<p>Thanks for all the replies!</p>
<p>somethingnew, I didn't think much about MIT and Caltech because I thought that they're at the top only in engineering, and not so much in science, but I'll definitely check them out now. I really liked MIT when I went to an info session last year. I'll also see into Carnegie Mellon. (And yes, I'm a female. =))</p>
<p>JHS, thank you for all the suggestions! I will look into all those schools. Because of the situation you've said, I had tried to convince my parents to let me apply to out-of-state private schools, since they are a lot more generous with financial aids than many public schools (UT-A doesn't give a lot of money, from what I gathered from my friends). It is proving to be difficult, since they don't know any English (we came to the US from VN 6 years ago, and as they jumped straight to works that don't require a lot of English, they haven't really learned it) and don't understand much about the college application process. All that they know are from their Vietnamese co-workers who have children in colleges or are about to apply to colleges, most of whom are staying in Houston, hence they are adamant against me going out-of-state. I'm hoping getting full financial aids from a good university would convince them otherwise.</p>
<p>What you've described with Harvard sounds a lot like with Rice, only Rice will finance 100% for students from families with under $30,000 income. I will try to find out all the schools that offer this. =)</p>
<p>I never really thought about LACs, since I just assumed they are only into liberal art majors (even though I really like that they're smaller in size than a lot of universities). But now that I know otherwise, I will definitely look into a few of them as well. Thanks! =)</p>
<p>ejr1, thank you for telling me that about Trinity. I considered the school because it's small compared to the public universities, but I didn't know very much about its financial and merit aids. Amherst seems to be on a lot of CC'ers' lists, and from your account, it sounds like a very good school, so I will definitely check it out.</p>