<p>A lot of my friends are in the same position as me. I think parents have forgotten that colleges expect them to contribute. I’m still a legal dependent child.</p>
<p>You’ll be dependent until age 24, graduate, or marry.
Are you the oldest child in your family?
Will you be retaking the ACT?
Your parents may cosign the loan but if you don’t go to grad school (and defer payment) or find a job that allows you to pay back the loan, THEY will have to pay the loan and THEY will be in default. The cosigned loan goes to THEIR credit as well as yours. In addition, if they currently have a lot of debt, they may not get approved at all. Private loans never ever stop - even if one cosigner dies, the other people still have to pay. Parent PLUS loans are at least better than private loans.
Typically, you’d have your work earnings + a work study during the year (unless you continue to be lead designer, you could also have both job + work study) + federal loans + whatever merit aid or grant the college wants to give you. Since you’re lucky enough to live in FL, you also have Bright Futures (NY, GA, CA also have similar programs - but residents of PA or AZ don’t. It means kids there are totally screwed if parents with a philosophy like yours can’t or won’t pay for college.)
Run the Net Price Calculators for EACH college listed on your thread. Apply to those that seem within budget, or if you like some colleges and the NPC doesn’t seem to encompass merit, email the admissions office to ask about merit aid. Hiram would probably have good merit aid, as do most LACs ranked outisde the Top 50 or located in the upper midwest (cold). Some public universities also do. The financial aid forum has a complete list of colleges with automatic and competitive merit scholarships.</p>
<p>I WILL be going to graduate school, so that isn’t an option. I’m planning on attending law school.</p>
<p>I am not the oldest in my family. My brother is a freshman at University of West Florida now.</p>
<p>Professional school (law school, med school, vet school + professional Master’s such as for teaching) is a different deal than grad school. Any grad student worth his/her salt receives some form of funding but professional schools require you to pay. Your loans are deferred until the end of that, where they accumulate, so that you start your professional life with both levels of loans to pay back.
You should aim for a top, top law school then (Top 14) which will require you to have a 3.8+ GPA and a high LSAT (we’re talking 170 - top 3%) as those may have funding. Most law schools won’t.
Your best bet is a combination of political science and philosophy for a major.
Note that MANY people don’t go straight to law school, but work for a while.</p>
<p>Check into NCF’s record with law schools. I know that for med school and grad school (PHDs) they do very very well and are considered Ivy feeder, but do verify for Law School, including quality of advising, internship opportunities, etc.
Since you need merit, invest in preparation (use Khan Academy, number2.com, etc) and try to up that ACT score.
When you choose your college, look at outcomes, too. Compare odds, advising, etc. If you get into the Honors College, check out whether that provides you with special advising in addition to special classes, opportunities, and dorm.</p>
<p>Some of the " near-superaid" colleges may have financial aid for 140k, so run net price calculators on LACs in the top 20 or so, the NESCAC schools, Grinnell, etc. However you’d need a higher score than that 28.</p>
<p>If law school ends up being too expensive, I have no objections to pursuing a master’s and doctorate in economics. In some cases, I’d actually prefer to do that over law school. So ideally if law school isn’t very doable financially, I’ll be headed to a master’s program in Econ.</p>
<p>The preparation is very different though.Graduate Economics is very theoretical and math-based. For Law school, you need lots of humanities &social science classes (history, philosophy, ethics, political science, economics). For a PHD in Economics, you basically need a Math major or a math minor at least. </p>
<p>Are you retaking the ACT next month?</p>
<p>NYU: Reach
BC: Reach
GWU: High match
American: Match/High match</p>
<p>What about graduate study in political science?</p>
<p>Graduate study in political science doesn’t require more than the standard “stats for social science” classes (typically, 2 - one required, one recommended ie., required if you want to go to grad school).
