<p>There are plenty of colleges between BU, Northwestern, USC, and a community college. </p>
<p>OP…the reality is that unless your parents plan to pay…BU, Northwestern and USC will not be possibilities for you.</p>
<p>So…tell folks what you are looking for in a college, and the financial limits (in other words…the amount your parents WILL pay per year). My bet is you will get some suggestions.</p>
<p>To be honest, Northwestern and USC will not be possibilities for OP even if his parent will pay for it considering uwGPA3.5 and SAT1700.</p>
<p>@billcsho That’s not what was asked</p>
<p>As I said to the OP, what she has now is a 1700 SAT and should be building her school list from that. Easy enough to add schools if and when she improves. </p>
<p>CC is not an insult, IMO. Being a NewYorker, you do have a lot of very good CUNY, SUNY choices at good prices. CCs can save even more money and I’ve seen kids who excell there transfer to some great schools. When you don’t have the money and the stats, CC offers a foot in the door. I’d pay and even borrow for a kid who does well and gets junior status at a CC to a 4 year school before gambling from the get go when money is tight.</p>
<p>Kiar, you have the stats to go to a four year university IF your parents are willing to pay the cost…AND if you look realistically at the choices you have given your stats right now. </p>
<p>I would suggest you build your college list for the bottom up. In other words, pick a couple of affordable colleges that where you have an excellent chance of acceptance. Then pick a few where you are in the ball park. Then apply to a couple of reach schools. </p>
<p>Just be very prepared to walk away from any college that does NOT end up meeting the financial guidelines your parents set forth. </p>
<p>@KiaraInNYC @ucbalumnus
IMO 5 percenters are not upper class. Upper 1%, yes.</p>
<p>We’re in that income bracket, so I know what it feels to be in that donut hole for college FA.</p>
<p>Kiar, will your parents pay $25,000 a year? $30,000 a year? That is about half the cost of a private university or OOS public. If yes, then that would fully find your instate options. </p>
<p>What was asked was whether you should go complaining to the university financial aid office that your mom and dad won’t pay the entire bill for you to go to the college of your choice. Right? In a nutshell?</p>
<p>You are not entitled to your parents’ $200K annual income. I am sure they gave you that impression over the last 17 or 18 years, and they made a huge mistake. Now, after so many years of privilege, which robbed you of your own hunger for excellence, they suddenly want you to be the student that you are not. You are a good, decent student, but, based on stats only, you are in the middle of the pack, and given your privileged upbringing, and access to all sorts of opportunities that only those in your parents’ income bracket would have had access to, you are here now with only a 3.5 and a 1700 SAT - decent, good, but not the stuff that merit aid award dreams are made of. Sorry.</p>
<p>They have given you a mandate that you earn yourself a 50% discount off of the NPC via merit scholarships, but, of course, they are evidently clueless about what it takes to earn a merit scholarship these days. My guess is that they suddenly want you to put in your fair share - you get that 50% discount, and they will put in the other 50%. Unfortunately, they are not being realistic. That $200K a year blinded everyone to reality, so you might as well all work together to see what opportunities are realistically within your grasp.</p>
<p>All you can do is accept a dose of reality for yourself, and share some of it with your parents. They need to see the numbers in black and white. They need to tell you an exact dollar amount that they are willing to contribute towards your college education each year, no strings attached. If there are strings attached, then they need to share that with you so you can decide if being bound by those strings is worth it. You should all sit down in front of a computer, run the NPCs at many schools, and review the qualifications for automatic and competitive scholarships.</p>
<p>Don’t feel bad. Most students, even many students with higher stats than yours, cannot get 50% discounts for merit. It’s a tough, competitive world out there. Best of luck.</p>
<p>OP, other posts have made a good point. Will your parents pay only 50% no matter what the cost of the college? Or will they pay 50% of the price of a top college? There is a big difference between those two ideas. If they will pay $32,000/year (half the cost of some top priced colleges now), then you have some options. University of Minnesota Twin Cities would be one choice that you could attend for less than that. St. Mary’s College of Maryland (public honors college for Maryland) is about $39K, so with federal loans and summer work you might be able to make someplace like that happen. Or instate NY options as well.</p>
<p>Unless your parents change their minds (and I have known parents to do so once they figure out the true picture for college costs and financial aid), you are stuck with only a few options:
