OP described the Manhattan high school student attends as very rigorous, so it is either private or a public exam school. In either event the counselors will have Naviance showing where student is likely to be admitted.
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@roycroftmom the OP posted:
Luckily the public highschool she attends in Manhattan is exceptionally rigorous and well regarded.
But I totally agreeâŠthese schools usually have great college counseling services which I hope the OP daughter is using.
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Ok, well, I would expect that means the usual suspects-Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Sci and Stuy. They have lots of Naviance charts there.
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UNCW looks pretty interesting.
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I live in Wilmington. Nice small city. Very close to the beach.
Wilmington looks pretty cool and meets many of the criteria- thank you to who suggested it. Weâre looking at the website now and DD is intrigued!
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We do have Naviance, yes.
I was really impressed with UNCW. We reached out to visit and inquired specifically about the honors college and they met with us for almost 1.5 hrs going into evening one on one. Pretty campus. My D wants small school, science focused, diverse and in southeast. She also has challenges that warrant support and small class sizes. She wants grad school so we too are focused on keeping undergrad costs low.
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Hereâs the problem. It makes little sense to look at colleges where your daughterâs chance of admission is close to zero. Less than one-half of one percent of UNCW frosh had gpaâs under 3.0. It is highly unlikely she will be the exception. I wouldnt set her up for disappointment by looking at all sorts of colleges without checking the chance of admission first
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Iâm confused - itâs $42,600.
is the budget $20K or $40K? That would add a host of schools.
And it is very nice - my son did a marine science camp there.
But only 1.3% have under a 3.25 GPA.
So add it if you like and can afford - but itâs a high reach.
Not trying to come off negative but realistic. Now - their average GPA is over a 4.0 so thatâs weighted - so your unweighted was described before - but how many Honors and AP classes were there?
Edit - I see @roycroftmom mom was writing the same thing and beat me to it!!!
Still confused on cost - if as you said before you need to be at $20K, why look at schools over $40K?
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When we toured UNC-Wilmington we timed the drive to the beach from campus, because hello, BEACH! A big draw. Campus was also really nice. I think it comes in around $40K OOS (ETA: someone already mentioned the cost).
The NC Promise schools (the ones with the cheap tuition even OOS) are 2 HBCUs, 1 historically Native American college eventually folded into the UNC system but still quite small, and Western Carolina. I have spent a week at a time at summer conferences at WCU and if I had to guess why it is part of NC Promise I would assume it is because it is painfully rural.
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Sheâs got a ton of college level courses, two APs, and a lot of community service, school government, and extracurriculars.
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When one has a budget, one has tradeoffs.
But yes, it wonât be for everyone.
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Ignore the ECs for now. How does your school weigh the gpa? Your counselor knows this. What is a " college level" course? DE? AP?
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Weâre not sure if weâre getting additional help from the MIL, if so, then we could expand our search so I def want to show a few that are more expensive.
I donât know yet on merit etc. I donât understand the merit process entirely.
She doesnât have high GPA, but does have a lot of other things going for her.
Just FYI, she doesnât go to these. NYC is a big place with a lot of fantastic public schools. 
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Realistically, as you will find the longer you are on CC, pretty much everyone has " a lot of things going for them" and ECs are not going to make up for academic deficiencies. They just do not. The college will be reporting her gpa on its CDS. If almost no one with her gpa is admitted, she wonât be either.
I see your edit to exclude the public NYC exam schools. Well, then I hope she does really, really well in her SAT.
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GPA will be the most important factor along with rigor. It would be helpful to know the unweighted GPA (seems you thought the 2.9 might not be correct). Regardless, Naviance will be most helpful to the extent that it shows who applied with or without tests. Without that info the scattergrams are less helpful. The Naviance historical GPA data will be more helpful than what posters are sharing from the CDSs.
ETA: CDS GPAs are only helpful if one knows how that GPA is calculated, and if thatâs how admissions calculates and uses GPAs in the admission process. Many institutional reporting depts do wacky things when calculating GPAs.
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At a 2.8 merit is unlikely regardless of other things . If a weighted at 3.0 maybe at a few schools. But not $20k worth of merit.
If $40k others open up and is a whole other search but best to target where you know you could afford for now.
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Cool.