<p>I have a 3.9 uw gpa, 4.6 w, 1940 sat (1370 cr + m), 31 act score. Location isn't really a factor, but I would like to go to a school where there is at least some importance placed on athletics. What are some "good schools" I should apply to, and would have a decent chance of getting in, or even getting merit based aid?</p>
<p>What do you like to learn in college? Where are you? Your GPA is pretty good. For example, I am in CA, and if I were you and I don’t know what I want to learn, I would apply to a rounded school like ucla.</p>
<p>When you say location isn’t a factor does that mean your parents are prepared to pay $55K/year for a school?</p>
<p>Merit aid, you need to be in the top 10-20%. Your GPA is great, but SAT’s/ACT’s less so. Makes it harder to pick those schools where you stand out academically.</p>
<p>Matches: Look at Big Ten (or similar) schools. Lots of sports, school spirit.</p>
<p>Erin’s dad- location doesn’t mean price… for example, I live in ny but I wouldn’t mind going out to cali for school, which doesn’t really change the price all that much</p>
<p>Thanks “crazed” for your suggestions</p>
<p>And yes, Lovesinglovesong, I’m not really sure what I want to study in college, so colleges like ucla make sense to start with</p>
<p>Get the list of all FBS football teams from the web. Investigate further to find ones of interest, check out the Fiske Guide. Apply to those where you are likely to get accepted based upon their common data set and can afford. Use their NPC to see if you can afford it. Attend one. Done.</p>
<p>@haystack- I was tryin to avoid that method by doing this. I’m basically looking for a narrower starting point</p>
<p>So you are going to trust strange people that know nothing about you and allow them to put together a list of schools for you…excellent. Fine and easy.</p>
<p>Iowa
Iowa State
West Virginia
Ole Miss
Alabama</p>
<p>I’m guessing that you would be happy at any of them. Your list is done.</p>
<p>Well mr/mrs Haystack, I was assuming people with some sort of personal expirence (I.e. alumni, those attending or even those planning to attend) would offer details on schools that interested them, not just random schools that you came up with off the top of your overly sarcastic head. And I had trust that these so called random strangers would take even a slight interest in providing schools that were superior to “Iowa State”. But when people who have nothing better to do provide some sort of random info, it just wastes both parties’ time.</p>
<p>And for your information, I’m not cluelessly going to apply to this potential list of colleges; instead, I looked forward to a group of colleges I may have missed in my preliminary college search.</p>
<p>Since you’ve avoided the question, what can your family afford (so we can narrow things down)?</p>
<p>I’m not exactly sure what my parents can afford, is it that you have schools in mind??</p>