Hi I was wondering if I could get some advice on what schools I could apply to and have a good chance of getting in that are highly ranked academically.
Residence: Pennsylvania
SAT: 1400 (660 math 740 reading)
GPA: 3.9 (weighted)
Leadership: Treasurer jr year then president sr year of Model UN club with 40 members
Extracurriculars: tennis, band, NHS, SHH
Already applied EA to University of Texas, Indiana University, Penn State.
Tentative academic interests?
What state do you live in? What can you afford? What is your unweighted GPA?
Thanks for your responses.
I’d really like to do some type of business and something with sustainable energy. My unweighted GPA is hard to get, but it should be around 3.7 due to some poor grades during freshman year. My absolute max is probably 50k/year.
Penn State is great unless it’s just not the environment for you. Great school, right price, and you seem to like big schools. I know someone who went there and then on to Wharton and a very succesful business career.
Besides state flagships, here are some other mid-size options you might explore:
University of Richmond has a good business school. Beautiful campus. It is expensive, but you may receive aid. It claims to meet full financial need. It is southern, and preppy. I don’t know if that is a plus or a minus for you. Richmond (RVA) is a fun city.
Case Western is a mid-size urban university with a good business school. Good science classes for the sustainable energy part. It gives good merit aid but does not claim to meet full financial need.
Creighton University in Omaha. Good business school in a pretty vibrant, prosperous city with a fun bar/restaurant district. Campus is interesting, more elongated than most, very nice though, short walk downtown. Elevated highway adjacent to campus, between it and downtown, did not seem to be a plus. Also urban. I’m not sure about financial aid there.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Higher USNWR report than one might suspect. Unique curriculum: very hands-on, project-oriented, students take 3 classes at a time in shorter quarters, if that is appealing. We loved the campus vibe. Freshmen seminars include things like Water for the World, Feeding the World, Housing the World, that type of thing. Great internships and ties to regional companies. Again, it will be more that $50k. If accepted, you’d probably get some merit aid, probably a matter of how much.
Hey thanks for the reply. I’m not at all acquainted with private schools so I appreciate you breaking down some of them for me. Also interesting point about transferring after 2 years at PSU, maybe I could transfer to UMich or NYU.
I think the first step would be to research the schools and see if they sound appealing. If so, run the net price calculator (NPC) for the school. This uses your basic info to give you a reasonable idea of what you might pay if accepted. Very often students don’t pay full sticker price at these private schools. Unfortunately, a student does not know for sure what they’ll be expected to pay until they are accepted and receive info about aid. It’s possible to fall in love with a school, get accepted, and then not be able to pay. Or it might be affordable but cost 50% or 100% more than Penn State.
Case, for example, does give good merit aid, and you’d probably receive some if accepted. It would probably be a question of it costing you $50k or $45k or $40k per year. Hard to say.
Private schools, though, can turn out to be less expensive than paying OOS tuition at a public university, like Texas for you. Publics typically don’t offer much aid to OOS students, although there are exceptions. Michigan costs approximately $60k per year for OOS students.
Richmond is obviously a southern city, though the school does attract a lot of students from the north. Beautiful suburban campus. Just a short ride to the Fan, which is the restaurant district. Richmond has had a real renaissance. Student body is generally affluent. Would you be comfortable in the South?
Case is much more of an urban school, not downtown, but in the city. Euclid Avenue, which has lots of restaurants, splits the campus. There’s been a lot of development on Euclid in recent years. It’s in a nice cultural district (museums, theaters, etc.) of Cleveland with Little Italy up the street. Obviously very cold in the winter. Can you get out of bed and walk a 1/2 mile to class when it’s 10 degrees outside? Do you like the city? Also, it has a good business school but is heavily STEM and has a large % of male students. Would this be okay?
Creighton feels very Midwest. Is that good? It would also be cold there. Students seemed very nice. It’s very well respected in the Midwest where there are relatively few mid-size, quality schools. Omaha has a pretty large business community.
We loved WPI. Very nice New England campus in a nice neighborhood in Worcester. School is mid-sized, around 5000 undergrads I think. The city itself has improved greatly in recent years, and a huge downtown redevelopment is underway. I’d research the unique curriculum, which is fantastic for some, unappealing for others. I know the school well, but not the business program, so you’d have to look that up. This was recently discussed on another thread. It used to be very heavily male, like a lot of STEM schools, but someone on here said the last class was the first one to be under 60% male.
