what would be good safety and target schools?

College Search & Selection
1
  • not International student - Northern Ireland with dual US citizenship
  • attends best Grammar School in NI
  • one of only 3 in her year to get all A*s at GCSE level - 11 subjects (subjects at GCSE: English Language, Eng Lit., (Higher) Maths, Further/Additional Maths, Religion, History, Health and Social Care, Physics, Biology, Chemistry (Triple Award), Irish Language
  • has consistently gotten virtually all As/A*s since the start of secondary school so 4.0 GPA
  • Currently studying Maths, Physics, English Literature, Psychology at AS Level (usual number of subjects at this point in High School in this country)
  • Ju-Jitsu for eight years so far and is a black belt and Junior coach - several awards
  • Worked at Burger King last summer
  • Volunteered at Action Cancer the year before
  • Participated in the Mock Bar competition with her school this year.
    SAT Reading 690 Math 650 Writing 710 total 2050
  • Low income family (SAT fee waiver)
  • Has always had a strong passion for wanting to teach at an elementary school level *She has been encouraged strongly to apply to Cambridge/Oxford University by her school, but since she has always wanted to go to America , she was thinking somewhere like Harvard would be the equivalent.
  • However she quickly realised her SAT scores and extracurricular weren't really "good enough" for Harvard - is it COMPLETELY unrealistic for her to have even a small chance of getting in?

We need a reach (maybe Harvard?), target schools and safety schools. What are your suggestions?
I think because the US has a bigger population she isn’t as impressive there as she is in Northern Ireland.
Any thoughts on what she should realistically aspire to and try for?
Should she bother doing the SAT subject tests (which are necessary for Harvard)?

Thanks :slight_smile:

2

Anything is possible. Your daughter sounds like an exceptional student with so so test scores. You are going to want colleges that give liberal financial aid to international students no? Will they treat her as a U.S. student with dual citizenship, I don’t know how this works. By all means apply to Cambridge and Oxford. Consider Smith, Amherst, Boston College, Williams varying degrees of selectivity. Probably going to be cheaper to attend a private, liberal arts college with a strong endowment. She can probably get admissions fees waived as well - an Ivy is not out of the question because her background is interesting

3

She is considered US student. But just kind of strange that she is coming from UK.

4

IMO those scores make H unrealistic. She needs to be targeting merit aid options for safeties. Go the Financial Aid forum and look at the pinned threads at the top. She should have some full tuition scholarship options available.

5

A US citizen living outside the US would be eligible for financial aid as a US citizen, but would not have any state residency for state universities (meaning higher prices and less or no financial aid at state universities, compared to state residents).

http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ may be helpful with safety candidates that offer large merit scholarships.

6

I respectfully suggest she devote considerable effort in preparation for a second SAT I (or ACT) examination. Her grades suggest that she can do well on the SATs (or ACTs), however, her current 2050 composite – although not unfavorable for many fine US LACs and universities – will reduce her admissions probability for highly- and most-selective undergraduate institutions.

7

Agree with @TopTier, she needs to hike up her test scores for more selective schools (even a level below Harvard). I would suggest that since it isn’t easy for her to visit, you do the following:

  • Get a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges for her to review. There are so many schools in the US besides Harvard, don’t even let her shop by name brand or worry about things like whether a school is in the Ivy league (it is only a sports conference anyway…).
  • Run the net price calculators on the websites of colleges she is interested in. Take travel expenses into account, and think about the fact that dorms close at most US colleges for about a month at winter break.
  • Have her do the following for schools that look good on paper and that appear to be affordable:
    o Review the college website carefully. Look at admissions for an online tour or photos, review the academics section for major and general/core requirements, look at a campus map, look at the student life section.
    o If the student newspaper is online, read whatever back editions are out there. You can learn quite a bit that admissions and the administration might rather you didn’t know through this process!
    o Read a lot of threads out here on CC for info on a specific college you might not get on the website.
    o Look at other college information websites (can’t list the names of some out here, they are blocked…)
8

so, just thinking aloud here: on the one hand, your d is being encouraged to look @ Oxbridge, and clearly hankers for Harvard (it’s the common element in both your threads); on the other she has a passion to be an elementary school teacher. I have a hard time reconciling those two: there is a certain sort drive / ambition that I associate with the people who get to Oxbridge/Harvard that I do not associate with the best elementary school teachers I know. This is not being judgemental about either group: just saying that in my experience they are pretty different types of people.

