Am I being realistic?

Mwfan1921
Wed, 22 Jul 2020 13:59:19 +0000

michellerekuc:

I have been looking primarily at schools that meet 100% of financial need, though for the most part they are pretty selective ( or schools that are known for giving high percentages of fa such as Syracuse).
My other schools are NJ state schools which I should be able to get some additional grants and scholarships for and should have an easier time getting a loan.

The list of schools I put together were very much predicted on the cost.
The question is whether I can get into them, or if I can’t, what are some other schools that I should look into?

From the current schools on your list in #4, none of the NJ publics meet 100% of need, nor does Syracuse.

It sounds like your budget will be $13K-$14K, based on the below. At some schools you may be able to get a work study job, and earn around $1K-$2K per year.

Family contribution ~$2,000
Pell Grant $6,195
First year student loan $5,500

Do you have a part-time job? Many meet full need schools will also require some level of student self-help (typically from a summer job) of $3K-$5K

I strongly encourage you to not take out loans greater than the $27K max in undergrad Federal Direct Student Loans ($5.5K first year, then $6.5/$7.5/$7.5).

Before you put any school on the list you have to run the NPC to see if it will be affordable. You shouldn’t apply to a school that won’t be affordable, or will require more loans the $27K. Do some people do this? Sure. And it can make sense in certain situations…but, if you are looking at a business major such as finance, or marketing, or management, I would limit the loans to the $27K.

It would be great if Rutgers were your affordable, highly likely school. The NPC result of $15K seems high, so not sure what’s going on there, you might double check that.

No one here can predict your chances of admission at these schools. I agree that UPenn, especially Wharton, is likely not attainable and I wouldn’t waste the ED there.

BU and Lehigh are reasonable reaches. WF is a reach too…and it’s competitive entry into the business school after frosh (?, maybe after soph) year there. Syracuse might be a high match. It’s hard to categorize without having a test score.

Make sure you are demonstrating interest at the schools where that is considered in the admission process. Lehigh and Wake do, not sure about BU and Syracuse. Look in Section C on their common data sets to check this. To demonstrate interest you sign up to receive emails from the school (and open and read those emails), participate in virtual programming (tour/admission session/student panel), do a zoom interview with someone from an admission (or sometimes an alum).

I don’t have a good sense of what you are looking for in a school (let us know!) but here are some more ideas (run the NPCs):

U Richmond
George Washington U and American U if you are interested in DC
Barnard
Marist
Elon

LACs - Washington and Lee, Haverford, Bryn Mawr (many don’t have biz majors, but W&L does), so you would have to major in econ for example). Posters can give you more LACs if you are interested in them.

Please also take a look at Questbridge.