Auburn and LSU both have full tuition scholarships for those with 33+ ACT’s and 3.5+ GPA’s, so I was wondering if this is the unweighted or weighted GPA? I know that Alabama uses the weighted GPA so I was hoping these colleges do the same. Also just a side point, do these scholarships cover room and board too? Thank you.
Follow over to the Financial Aid forum where this question should have gone.
What is your home state?
Auburn’s scholarship for those stats is full tuition in state but $16,000/year for OOS, quite a bit less than full tuition.
http://auburn.edu/scholarship/undergraduate/freshman.html
LSU does not have anything like what you described.
https://sites01.lsu.edu/wp/financialaid/entering-freshman-scholarships/
You are from the midwest so you’re OOS for both schools (and for the UCs that you mention in another thread).
Auburn doesn’t have a full tuition award for OOS students with those stats. LSU doesn’t either. And their awards don’t pay for room and board.
The UC’s would cost your parents $55k per year…are they ok with that? or paying $38k for SLO?
What are you looking at that shows you the Auburn and LSU awards???
Anyway…Alabama would give you free tuition plus 2500 per year for your stats and being a CS or engineering major.
How much will your parents pay each year?
If you need aid/merit, then you need to be careful with your app list otherwise you won’t have any affordable schools.
Auburn’s OOS tuition is about $28k per year…That Presidential OOS merit award is only for $16k (and doesn’t increase when tuition increases each year).
That would leave you paying about $12k-15k per year while there for tuition and another $15kish for room, board, books, fees, etc…so about $30k per year after merit.
Alabama would give you free tuition (no matter how much it goes up), and ($2500 per year for CS or engineering)
Your remaining costs would be about $13k per year…if you take out a student loan for $5500, then your parents would only have to pay about $7500 per year. Quite a bargain.
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I am in desperate need of a school that gives good financial aid.
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You wrote the above in a thread about UCs. UCs will not give you any aid to cover the OOS costs. They are firm about that.
UCs require that you pay: $23k + EFC + full self help (about $9k).
So, if your family’s EFC is $10k, then you’d have to pay $33k plus $9k self help…per year. UCs are really only affordable to those who have parents who can pay a big chunk.
Is your family low income?
Does your family have a good income, but they won’t pay much for college?
You need to ask them how much they’ll pay each year.
Bob, I think I forgot to read the “other” requirements and just glanced at the gpa and act for lsu so I appreciate you showing me that so I could take a second look.
And mom2college, no where in this thread did I mention anything about California colleges, I already am aware that they don’t give good aid so I am looking at private schools in that area. Im also already aware how much my parents will pay and what to work with.
@thesteve I only mentioned the UC schools because you mentioned them and the need for FA in another thread. Since you hadn’t mentioned in that thread that you now realized that aid wouldn’t happen at a UC, I mentioned it here.
While you may have been aware, many times we’ll see later posts from students who are surprised at the “bad FA” that they’ve gotten. Then, we parents will often look at “old threads” and see that the student was warned, but the student never went back and read that warning.
Just a couple weeks ago, there was a student posting that her “dream school” isn’t affordable and now she has no place to go. 
A couple of us parents looked back at her old threads and @ErinsDad warned her in November that her schools may not be affordable. She either never saw his wise warning or she ignored it.
So, I was just trying to help you avoid a terrible situation.
We’re all just trying to help you. You thought that tuition was free at Auburn with your stats, and it’s not. It’s easy to misread something (as you’ve noticed with LSU), so be appreciative that people are trying to help you avoid the land mines.
Glad to hear that you know how much your parents will pay. What schools are affordable for you?
Ah sorry if it I sounded like I was being angry, it’s impossible to have a soft tone over the Internet. I’m actually really appreciative of people like you who help people you don’t even know. And basically I’m now applying to a lot of private schools such as Santa Clara, USC, Rice, Emory, and more. My counselor told me to definetly do Santa Clara because I go to a Jesuit high school and they tend to give a lot more money to people like me and he thought I could afford it. So if a private school can help, the California dream is back for me. I’ve also learned online that Texas Austin and Georgia tech tend to give good aid even to people out of state. After that, the scholarships I can get that are about 13 grand might be enough for me at university of Arizona and asu (maybe auburn too). At least that amount would be very close to what we are looking for, so we would have to see exactly how the package works out before I get my hopes up. If no private schools help and none of these public schools can either, then I will probably fall back on Alabama, and last night I was hoping to add lsu or auburn to those fall backs but now I’m glad that I know they probably aren’t the best ideas. Probably gonna cost us as much as college to apply to all of these schools though haha but hopefully at least one school pulls through with what we are looking for, and I think/hope my list is realistic in having one and Alabama is always in the back of my head so I won’t be terrifyingly depressed if everything else fails.
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My counselor told me to definetly do Santa Clara because I go to a Jesuit high school and they tend to give a lot more money to people like me and he thought I could afford it.