To be blunt, Harvard is unrealistic. For other suggestions, a little more about her would necessary: big/small? urban/suburban/rural? north / east / west / south? arty / sporty / greek-y ? does she want to major in elementary ed? (not an option in many of the more competitive schools)?

9

<<<
SAT Reading 690
Math 650
<<<

Those are the problem. For her to even have a chance at H, she’d need to raise her SAT M+CR scores by at least 100 points, but really more like 150+ pts.

As for other schools…
Much also depends on how much YOU will pay. Even tho she’s a citizen, citizens rarely get enough aid to afford college…and your D will have EXTRA expenses…int’l travel, and health insurance.

10

You mention being low income, that makes things much more difficult. does your child have a non custodial parent? If so, then his income and any new spouses’ incomes will also count. So, if your child has a NCP that has a decent income, would he contribute? If not, that will be a problem.

Your D would have to target the schools that “meet need”, but many of those do not cover the costs of int’l travel or health insurance.

Most schools in the US do not give great aid. Many give lousy aid.

It sounds like she has an American parent? If so, has that parent been filing taxes here?

11

thanks everyone for all your suggestions. It is going to be an interesting process… I am the mom and I will be most likely moving with her to whichever state she ends up deciding on targeting. She is going to do a gap year and work so as to qualify as in-state, and just to get used to things. She has no other parent legally unless he decides to change that.

We have struggled for ages so far with the contradiction between her capabilities and her desire to teach elementary school - she is young and her interests and her world are expanding - she is staring to maybe go off the idea of Harvard a little. Now really excited about Williams and U Penn. I think we have now decided she wants a small or middle sized school. But anyway, we just have no idea about Target schools. We just picked the first safety school we could find - U of Delaware. That’s the only safety we have so far. And no targets!

12

oh yeah - she wants east coast/new england.

13

Maybe consider a test optional school like Bowdoin?

14

I think Bowdoin would be a great “reach” since they’d take into account her remarkable GCSE results (11 A*s really is rare) and predicted A Levels.

Any school that admits fewer than 30% applicants has to be treated as an automatic reach.

If you move and you both work wherever you live, make sure she doesn’t take any community college class or anything (she can “stay sharp” by doing coursework on coursera, it doesn’t count. Community education also doesn’t count, like driver’s ed, first aid…)
UDelaware makes little sense though: only one in-state university to choose from, not especially cheap in-state, no especially generous aid, not very large… If you want colleges that would be “in state” for her and are great or cheap, look at SUNYs (NYS), North Carolina (UNC-CH is a “public Ivy” ie., excellent and the other top schools, like NCSU, UNC-W, App State, and UNC-A, are very good too - but the governing board wants to cuts 50 million from the university system’s budget!! o_O… so that’s a consideration…), Virginia (lots of excellent universities at a rather low cost in-state: UVA, William&Mary, Virginia Tech…), California (CCs, CSUs, UCs - a good dozen excellent public universities to choose from), Maryland (UMD CP, UMC BC, StMary of Maryland are three strong colleges, too). New England, unfortunately, had hundreds of private colleges before the public university system was set up, and pickings are slimmer for a combination of great academics, great choices, and good price. If she attends an Irish grammar school, she may not like the basketball madness at UConn or the general madness at UMass, although she’d have a good shot at Honors college - and then there wouldn’t be many choices (UMass Lowell perhaps, in addition to UMass Amherst?) Avoid Pennsylvania or Illinois: high costs in-state, lousy state aid; also avoid Kansas, which is having tremendous budget shortfalls for the second year in a row (some kind of economic experiment gone wrong)and cutting education budgets. Then you can apply to any private university in the country. You could always move to a less populated State, such as Nebraska, Arkansas, Wyoming, or Montana, as you’d get a boost for geographical diversity regardless of which private you’d apply to, but the downside is that you’d have few pickings for in-state public.