Check out Occidental, they have a “semester on a campaign” program as well as a UN semester (selective, but very cool and rare nonetheless).</p>
<p>I would rather do a PhD in political science, but then there’s always the problem with job prospects. PhD Econ allows many job opportunities in private sector as well as academia. PoliSci is mainly acadamia which worries me with the current state of universities and hiring. I’d like to not have to worry about that, but being realistic, I have to.</p>
<p>OP has had a couple of other threads that come back to this money issue. Ian if your parents will not contribute you need to go where YOU can afford. I believe you said before you have a financial safety or merit money somewhere?</p>
<p>Don’t bother applying to any of these private schools if you can’t afford them. What’s the point? You won’t be getting much merit aid with your scores. Stick with the more affordable state schools.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of the advice. I have spoken with the parent whose kid goes to New College of Florida. I think I am going to stick with my in-state public options (one of which is New College) because it’ll turn out to be the most affordable option.</p>
<p>I appreciate everyone pitching in and keeping me realistic here. My life will be much simpler when January 1 rolls around and most application deadlines close. Then I can stop wondering about it because I will have missed my opportunity anyway.</p>
<p>You could also consider Rollins College if you can’t expect any parental contribution. Rollins has some significant merit aid available that your stats should qualify you to be considered for. Check out their website, they have multiple scholarship tiers and even with your ACT score you can be eligible for a pretty high tier.</p>
<p>Really, with that parental income and no actual contribution, you are in a tough spot. I’d start by arguing against their premise. “We put ourselves through college and you can do the same” fails to address the fact that median college tuition has grown 3x faster than median income in the past two decades. What they did is not impossible, but it is much harder now.</p>
<p>If you’re still left with no parental contribution, then you may end up in an arranged marriage with Florida A&M, where your GPA and ACT qualify you for an automatic full-ride scholarship. Perhaps you can learn to love it. :)</p>
<p>Just sent my application to Rollins via the Common App. I qualified for the application waiver, so why not? Do you think their aid will be better than Stetson University’s? I suppose only time will tell.</p>
<p>Rollins has more money than Stetson, but nobody can tell you whether they’ll spend more on you than Stetson.
That’s why you have to apply widely - since you’re on your own, you should probably stick to colleges that will offer the experience you’re looking for along with full tuition. Colleges that CHange Lives (website) would be a good place to start. NCF and Eckerd are on the list, BTW.
It’s going to be hard to beat NCF in terms of costs and intensity, but NCF is a peculiar school, that many students wash out of, so you need to be sure it’s the right fit. It’s a great, great school but it’s not for everybody so you have to be sure.
Don’t put all your eggs in the samebasket - that’s why Eckerd or Stetson or Rollins as good opportunities, as well as any colleges similar to these.
I’d try Wooster, too. Not sure they’d give you full tuition but if you want serious, research-oriented like NCF but a tad less intense, it may be a good pick and it can’t hurt to try - especially since you have a boost thanks to geographic diversity.</p>
<p>OP: Definitely run the NPC for colleges. In my situation, Rollins is about 10K more than Stetson… doesn’t appear to be a cheap(er) option to most colleges. You’re likely looking at >$35,000/year out of pocket for Rollins. I’ve found Birmingham Southern to be about 15K less/year than Rollins on the NPCs. Midwest LACs in the CTCL consortium also seem to be relatively cheaper options. It’s likely none of these private LACs will be less than $20,000/year out of pocket for you.</p>
<p>You’re in a bind… seems as though public FL colleges will be your cheapest option, as others have stated. </p>
<p>If you look at my original post, most of the schools I applied to are in the Colleges that Change Lives book. I bought the physical book, read it cover-to-cover, and made a list of the schools that interested me.</p>
<p>I know New College isn’t for everyone. I’ve already visited it and loved it. I’m just trying to see what some of my other options are.</p>
<p>Also to the Rollins / Stetson thing: it probably varies from person to person. Rollins only takes the FAFSA, whereas Stetson takes the FAFSA and the CSS PROFILE. The way they calculate aid is different, so it probably just depends on the individual’s situation. I’ve applied to both Rollins and Stetson, so time will tell which one ends up being cheaper.</p>
<p>At this point, however, it’s looking like New College will be my only affordable option besides Florida State and U of Florida. I don’t have a problem with that, though, because I love New College. I’m planning on making a second trip to Sarasota so I can sit in on a class soon. 
</p>
<p>^If NCF has the culture you’re looking for, then it’s impossible to beat cost-wise as a LAC for a Florida student.
(I wondered how you selected these colleges indeed. 
)</p>
<p>Just got my scholarship offer from Stetson in the mail. $25,000 per year.</p>
<p>Still not a definite, but depending on if I qualify for Stetson’s Bonner Program or not, it is still a strong contender.</p>
<p>But yes, I love the culture at NCF. I don’t want to fully commit there yet because I still want to have my options open.</p>