<p>^^^Would he also be eligible for the $2500 that matriculants to Bama’s engineering school get? That would reduce the price tag a bit.</p>
<p>muhammad9211 -</p>
<p>When is your family planning on returning to Maryland? Does your family own a place where you could live and commute to UM-BC? What county is your former residence? Check the residency requirements for the community colleges in MD. Some used to require only 3 months residence to qualify for in-county tuition and fees, and since they are open enrollment, you are flat-out guaranteed admission.</p>
<p>In your price range ($15,000 from your parents plus student loans), there are options in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Here is what I found with College Navigator for a program in Information Sciences/Comp Sci: [College</a> Navigator - Search Results](<a href=“College Navigator - Search Results”>College Navigator - Search Results)</p>
<p>On your own, you can only borrow the federal loan maximums of $5,500 freshman year, $6,500 sophomore year, $7,500 junior year, and $7,500 senior year. To borrow $10,000 each year, you would need a co-signer. If your parents aren’t in the US, that might not be possible. However, as you are a citizen, you can get a job on or off campus anywhere that you can find one, so your chances of pinning down some kind of student job during the year and/or internships in the summer are pretty decent.</p>
<p>Based on the typical GCSE translations, your GPA would be 4.0.</p>
<p>That 550 really hurts your chances - when will you know your new results?</p>
<p>3, 13, 14 will be unaffordable.</p>
<p>My parents arent going back, just me. No place from where I could commute.</p>
<p>Scores are released 21st nov</p>
<p>REVISED LIST</p>
<p>1) Cornell ED
2) Stanford
3) Dartmouth
4) Northwestern / Brown
5) Harvey Mudd
6) U of southern cali
7) Georgia Tech
8) U of Rochester
9) Worcester PI
10) Grinnell
11) Lafayette or Macalester
12) Depauw</p>
<p>I still think 1-4 won’t take you with your SAT scores. See what the new scores are and start looking for more safeties. It may be a better use of your time to work on applications and essays for more realistic schools. Best of luck to you. You are certainly putting a lot of effort into this.</p>
<p>Clearly you are a math/science kid and not an English kid as shown by both your test scores but your ECs show a nice diversity. Hopefully you will have better scores from your November tests but I do believe you have a lot to offer a college. You’re US but you’ve spent 4 years living in another country and you clearly have many interests.</p>
<p>Although you say you have no idea what “kind” of college you want I think if you were to apply to some of the smaller, more holistic type of schools you would do better. </p>
<p>The larger schools on your list have enough diversity and interesting students without making exceptions so I would eliminate Northwestern, Northeastern, Duke, Stanford, etc. (I would have eliminated Cornell but you said you applied ED so I’m assuming it’s already been done.) Harvey Mudd would take you if you were female but since you’re male you could skip that one also.</p>
<p>One school not on your list that might work is Carnegie Mellon. They are really a trade school for some of the best and brightest in a student’s area of interest. I believe you only take one or two classes outside of your division and I am sure there are kids with lower English scores because one of the required classes for almost every division is like a Freshman English class, at least it was 6 years ago. You may find it too restrictive but you should definitely look at it.</p>
<p>Hopefully your new test scores will help your situation, good luck!</p>
<p>You are receiving good advice on this thread, andto your credit you seem to be assimilating it. Agree with ^ posts that #1 - 4 are high reaches. Maybe choose only two and then focus on your match and safeties. The good news is that you are open to different scenarios, judging from your comment about size. The best advice our family has gotten on this site is to invest HEAVILY in your safeties. Spend the time to research them and try to determine which is a match, which is a safety…and which are affordable.
Best of luck!</p>
<p>I would say that 1-5 are your high reaches and 6,7, 8, 10 are high matches. Lafayette and Macalester are matches, DePauw and WPI are safeties. I’d eliminate some from 1-5 unless you don’t mind the expense and unless you’re going for computer science I’d add CMU.
UMN Twin Cities is not too expensive from OOS and is not bad at all.</p>
<p>Have you run the Net Price Calculator at each university’s website? The NPC will give you an estimate of the financial aid. These estimates will not be as accurate for you as for someone whose parents only have US-based income, but they will give you an idea. Also, if your family owns any property other than your family home, or if your family owns a business, the NPC will probably not give very accurate results.</p>
<p>I get it that you like Cornell. However, I don’t think that you should apply anywhere ED because you are going to need to compare your financial aid packages. The colleges and universities will decide what they think your family can pay, and that is what your aid package will be based on. In most cases your student loan will be included in the aid package, so don’t count on being able to use your loan to help meet your family contribution.</p>
<p>Yes, some on your current list are relatively safe go admission, but none are clearly safe for cost. If you have an affordable back-up where you live, that is OK. If you don’t, or if you feel you need to get your education in the US, you have to find a financially safe place here.</p>
<p>Thank you all for the advice. I dont see the justice in completely eliminating 1-5. I mean wheres the ambition in that! And my profile isnt THAT bad. Its just my CR score. Will post back my SAT score in a week!</p>
<p>I didnt bother with the npc’s cuz my family owns property and a house, and my dad is somewhat self employed. I instead looked at the avg financial aid of each college. DePauw I think will serve sufficiently as a safety as the avg finaid was 38k. And I think over 90% of financial need was met. Same sit with the other LAC’s.</p>
<p>If all fails, I will end up attending uni here I guess, and try to transfer possibly later</p>
<p>And amtc was the only one to notice that I ALREADY APPLIED TO CORNELL. Its says ED, I sent my app last week. Please dont tell me to remove it. Cuz its sent!!</p>
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<p>NPCs might not be that accurate when self-employment is involved, but they are still going to be more specific to your situation than average financial aid numbers, since the latter do not take anything from your specific situation into account (the average at a given school may reflect richer or poorer students going to that school; for public schools, the average might be from predominantly in-state students, but you will get much worse financial aid as an out-of-state student).</p>
<p>Also, schools which “meet full need” have varying definitions of “need” based on varying definitions of “expected family contribution” and varying levels of “expected student contribution” or “self help”. So their net price could differ significantly.</p>
<p>Running the NPCs will be a lot better than assuming financial aid based on averages.</p>
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<p>DePauw is not a safety, since it considers level of applicant’s interest. DePauw is also a very fraternity/sorority-oriented school, with [just</a> under 70%](<a href=“http://www.depauw.edu/studentlife/greek/gogreek/]just”>Go Greek - DePauw University) of students in them. Unfortunately, alcohol appears to be a prominent [problem</a> in campus life](<a href=“http://www.thedepauw.com/news/university-abandons-hard-liquor-ban-begins-search-for-new-alternatives-1.2901157]problem”>http://www.thedepauw.com/news/university-abandons-hard-liquor-ban-begins-search-for-new-alternatives-1.2901157).</p>
<p>And can we please keep my profile, other than my CR score, in mind?
