@suzy100 Thank you, your advice has helped, do you know if living on campus will count or would I have to rent an apartment or condo in most cases, generally speaking.
@SomeKid123 I don’t know about “free tuition” necessarily but I am hoping to get some need-based scholarships.
@WaterpoloGod23 , there are a few states that make it easy to change your residency (Utah is one, and U of Utah is an excellent school that you might consider) but most do not. When you are under 21 and still accepting financial support from your parents, most states make it very difficult to establish residency. You probably could not do this in Washington State, and thus UDub would be quite expensive - over $40K/year even with the maximum OOS merit aid.
For a very low income student like yourself, you are much better off applying to private colleges and universities that meet full need, rather than out-of-state public U’s. Rice is one such university, for sure, but as others have noted it’s a very tough admit with an average SAT of 1510. (Even the 25th percentile is 1450.) It’s going to be a long shot unless you can bump up your scores. (You could try the ACT and see how that goes - sometimes students find themselves better suited to one test than the other.) Duke and WashU are similarly tough.
Are you recruitable for D3 water polo? (I assume you’re not going through D1 recruitment or you would have said so, right?) There are some top-notch colleges with D3 polo teams, and while they don’t give athletic scholarship money per se, you’ll get an admissions boost if they want you for the team, and you’ll get good need-based aid if it’s a full-need met school. If this is a possibility for you, start contacting coaches at the schools you’re interested in!
D3 water polo colleges:
Meet full need but not appropriate academically:
California Institute of Technology
Harvey Mudd
MIT
Meet full need, reach schools - if they really wanted you as a player, that boost might get you in
Claremont McKenna
Johns Hopkins
Pomona College
Meet full need and good match - definitely look into these three if you’re a D3 prospect:
Connecticut College
Occidental College
Pitzer College
Don’t meet full need, but might possibly give big merit
California Lutheran University
Chapman University
University of La Verne
University of Redlands
Washington and Jefferson College
Whittier College
Apart from water polo, here are some other colleges that meet full demonstrated need, that would be good to look at:
Schools that meet full need and do not require low-income students to take out loans:
Colby College
Connecticut College (also a D3 water polo school, and it’s an easier admit for men than for women)
Davidson College
Emory University
Haverford College
Kenyon College
Lafayette College
Lehigh University (has a fully-funded fly-in diversity weekend that you could apply to)
Vassar College (easier admit for men)
Washington & Lee University
Wesleyan University
(Rice, Duke, and WashU are all in this category too, but getting your SAT at least into the mid-1400’s and preferably higher would make them a lot more realistic.)
Additional schools that meet full need, but aid packages may/will include loans:
Boston College
Carleton College
Case Western Reserve University (has many of the positive attributes of Pitt, but in a private U)
Colgate University
College of the Holy Cross
Colorado College
Franklin & Marshall College
Grinnell College
Hamilton College
Macalester College
Middlebury College (known for foreign languages as well as other academics)
Oberlin College
Occidental College (D3 polo)
Pitzer College (D3 polo)
Reed College (worth a look in your home state - very strong sciences)
Skidmore College (easier admit for men)
Trinity College (CT)
Tulane (almost - meets 96% of demonstrated need on average)
Union College (NY)
University of Richmond
University of Southern California (a little reachy but had to include it - seems like a good fit)
@aquapt WOAH! This list was so helpful I am exploring tons of options. I will let you know how things go.
Good luck with the research! The athletic departments of the various schools should all have Prospective Athlete inquiry forms that you can fill out to make contact, i.e. http://www.sagehens.com/information/prospective_athletes The other piece is, for every school you’re interested in, run the Net Price Calculator that they supply. (Example: https://conncoll.studentaidcalculator.com/survey.aspx ) and see what that particular school’s financial aid formula says your out-of-pocket would probably look like. (Hopefully it will be zero, or very close to zero, at the vast majority of these schools.)
Google Sheets is your friend. Put the list of schools you’re investigating into a spreadsheet, and then you can store all of the relevant links, contact info, financial numbers, and anything else you want to track and compare, within the spreadsheet. Plus it’s then easy to share the info with parents or anyone else who’s helping you out, complete with commenting/chat functions. If there’s info you want to keep for reference but not see all the time, you can hide rows and columns, or make additional tabs for archived info. You can sort by cost, or make a column rating your preferences and sort by that… it’s a really good way to track everything. (TBH, between spreadsheets and essays, I was on Google Docs/Sheets so much with my kids during the college process that I sometimes forgot whether they were physically in my house or not. I’d be like “Are you hungry?” and they’d be like, “I’m at Dad’s house.”)
Luckily, the kind of major you want is pretty mainstream, so you won’t need to take many (if any) schools out of the running based on academic offerings. You can get a solid premed/life sciences education at any of these schools, though the finer points of research/volunteering/shadowing opportunities will vary. But the most important “brass ring” is the fully-funded, debt-free financial aid package; and you’re definitely a strong enough candidate to make that happen if you play your cards right. Do keep us posted!!
@aquapt Thank You.
RE: earlier mention of Cal Lutheran. With your stats and interests you would get a significant scholarship at Cal Lutheran. If you apply and get accepted to UCD, UCI, UCSB, UCB or UCSD, they will match the full UC tuition/R&B costs as a scholarship. They also have competitive full tuition scholarships. It is a small college, but their D3 sports are excellent. They even have D3 football (training/home practice camp for LA Rams) Craig Rond is the Water Polo coach and he is a great guy. Worth a look unless you are looking for a larger campus.