Southeastern reaches/matches?

I’m female, African-American, with a 31 on the ACT, 32 superscored, a 1420 on the SAT, 1430 super scored, a 3.8 unweighted GPA, Mississippi resident, with a budget of <15k per year. My dad makes around 150k per year (maybe less…he hates talking about money matters lol). I’m homeschooled, so honors classes but no APs. Thanks

Agnes Scott College, near Atlanta, would be an academic match, but I don’t know if they’d give enough merit aid to make it affordable for you to attend.

I know it’s difficult to have the money talk, but with a family income of $150,000 per year, most colleges will expect your family to pay more than $15,000 per year.

Do you have a preferred major? With your Dad earning around 150K a year, you’ll be looking for merit scholarships, and not so much need-based scholarships).

The Alabama schools offer generous OOS scholarships (UA, UAB, UAH, Auburn, etc.).

FSU would likely offer you an OOS tuition waiver, and perhaps the freshman merit scholarship. In-state tuition is about $6.3K a year for the Florida public universities.

You could get admitted to UF (based on your EC’s, etc.), but UF isn’t very good with merit scholarships. However, if you apply to FSU, you can re-use much of what you did in FSU’s app (filling out the SSAR, etc.) for UF, and the app cost is only $30 or $35 dollars. It may be worth the effort to apply and hope for one of the scholarships and acceptance.

The other Florida publics would offer generous merit scholarships, and may be a good fit based on your preferred major (like engineering at UCF or USF) and if living in Orlando or Tampa, etc., is appealing.

USC (South Carolina) offers several appealing OOS scholarships, and has what may be the best honor college program in the country.

https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/undergraduate_admissions/tuition_scholarships/scholarships/nonresidents/index.php

Clemson may be a bit out of your price range. It does offer merit scholarships, but it may not be enough to bring your overall cost down to $15K a year. However, it excels in several areas, like engineering.

https://www.clemson.edu/financial-aid/types/scholarships/clemson-scholarship-recruiting.html

University of Tennessee-Knoxville would be around Clemson’s cost range, based on OOS tuition-Merit Scholarships.

https://onestop.utk.edu/scholarships/volunteer/

The more selective (south east) private schools (like Vanderbilt or Duke) may still offer some “need” based aid, but they are difficult to get into. Run the “Net price calculator” to get a sense of what your cost may be at these schools.

vanderbilt.studentaidcalculator.com/survey.aspx

Good Luck!

Do you want to limit yourself to the Southeast? If not, an African-American from Mississippi will be a very attractive applicant to many “meet full needs” private schools in the northeast, your stats would make you a competitive applicant, and they will give significant need based-aid even with incomes in the $150,000 range. Look for schools like Amherst, Williams, Vassar, or the Ivies.

If you want to stay in the Southeast, you would probably get substantial merit and possibly full tuition at many HBCU’s with your stats. Here are the merit offers from Florida A&M.

http://www.famu.edu/Scholarships/2018_2019%20Scholarship%20Criteria%20September%202017%20(5).pdf

Tuition would be free at Bethune-Cookman:

http://www.cookman.edu/financial_aid/Aid/Scholarships/Presidential.html

@Gator88NE listed many of the scholarships at flagship schools, but non-flagship schools will offer higher amounts of merit. For example, Southern Mississippi would give you fee tuition with your stats:

https://www.usm.edu/undergraduate-scholarships/freshman-academic-scholarships

Tuition at Mississippi State would be under $3,000.

http://www.admissions.msstate.edu/freshmen/money-matters/scholarships/academic-scholarships/

Free tuition at Alabama Huntsville:

https://www.uah.edu/admissions/undergraduate/financial-aid/scholarships/merit-tuition-scholarships

Free tuition at South Alabama:

http://www.southalabama.edu/departments/financialaffairs/scholarships/freshscholarships/index.html

There are also significant outside scholarships through the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

https://tmcf.org/our-scholarships

and the Gates Millennial Scholars Fund:

http://www.gmsp.org/

Good Luck!!!