My GPA is near perfect in a rigorous gcse system. I mean how many kids do u guys know are predicted for 3A*, 1A? I have a plus 700 in both math and writing. My SAT 2 are good. My EC’s I personally think arent too shabby. And dont u think the fact that ive lived abroad for four years now will play a part in my essays? No offense, but what I picked up is that people on CC dont exactly look at profiles hollistically.</p>
<p>I appreciate the help, I really do, but come on guys! To say that I have zero chance of getting accepted and might as well cross the top 5 off my list is just ludicrous.</p>
<p>Even great stats would mean you get the chance to qualify to buy a ticket to the lottery. It’s still a lottery bc those schools have tons of kids with great stats and great EC’s. </p>
<p>You said you want to cut down on apps and need to keep COA fairly low. Thus, elminating some of those places were you will need luck to get in is the smartest thing. You have a better chance at scholarships where YOU are the cream of the crop not where you sigh a big sigh of relief that they accepted you.</p>
<p>Realistically, #1-2 and #4-8 are reach for everyone (does not mean that you will not get admitted, but no one should have high expectations for getting admitted unless your parents donated enough to name a building).</p>
<h1>3 and #14 will be too expensive if you can only pay $15,000 per year, since the minimum out-of-state net price is over $30,000 for each of them (and will be higher if your parents make more than very low income that I put into the NPCs to test).</h1>
<p>For the record, I didn’t say to completely eliminate 1-5 (in part because 1=ED) but to eliminate SOME from 1-5. I don’t think anyone said to eliminate all top schools from your list, in fact. Your original question dealt with cutting some schools from your list and since you have few safeties and few matches, if you want to cross out a few schools, they’ll have to come from the high reaches and the reaches.
Fact is <em>many</em> students who appy to these schools have 3 A-Levels at A/A* - you’re different because you have 4 so yes that’s good but no one can tell if it’ll be enough to push you to the admit pile. Pretty much everybody who has a chance will have 700+ at these schools so your scores are within the expected range overall.
( At Harvey Mudd, about half admitted students have a perfect 800 and 75% have 740 or more - with the bottom 25% being legacies or students who had very difficult circumstances but proved themselves otherwise.)
Your +'s: having lived abroad and having 4 A’Levels instead of 3.
Your -'s: financial need for need-aware schools, that CR score.
Will they even out? No one knows.
So, if you want to apply to all the schools on your list, no problem - in fact I’m sure you’ll get into many ( safeties and matches, perhaps 1 reach or two). How many will be affordable is another, separate issue.
However if your primary goal in this thread is to learn which schools to cut, the advice will always be to cut among your reaches.</p>
<p>I assumed you picked DePauw for its Greek Life (since it’s well-known for that). If Greek Life is a turn off for you, find another school of similar caliber where Greek Life is less predominent. Lehigh, Union, Clarkson… all have alcohol-related problems though.
Another reach would be Haverford, for the program with UPenn (4 years as a physics or CS major with a decent GPA = automatic admission to Penn’s Master in Engineering and MS in one year, a very good deal.) I assume your profile would interest them, no Greek life, alcohol not predominent.
CMU (outside of CS) is another match, CWR is another safety.</p>
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<p>Well, no. That’s your big weakness. Look at the CDS for each college. </p>
<p>At Yale, something like 2% of enrolled freshmen had CR scores below 600. At Columbia and Stanford, maybe 6% of enrolled freshmen had CR scores below 600. That most likely means the bulk of applicants with these scores were rejected. Even at Harvey Mudd, fewer than 5% of the freshmen scored in the 500s.</p>
<p>You want to know what schools to eliminate. Well, keep one or two reaches (aside from Cornell) but eliminate the other reaches.</p>
<p>A few Ivy students (2% - 11%) do arrive with CR scores under 600. Mind you, that’s 2%-11% of the 6%-15% admitted. I suspect most of them are URMs, athletes, children of big donors, or other “hooked” applicants. But maybe you’ll be an exception. Since you applied ED to Cornell, you’ll know in a few weeks (by mid-December). If they accept you, you’re done. If not, there still will be time to apply to other schools. </p>
<p>Ordinarily, it would make sense for your RD schools to be less selective than your ED school. It’s a little unorthodox to backstop Cornell ED with Stanford, Dartmouth, Brown, and Northwestern.</p>
<p>I personally dont see the point in having more than 7 match school 
someone care to enlighten me? I think 4-5 reaches is just fine. But, im here for opinions.</p>
<p>If my CR score is whats holding me back, then I’ll just retake…again. four isnt excessive I hope. I was getting constant 700’s on my diags. Im just really unlucky.</p>