the financial information or not. He will need their cooperation, or he won’t be able to complete the FAFSA and he won’t get any aid other than federal loans.</p>
<p>Not all need-blind schools meet full need. He needs a school that meets full need.</p>
<p>Also, if the parents are unwilling to fill in financial aid forms, then that gives them veto over him going to college, unless he can find a school that is free (e.g. military service academies, but probably not with his stats even if he is interested in them), very low cost where the remainder can be financed by his own work and/or Stafford loans (e.g. Berea College), or where he gets a full ride merit scholarship (perhaps Jackson State out of the <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-8.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships-8.html</a> ).</p>
<p>His sister is in college, so I think they’ll provide the information.</p>