<p>Please help me because I don't know what schools to be looking at. I'm going to be a senior this year and I want to visit as many universities as I can so I can find which one I like best. I live in Illinois so I'm looking for colleges within a state or two. I plan on majoring in Electrical or Computer Engineering or Computer Science with some sort of minor in business. So far I've visited UIUC and Purdue and I want to visit UM Ann Arbor. Here is some info about my high school career.</p>
<p>Junior Schedule
AP Chem
Advanced band
H Pre Calc
AP Physics B
H Spanish 4
H American Lit</p>
<p>Senior Schedule
AP Stats
AP Calc AB
AP Lit and Comp
AP Econ Micro and Macro
AP Physics C Mech. and E&M</p>
<p>Test Scores
ACT - 31
English -28
Math - 34
Reading - 31
Science 31</p>
<p>SAT - 1760 :"( Really low i know
Reading -510
Math - 750
Writing - 500</p>
<p>SATII
Chemistry -750
Math II - 710
Physics - 720</p>
<p>AP
Chem - 4
Physics -4</p>
<p>EC's
Band - 3 years and was a Section Leader my 3rd year
Mathletes
Scholastic Bowl
National Honor Society
Spanish Honor Society</p>
<p>I went to the east coast to visit Cornell, MIT, UPenn, and Carnegie Mellon. I know those are really big stretches but I wanted to visit them.</p>
<p>Also my unweighted GPA is 3.9 and I am ranked 12 out of 400. I would be ranked higher but band class has brought me down because it is unweighed.</p>
<p>How much can your family afford? UMich will cost you $50K/year. UIUC would give you the same education at a fraction of the cost.</p>
<p>I don’t really know an exact number of how much we can afford but i know I will be relying on financial aid and student loans if needed to pay for at least half of school. I dont know if that helps but right now I’m not looking at cost because I want to apply to schools and see what they offer me.</p>
<p>
OOS public Us will generally offer very little. You can check each school’s Net Price Calculator for a good idea of what to expect for FA. As a student YOU can only borrow $5.5K as a freshman, rising to a total of $7.5K as a Jr and Snr.</p>
<p>If i were you, I would pretty much forget the SAT ever happened. Just don’t send your SAT to colleges because your ACT is so much better</p>
<p>I would say, forget the SAT and retake the ACT, because while you have a good score, I bet you could get close to perfect 
Regardless, you really could shoot for more Ivies and top-10 schools. A lot of them offer amazing financial aid! (For example, at Harvard, 80% of students receive grants, 60% pay $10,000-15,000 a year or less, and 10% get free tuition).</p>
<p>Rose-Hulman is in the midwest and offers some merit aid. Michigan Tech is another good choice for engineering, especially if finances are a concern.</p>
<p>You really have to start looking at cost now if you want to have good choices in the spring. It is very important to have your parents help you run the net price calculators as suggested above. Just hoping for good financial aid can mean that you waste time on applications to colleges you will never be able to afford. If the calculators are not showing you are likely to get much need based aid, you will want to focus on schools with good merit aid, in-state schools, and schools that have relatively low tuition.</p>
<p>I guess no one noticed this is a post from last year and the OP hasn’t posted since August.</p>