<p>I have a 3.54 unweighted GPA this year, along with a 3.81 weighted because of 5 honors classes. Along with this, I have a 2100 SAT score. Outside of school, I am playing high school baseball, volunteering, and working at a job. What colleges do you think I can get into or what colleges seem like a good fit for me?
Thanks!</p>
<p>what is your overall unweighted GPA? what can your family afford? have you run the net price calculators? what state do you have residency in? do you like small, medium, or large? do you like any partying? what regions of the country would you rule out?</p>
<p>@jkeil My overall unweighted is a 3.67 GPA. My family can afford about $20,000 without loans, and much more with loans. Student loans are also something that I can look into before I apply for colleges. I currently reside in CT, and I have no real preferences on location, partying, or size of the college.</p>
<p>it would go from Dickinson to Butler to SDSU to Hendrix to UAlabama…
It’s too wide.
Key elements:
Parents’ budget -can they afford their EFC, will you need financial aid (a lot? Are you Pell-eligible)? Merit Aid?
What’s in-state for you?
Can you go anywhere in the country?</p>
<p>@jkeil911 - sorry forgot to tag</p>
<p>@MYOS1634 – I am not in need of fiancial aid, but anything I can get would be greatly accepted as it will help me in the short term money-wise. Right now, I am in CT, so some of the colleges nearby are University of Connecticut, Wesleyan University, and Yale University. I can go anywhere in the country.</p>
<p>Why don’t you start with the search engine right here at CC? <a href=“http://www.collegeconfidential.com/college_search/”>http://www.collegeconfidential.com/college_search/</a></p>
<p>Let me talk about money because you are under-informed about money. You can only borrow $5500 your first year and 27K over four years, so taking out loans isn’t going to pay the costs of attendance unless you go to a 4yr. school that costs no more than $25500/year. That is pretty close to possible, actually, but you’ll have to shop around. There are some pinned threads at the top of the Financial Aid forum that you should take a look at, esp. the thread that addresses inexpensive colleges.</p>
<p>You should first investigate your state’s public colleges for their costs of attendance. Run the net price calculator found on the Financial Aid page of each college. Check to see what the college says it would charge you (based on your family income). This is called the Expected Family Contribution or EFC. These EFCs are fairly accurate, with exceptions having to do with two-parent households, parents who own businesses, and parents with vacation homes. </p>
<p>Aid at colleges comes largely in two forms: need-based and merit. Your grades aren’t so high that you’d qualify for admission to those schools that are “100% meets-need,” that is, those that will meet the difference between the EFC and the costs of attendance; so you’re going to want to search around next for those schools that might offer good merit of the size of a full tuition scholarship. There are lots of schools that offer 15-20K in merit, but charge you 55-60K. Even with additional need-based aid that won’t help you. Again, you’ll want to search for these big merit scholarships in the pinned threads. You might for instance qualify automatically for a Presidential Scholarship at the University of Alabama with your grades and SAT. You’ll have to search around, and you’ll have to get the applications done soon.</p>
<p><a href=“http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out-of-state.html”>http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out-of-state.html</a></p>
<p>Btw, how does your SAT score break down?</p>
<p>@jkeil911 As a sophomore, my SAT breakdown was a 780 in Math, 620 Reading, and a 700 in Writing</p>
<p>hmm, the cutoff at many of these merit schools is going to be around 1400 or a little higher. what year are you? do you have time to boost this SAT?</p>
<p>From your other posts, it sounds like you’re a junior. Are you retesting?</p>
<p>Don’t rely on a bunch of loans to get you thru college. Your parents can pay $20k, work with that. If you retest your chances for merit increase.</p>
<p>In one post, it looks like you have a 1400 M+CR, in another you report a 610 CR, which would mean a 1390 M+CR.</p>
<p>@jkeil911 I am a sophomore right now so I have 2 more retakes of the test to do. 2017 is my graduation year.
What would be an appropriate M+CR score? </p>
<p>Let’s just say that there’s an automatic full tuition scholarship at Alabama for students with 1400 and 3.5. There are a couple other automatics out there but they’re disappearing one by one and/or the cutoffs are going up.</p>
<p>And UPitt has a cutoff of 1450 and top 5% to get merit there. However, it is not an automatic scholarship and it’s not full tuition (except for a couple dozen). In addition, because these scholarships are becoming more and more visible to applicants and the pot is not growing as fast as the applicants, that 1450 was probably not the bottom cutoff for a lot of kids this year. That is, there were applicants with 1450s and 3.8-4.0 who got NO merit, if what I hear on the grapevine is correct. </p>
<p>And Washington and Lee has a lot of money, but it’s going to some pretty exceptional kids who could be going to ivies but their parents are making too much money to get any of the ivies’ need-based aid.</p>
<p>These are some examples. You need, too, to concentrate right now on bringing up that GPA or the SAT score won’t be enough help. I’d say the final GPA needs to be at least 3.8, so you need to pull down some near 4.0s the next couple years. Remember, senior year final grades won’t do you any good if you apply in fall of your senior year. </p>