<p>Yes, do discuss with your parents what that 50% means. We gave our kids firm figures as to what they could pay. That meant they needed some merit from the top priced private schools or commute to them. They could do OOS publics. My one son did go to a private high priced LAC with outside scholarships, a merit award, worked summers and during the year , won a research grant, lived off campus for the last two years and scrimped, so was able to do it under budget and with no loans on his part. Pretty good I thought. I wish we could pay for any school they want, but it would not be a good financial move for our family, given circumstances.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No one is trying to insult you, and you should know that there are all kinds of kids at CCs–even very smart ones from comfortable families like yours.</p>
<p>It’s not that a CC is your ONLY choice–it’s that your parents have set parameters of not paying for more than $25K-$30K a year (I am basing this on you saying they would pay up to half of the stated price). So your choice is to find an affordable four-year option now, or find another way to manage a less-affordable school (perhaps by only attending there for two years).</p>
<p>You should ask your parents if they would pay for some test prep. It could make a big difference in your outcomes.</p>
<p>ETA: Sorry–kinda cross-posted with intparent. </p>
<p>Kirain, have your parents talked to you about money and what they will pay for college, other than the 1/2 of the cost? Where do they think you should go to college/? Are they aware of the costs? What do they think you should do if you don’t get any merit money or enough to comprise half or what they feel they can pay? Do they understand that you are highly unlikely to get any financial aid and can only borrow $5500 freshman year, and bit more each thereafter? Talk to them and find out what they are thinking about all of this. Are the SUNY, CUNY, schools in consideration to them? Are they expecting you to go away to school or commute? </p>
<p>I remember one year Stanford admitted someone with 1700 SAT score, he was Hispanic.</p>
<p><a href=“Accepted And With A 1700 Sat Score!!! - Stanford University - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/433076-accepted-and-with-a-1700-sat-score.html</a></p>
<p>That student excelled relative to his circumstances. By the way, the OP cannot afford Stanford even if admitted.
OP has to hit the books, do a focused test prep and increase SAT score considerably. Should tell her parents that SAT prep is a best investment they can make at this point. Then find a private college willing to pay up to attract an URM.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Those large scholarships at HBUs do not require that the student be black. A few of the automatic ones (Howard, Florida A&M, Prairie View A&M) may actually already be within the OP’s stats, depending on what the SAT CR+M is. Most of the non-HBUs’ automatic big merit scholarships are more test-score (rather than GPA) focused.</p>
<p><a href=“Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #300 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Automatic Full Tuition / Full Ride Scholarships - #300 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums;
<p>
</p>
<p>“Upper class” always seems to be a few percentiles higher income or wealth than the speaker or writer…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>CC graduates can be very successful:
<a href=“Berkeley News | Berkeley”>Berkeley News | Berkeley;
<a href=“Aaron Benavidez | Department of Sociology”>http://sociology.fas.harvard.edu/people/aaron-benavidez</a></p>
<p>Offering to pay half of your college is pretty generous to be honest. Not all families can do that. Perhaps requiring you to come up with 1/2 the costs is their way of making sure you are invested in your own education. Some high income families still want their kids to develop a good work ethic by earning some of what they have. May not make the kid happy but not such a terrible parenting move to be honest.</p>
<p>I agree with others that you are over-estimating you chances at merit at the schools you’ve mentioned. You need to look into schools where your stats are well above average. I know that you are hoping to improve your scores but always research with the numbers at hand. If you manage to make a drastic improvement, THEN you can look to more difficult schools. Better for you to search and find a few schools that fit the bill on low stats and then be happy later when you can widen your search to accommodate higher states. </p>
<p>Do you have a job? Might be time to start earning some money. At this point, your stats are low for merit. You will need to save some money and possibly consider student loans to come up with half. Your UW GPA is generally what counts for merit scholarships… not the weighted score. Do you have any special talents? There are some smaller LAC’s that have substantial scholarships for performers, for example. Because the programs are small, not as much competition to get them.</p>
<p>
</a></p>
<p>Student attended a school in a poor part of California. It had about 75% SES-disadvantaged students and 43% English learners, and was a relatively low performing school even among similar schools in the year of that student’s admission.
<a href=“http://api.cde.ca.gov/AcntRpt2008/2007BaseSch.aspx?allcds=54718865431184”>http://api.cde.ca.gov/AcntRpt2008/2007BaseSch.aspx?allcds=54718865431184</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Most competitive schools will look at your unweighted GPA because there is already an expectation that you are taking the most rigerous courses your school offers and are doing well </p>