Again, Penn State is a terrific, cost effective option. But you might explore these as well, with the understanding that they might not be affordable in the end. NPC will help give you an idea on that. Note that some schools have an earlier deadline (often Dec. 1) for consideration for merit aid.
Thanks for the info, really appreciate it. Do you have any ideas for public schools?
Son was interested in WIlliam & Mary so while in the area we went to Richmond. WOW, what a place (W&M too BTW).
I’ll confirm a previous poster’s comments: In the south but not necessarily southern due to a large % of NE students.
Great overall school. BEAUTIFUL campus. Very friendly staff. Can’t say enough about that. Their follow up through the entire admissions process was spectacular. They really care. To the point I felt bad that my son decided on a different school. Definitely not just a number at Richmond!
Since your budget is pretty big, here are more publics with highly ranked business programs.
U Wisconsin
U South Carolina
U Illinois
U Georgia
U Arizona
Michigan State
U Tenn
U Virginia
U North Carolina
I don’t know for certain, but you might find both business and sustainable energy at schools like Univ of Vermont and U of Colorado, Boulder.
Here’s an update: I was accepted to both Indiana University and Penn State University’s business schools. Thanks for the additional opinions everyone. I’m glad you’re giving recommendations, but some of them seem like they’re a little bit below my academics. My SATs and GPA are much higher than the averages of some of the schools mentioned - are there any public schools with averages closer to mine?
I saw the recommendations and don’t think any of those are a mismatch for your stats. Your 1400 wouldn’t even get you into most of those schools’ honors program or any merit, which means you won’t be at the top of the applicant pool. Research them and apply to the ones that look like a good fit.
We can’t tell without knowing your unweighted gpa, but the most selective publics are UCB/UCLA/Other UCs, U Mich, UVA, UNC, William and Mary, GA Tech, U Florida, etc.
With your scores, UVA and UNC would be reaches at best OOS. Very difficult admissions for OOS - UNC is close to 15% acceptance. William and Mary also very challenging. Don’t know about the others. All of them, other than UF, are a tier (or two) ahead of Penn State and IU (which are great schools - but not as competitive admissions as these).
My absolute max is probably 50k/year.>>>>
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Is this the amount that your parents have said they will pay? if not please ask them
Yeah it’s kind of hard, there isn’t much in between. The selective public schools are very selective (especially to an out of stater). I don’t think I’d ever get into UVA or UNC so I’m not going to apply there.
50k/year is at the very top of my price range. My parents have agreed to pay 30k a year, but the rest I’d have to take on as loans.
I think a very good option would be to go to somewhere like PSU for 2 years and then try to transfer to a higher tier school like Northwestern, Michigan, or UVA. That way, I’m only paying the outrageous cost for 2 years instead of 4.
Do you know what your EFC is? If your parents are not eligible for need-based aid, you will not be able to afford Northwestern, NYU, Michigan, or UVA as a transfer, even if you were to get accepted. You cannot take out 20K in loans annually. Maximum federal student loan is 5.5K for freshman year, gradually increasing to 7.5K by senior year. Can you afford Indiana U as an OOS student?
Northwestern and NYU are at about 70K per year right now and Northwestern doesn’t provide merit-based aid and NYU is notoriously stingy for aid of any kind. Those numbers are only likely to increase two years from now.
I know a number of students with stats higher than yours that were rejected or waitlisted at Case Western last year, so I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the suggestions made here as beneath your stats.
It sounds like you have an affordable option at Penn State and many students would be thrilled to have gained admission into its business school. I think you are likely to have a better college experience if you focus on what you have and not with the mindset that it’s a temporary situation from which you hope to transfer in two years.
Yeah I guess I’m kind of delusional… it’s so hard being in the middle class and trying to go to college these days. The only people who can go to these nice, expensive schools are people who are really wealthy and people who really aren’t and can get loads of FASFA. FASFA says we can pay 50k a year but we simply can’t.
You can only borrow ~$5500/year. If you work summers you can earn ~$3k/year. That gives you $38k/year unless you get merit somewhere.
FAFSA is an application that determines if students qualify for a Pell grant. The maximum Pell grant is ~$5k/year. Low income students aren’t attending residential college on Pell grants. If they’re lucky, they have an affordable cc within commuting distance of their home.
Do you have any financial safeties on your list?