mom2collegekids

"hoping to get a lot of money from outside scholarships and from other sources of aid"

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Not sure what that means. You won't get any financial aid at UCLA or UIUC. Unless you can afford $50K per year you should look at other schools.
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Erin's dad is right...UCLA and UIUC will not give you aid. They don't give OOS students aid, because they can barely give aid to their in-state students. Are you aware of that? (A good rule of thumb is that OOS publics can't meet the need of OOS students...However, there are some OOS publics (lower ranked) that give high stat OOS students merit money.)


I know that you have the one safety that you mentioned with a tuition scholly. However, if you don't want to go there (which is what I'm picking up from your post - but maybe I'm wrong)....I think you should pick another safety.

Snyder005

It's not that I don't like it, its just that I love my other choices so much!

I was considering University of Minnesota, but was a bit wary of the cold weather. Besides that it fits my criteria perfectly.

I really don't like the Northeast, haha, but I'm willing to make exceptions for MIT and Columbia.

mom2collegekids

^^^

The fact that you love your other choices so much more is a reason to have another financial safety choice that you will really like. If you don't get accepted or the F/A that you need, you really don't want to feel that you were left with the consolation prize and no choices. I like kids to have at least 2 financial safeties (that they really like) so they always have a choice in the spring.

Snyder005

Well I really liked WPI, but I don't really consider it a safety, due to the rather high tuition cost. But I also like U of Minnesota, which is much cheaper.

Would it be wise to replace UCLA with University of Southern California? I would love to go to LA for college, and both schools offer comparable physics departments, sizes, and other stats.

Snyder005

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Columbia University
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign*
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities*
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Southern California
Worcester Polytechnic Institute

*application submitted

UCLA already has my test scores and is fairly painless to apply to, so I'd rather keep my options open.