<p>Have you tried the ACT? There is no penalty for guessing, and it is not as deliberately tricky as the SAT. If you don’t need to take the writing portion because of the places you apply to, it also ends up being a much shorter exam than the SAT.</p>
<p>Might be a longshot, but WPI is the only test-optional engineering school. [Undergraduate</a> Admissions: Flex Path Information - WPI](<a href=“http://www.wpi.edu/admissions/undergraduate/apply/policy-qa.html]Undergraduate”>http://www.wpi.edu/admissions/undergraduate/apply/policy-qa.html)
They do not guarantee to meet full need, but since your grades are pretty good and you are a URM and first-gen and come from Texas - they might sweeten the pot.</p>
<p>Community colleges save A LOT of money; but if you can get into an in-state school, go for it!</p>
<p>Your strategy should be to apply as soon as possible to a few in-state schools you like, then to aim wide. With your stats, you’d need to look for a college that’s recruiting Hispanic students and a strong CS program, probably in the Midwest or Midatlantic.
Some possibilities among colleges that meet 100% need:
Davidson
Dickinson
Earlham
Gettysburg
Macalester
St Olaf
Vanderbilt</p>
<p>These schools are more or less accessible for you, and to have an idea of whether you’d be interested, fill out the “request info”/“join the mailing list” forms online.</p>
<p>If you can take the ACT you should try it, there’s no penalty for guessing as mentioned above. While the material is more advanced and more diverse in content/format/approach, it’s also more straight forward. Fewer tricks and weird wordings. You could do better on it.</p>
<p>Edgar, you already know (from other threads) that to get into either UT or A&M on review you would probably need a 1900+ SAT score (because your rank/scores don’t make auto admit), while to get into A&M as an academic admit you only need to raise your reading score to 600 (I see on another thread you are only confident to 550) and CR+M to 1300, or CR+M of 1200 for UT Dallas, or CR+M of 1140 for Texas Tech (sounds like you will have that with your October test); you are already in at UH I believe!
The bigger issue is your insistence that you want to have your full need met, with at most $20k debt (loans). Frankly, that’s pretty unlikely at any of these Texas publics. Paying for college is your and your family’s responsibility, and to house, feed and educate you for 4 years will cost more than $20k. I assume you have already checked out the Texas ‘estimator’ at
[AID</a> for COLLEGE in TEXAS](<a href=“College For All Texans: Page Not Found”>http://www.collegeforalltexans.com/apps/CollegeMoney/)
which gives an indication of the extent to which the colleges/state of Texas will help defray those costs depending on your family’s income (there are additional programs for very low income families) - up to half the cost as near as I can tell.
If you and your family are still not willing or able to meet the residual cost then your best bets for reducing the expense are either a community college for 2 years followed by transfer to university (should be fine for CompSci), or attending a local uni (you don’t say where you live, DFW?) and living at home to save the room+board. Either of these would bring you close to your target (a figure which I assume you picked out of a hat), I think. And as another poster suggested, you can work part-time for extra income. The main thing is that the right attitude is not
, but “Si se puede”.</p>
<p>Suerte.</p>
<p>Ok I’m in at UT Dallas(they auto admit top 15%), Texas Tech (SAT scores), and U of H (I think they auto admit top 15% as well). I love A&M and I think I have a pretty good chance. What other schools should I look into? I don’t really mind if they’re low reaches/ reaches. Just that I have a chance. I really don’t want to go to community college. I’ve worked too hard to end up there. I ran the calculators and I can afford A&M and U of H after all the grants and stuff. I live in Houston btw so I would commute. Hopefully I get an 1800+ on the SAT. Should I apply to Vanderbilt?</p>
<p>Ok I’m already signed up for the October 26 ACT. My goal is a 31. This is my last chance to make it where I want to go.</p>
<p>Hopefully I get an 1800+ on the SAT. Should I apply to Vanderbilt?</p>
<p>You could try Vandy, but unless your ACT is a 32+ or your SAT is a 2100+, your chances would be very low.</p>
<p>The College Board tracks average gains (& losses) made by students when they re-take the SAT:
[Retaking</a> the SAT](<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/sat-reasoning/scores/retake]Retaking”>Understanding SAT Scores – SAT Suite | College Board)</p>
<p>“On average, juniors repeating the SAT as seniors improved their combined critical reading, mathematics, and writing scores by approximately 40 points.”</p>
<p>An improvement of over 300 points (1590 to 1900+) is unlikely.
For schools like Vanderbilt, your class rank would be an issue, too.
Over 90% of freshmen entering Vanderbilt in 2012-13 were in their HS top 10%.
Probably many of those were in the top 1%-5%.</p>
<p>The thing is I actually studied this time. The first time I had no idea how the test was. I had not taken any practice test. But I guess I should wait until I get the results to see if I can “cast a wide net.”</p>
<p>Did you take the PSAT as a junior? </p>
<p>If you get an ACT 31, then you’d have more options. Right now, with your current scores (or maybe a small increase) you’re going to be very limited.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The standard comparison figures an 1800+SAT is ‘equivalent’ to about 27 on the ACT, whereas a 31 ACT matches about 2050 on the SAT. Of course some people do better on one test than the other, but unless you have been taking practice ACT tests to support this belief this sure looks like an odd pairing of assumptions. 31 ACT would certainly make you a hopeful for Vandy, 1800 SAT would not; but since you seem to have plucked Vandy out of the air (you hadn’t mentioned it as a consideration before) I wouldn’t let that be a discouragement - just do as well as you can on the ACT this weekend, knowing that the better you do the more scholarship money you are likely to get (wherever you end up going).</p>
<p>Okay. I appreciate the guidance. I will post back with my results.</p>
<p>Thank you. Please do, because it’ll be useful to other applicants.
In particular, make clear subject titles like 'TX Hispanic, reach ED results" etc. for the students out there who can learn from your story. I hope we can follow what happens to you throughout the admission season up to May 1 and your decision to enroll somewhere 
We wish you the best of luck.</p>
<p>This may not be applicable to you because I’m from MD, but I have similar scores to you when I got in UMD College Park. My SAT was 1600/2400 and ACT was 24. My GPA was 3.14 in highschool and I didn’t have any extracular curriculums. </p>
<p>I was 100% financial need-met through State Grant & Federal Work-Study. My loan out of college was $5,500, but that was because I studied abroad :p</p>
<p>^ Interesting.
According to UMCP’s 2012-13 Common Data Set, the average GPA of entering freshmen was 4.07. Approximately 78% had GPAs of 3.75 or higher. Less than 5% had GPAs under 3.25.</p>
<p>So you got in with below average scores, far below average GPA, no ECs, and 100% need. Just lucky, or what?</p>
<p>I’m assuming that’s 3.14 unweighted, whereas CDS reported for UMDCP is weighted (as evidenced by an average of 4.07). Weighted that 3.14 may turn into a 4.14…</p>