Hi, I am an incoming senior. Asian Female. I want to go into the healthcare/medical field. I’m open to being anything that makes a good salary. Some careers I have in mind is Physician Assistant, Occupational Therapist, or Nursing. I don’t think I could get into a direct program. My gameplan is to apply to a lot of colleges and go to the best one I get accepted to. My ideal college would be a large, diverse college in an urban/city environment but I am still open to a small school if that means I get into a good program and I get scholarships. I live in Illinois and I would like to go out-of-state. Some of my dream colleges are Michigan State, UT Austin (TX), Marquette (WS), Daemen College (NY), Nova Southeastern (FL), Loyola University of Chicago (IL), St.John’s University (NY).
GPA: 3.0 (hopefully it’ll go up my senior year)
ACT: 25 (taking it again in Sept., hopefully, it’ll go up)
EC: Lots of clubs, no sports, honor roll freshman and sophomore year, lots of volunteer hours (Nursing homes and other random events), Art show, Freshman, and Sophmore Cabinet.
Advanced/Ap Classes: Advanced Geometry Class, AP Lang, AP Biology
Bad Grades: C+ 1st Semester Chemistry, C+ 2nd Semester Adv.Geometry, C+ 1st Semester US History, C+ 1st and 2nd Semester Pre-Calculus. Got mostly B’s but some A’s.
Letter of Rec: Was never really close with my teachers or counselor but I’ll ask my counselor
** I transferred high schools right before my Junior Year. The high school I go to now is a more academically challenging high school (that’s why my GPA is so low) so maybe colleges will see that when I apply. It was difficult adjusting to the new school. Didn’t join many clubs/activities. **
I have lots of questions so, please just give me as much information as possible.
-What colleges will accept me?
-Should I do a pre-program?
-Should I just go into Nursing so I will have a job when I graduate?
-Can I get any scholarships/financial aid money?
Small, diverse schools? ( I don’t want to be in the middle of nowhere)
-East Coast/West Coast schools?
-Safety/ High Acceptance rate schools?
What is your budget and will you be eligible for needs based financial aid? Going OOS will cost more. Is that something you can do? With a 25 ACT score merit aid might be more difficult to get. Some schools will meet need if you are eligible for need.
I can tell you that as someone who lives in Texas, I know a ton about UT Austin. Unfortunately, since you’re out of state, it will be much harder since they giver preference to in state students, which means your test scores must be supurb to get into UT, and a 25 won’t do it. You probably will need, since you are out of state, a 32+ just to be competitive here.
How much can you and your parents pay towards your college education/year? With your current stats, merit-based scholarships would be difficult and OOS schools will be costly unless you qualify for a good amount of need-based aid?
I’m trying to get as much money as possible. My family’s’ average income is about $80,000. What are some scholarships I could apply for this summer? Any school suggestions?
The best financial aid comes from the colleges not from outside scholarships. I would find some colleges of interest and run their Net Price calculators to see if you qualify for any need-based or merit-based financial aid. Also find out the actual amount your parents are willing to pay each year now, before applying so you have no surprises next spring and you cannot afford your top choices.
Look to your in-state options first and you need to find out how much you can afford to pay before college suggestions can be made. Money is usually the #1 reason for targeting certain schools.
All of those jobs will have a solid employment outlook. However…
Physician’s assistant is probably off the table, as you would need vast improvement in both calc and chem. Same with Occupational Therapy. These are both Master’s degree programs that are insanely competitive…in addition to being popular stand-alones, they are a popular fallback choice for pre-med students who fail to get into traditional medical school. 3.0 gpa and 25 ACT very likely won’t cut the kind of competition you’ll encounter here.
Nursing could be an excellent choice. A nice thing about nursing is that you can ladder it all the way to nurse practitioner or nurse anesthetist (Masters degrees with excellent income and opportunity comparable to PA) You could try the career on and see if it’s a good fit earlier in the game. Good income and opportunity at all levels of education, too, if you’re working your way through. Also, lots of scholarships and incentives for nursing.
Hi, check out Nursingschoolhub.com , it seems like a good reference site. UWF in Pensacola might be a good option. I know of several students that have recently graduated from the University of West Florida with a degree in Education , have jobs they love now , and really enjoyed going there. They have a good nursing school as well. Best of luck in your senior year and college search!
What state do you live in? There are lots of colleges that will accept you; only a handful of colleges are the super-elite type, and most colleges actually accept mos students who apply. Need-based financial aid is dependent upon your family’s resources; colleges now have net price calculators that you can use to see around how much financial aid you’d be offered (you can search “loyola net price calculator” or similar to find the NPC for schools).
Scholarships - that really just depends. The best scholarships come directly from the colleges themselves, and you are most likely to get a scholarship if you rank in the top 25% of applicants to that college. So ideally you’d look for safety schools, where you are almost assured admission; those are your best bets for scholarships.
Whether you should do nursing or something else is really dependent on your own interests. Just note that physicians assistant programs usually require 1-2 years of direct clinical patient care experience, so most people who successfully get into those programs are healthcare practitioners (EMTs/paramedics, nurses, certified nursing assistants, sometimes physical therapist or occupational therapist assistants etc.) In that sense, nursing may be a good major because you could work right out of college and then you could apply for an MS in physician assistant studies afterwards.
Since you live in IL, instate public Us where you can commute would be the cheapest option. Generally merit scholarships are offered to students with top test scores and grades.
Some CC programs have health-related programs like respiratory therapy, emergency medical technician,LPN, RN and more.
Your GPA, ACT and grades in your sciences courses preclude your direct admission to most 4 yr. nursing programs. If you want nursing, I would suggest that you start out in a CC in an LPN or AD program. Even these may be difficult admits. Nursing and PA programs are heavy in the hard sciences and your lower grades in those subjects in HS are not good indicators of success in these subjects in college. I suggest that you job shadow some nurses, PA’s and OT’s and see what the profession entails and what it takes to obtain degrees in those fields.
Have your parents told you what they can pay? Sit diwnwiththem and run the Net Price Calculator on the websites of a few of the places that you like so far. That will give all of you an idea of what your costs might be.