Do you own a Fiske Guide? (Or Insider’s Guide to the colleges, or Princeton Review’s best Colleges?)
If so, can you have her read, for instance, the description for UMass Amherst, Amherst College, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire - it’s a consortium but they’re all very different, so it’s practical to have her read all 5 descriptions. Add Brandeis and Boston College. Which ones appeal to her? Have her look at the Claremonts: McKenna, Pomona, Scripps, HarveyMudd, Pitzer; add USC and UCLA: which ones appeal to her? That would help you define what she wants/doesn’t want, what is a “want” and what is a “need”.
If you report your findings on your thread, you’ll likely get lots of suggestions “like” the ones she likes.

15

@silverwoman, great plan! And good advice above ^ … FWIW I’d recommend VA over MD if you’re looking at moving and might have an interest in the Washington DC area. (You probably know this, but much of metro DC is actually either MD or VA.) We’re also overseas but in-state in MD, and while we do have a couple of nice options in MD there just seem to be more higher-ranked choices across the river in VA. For your context, both U Va and William and Mary are excellent schools, and both have schools of education. So they’d be great options whether or not your daughter continues with her interest in elem education. I hope she’s able to work with kids during her gap year or even find some way to work in a low-income school or at a nonprofit related to education … that would demonstrate her interest in education while giving her a great experience personally! And if she’s in the US, she can retake the SATs a few times during her gap year without those pesky overseas charges that double the prices :smile: Sounds like your daughter is an amazing kid; if she becomes a teacher, any school would be lucky to have her!

16

UDel is not a safety unless she has all costs covered.


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She has no other parent legally unless he decides to change that.

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What does that mean? Are you saying that her birth cert doesn’t list a father?

Looking at Williams and UPenn are just as unrealistic as looking at H. Your D is likely targetting these schools because she’s heard of them.

17

her birth cert does not list her father and he has not acknowledged her as of yet - trying to get child maintenance. no luck so far.

u delaware - i can’t pay anything - at least it would be extremely minmal - so would she maybe get merit aid/ scholarships for there? i don’t know how to pick a safety, really - but i know it would be best if it were one of the “meets 100% of financial need” schools.

18

She wouldn’t get merit for the scores she currently has. her efforts should be focused on raising those scores. Considering her IGCSE scores she CAN do it on the ACT, I’m quite certain.
“meet 100% need” are too selective to be considered safeties, or, often, even matches.

19

If your daughter gets into either Cambridge or Oxford University (or another top-tier University in NI/UK), would she be able to get a full ride or close to having all her educational expenses taken care of? Maybe she should pursue her undergraduate studies in the UK and do her graduate studies in the US. This will eliminate the need to take a gap year.

BTW, with A’ Levels, wouldn’t she only spend 3-years at a UK University?

20

@silverwoman UMaine Farmington could be a safety http://www.umf.maine.edu/ It is a top regional public LAC which is very good for education. It is free to apply. Your instate cost would be 9k and you OOS cost would be 11k. That is with the top merit aid which she qualifies for, the full Pell Grant and another grant. Portland is an amazing city with job opportunities. She could then get Stafford loans $5500 the first year, $6500, $7500, $7500. So she would need to earn about 10k during her gap year and summers to do this comfortably instate. 16k OOS.

And maybe Bowdon also in Maine as a reach. Probably a better chance if you are instate.