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While it’s true that some of the Jesuit univs do give merit to their Jesuit HS applicants, be sure to still have your parents run the NPC on SCU’s website. The “generosity” isn’t usually much, and it gets applied to “need”…it doesn’t get subtracted from the amount that your parents are supposed to pay.
SCU doesn’t “meet need”.
For instance…
$55k COA for SCU (I’m guessing here, haven’t checked actual COA)
$20k EFC for your family (again, guessing)
$35k of need
IF SCU gives you a Jesuit award, that will get subtracted from the top…
$55k COA
$25k Jesuit merit award (based on your stats…that’s why my nephew got for similar stats)
$8k (mix of loans and work study ~ self-help)
$33k of “aid”
your family would be paying $22k and you’d have the self-help
So, as you can see, the “family part” wasn’t reduced at all. So, have your parents run the SCU NPC. It’s a very good school and if your family will pay, then super.
I do not think that UTexas gives much aid to OOS students. GT sometimes gives some. Please have your parents run the NPCs on those schools’ websites.
Do you know what your family’s EFC would be?
Our EFC is something around 14k, although, my parents say they are willing to do whatever to pay more if they must as we really value education over any other expensives (but for now I’m only being realistic if its around 15k). Haven’t ran the calculators yet but I definitely plan on doing so soon. I also might add that even though Santa Clara would be a dream school, I have always realized that the cost is a lot and I probably would have never even had it on my list had my counselor not said that they should meet my parents aid and since we tend to send a lot of kids out there it’s hard for me not to believe him, but at the same time, everything else points to my parents having to pay a lot more so I’m not going to get my hopes up for the school. Also do you think I would almost be guaranteed that Jesuit merit award? I had always thought that was just for a select group of people, but perhaps that is just another mistake of mine, but it’s so hard not to make them when it seems like I’m looking at thousands of colleges.
Perhaps my list isn’t the best it could be as I got a lot of private schools that aren’t good with aid and public schools that are also known to barely give any aid. (Thank God I don’t have those California ones anymore though). I am one of those people where weather is almost the number 1 factor and I really just want to go down south or to the west and go to a decent sized school with a decent computer program, but maybe that’s too much to ask for. So do you have any ideas on schools (private or public) that either give great merit aid, or simply good financial aid? From my understanding it seems like absolutely no schools are ever going to meet my aid. I realize that not all schools are guaranteed to meet all your need, but my god, I was hoping that one of my 30 schools would at least come close. It really seems like the Arizona schools are the only ones that do, but I need more backups for sure. And then for all I know I’m going to run the calculator on Arizona and rule those schools out. Is it really only possible for someone with my kind of money and decent grades to go out of state if its Alabama?
You just seem to be making the wrong list…including a bunch of OOS publics. Unless you get huge merit from therm, they won’t be affordable. Alabama is a bit unique as an OOS public because it does offer generous merit for high stats. Most publics just don’t do that. I think Alabama and Temple are the highest ranked publics that offer merit like they do.
You need to include some privates that “meet need”…maybe WashU, Tufts, USC, Cornell?
Have your parents run the NPCs.
As for SCU…when my nephew got his award, it was a few years ago…he’s a rising senior. So, it’s hard to say what SCU is now offering kids with ACT 33+. It seems that they’re getting tighter, but maybe only with non-Catholics? I’m not sure. @bobwallace posted that his son had an ACT 35 and got no merit from SCU, but he’s not Catholic nor did he go to a Jesuit school.
All you can do is try and see.
Yes, I think I will keep some of the OOS publics that give some hope of a good financial aid package, but I definitely am going to now focus my search on private schools, especially the ones that meet. USC has always been one, but it seems tough to get into. I would like to thank you for helping me strengthen my search, it’s always good to get a different point of view rather than from people like my counselor who insist to not worry and that most of my colleges would meet my need, but in reality it seems like they probably wouldn’t. Hopefully I can make my list a little more realistic, thanks again
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rather than from people like my counselor who insist to not worry and that most of my colleges would meet my need,
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oh good heavens! Would someone please knock these GC’s upside the head!!
You’ve got your financial safeties, Alabama and maybe UArizona, so now you can focus on matches and reaches that will meet need.
Are you going to visit alabama?
So you are from the midwest with a 32 ACT, 3.74 GPA, minimal ECs and you want to major in CS at a rah-rah school that has partying (and beaches and surfing - have you ever tried surfing?) and will cost no more than 15K?
What is your state’s flagship? Does your state have tuition reciprocity with an adjoining state?
Mom2, I do plan on visiting Alabama soon, heard from friends that it seems like a beautiful campus. But I’m glad that I know my financial safeties might be where I end up before I do the whole process and get my hopes up.
And Madison, beaches and surfing would always be an add-on, my main two criteria are 1. South/West, 2. Big rah-rah school, and after that I am looking for a mixture of the best possible computer science school with a reasonable amount of aid. With that said, since I’m looking to move south, Mizzou (my flagship) is not really plausible to me. I would rather go to Alabama WAY more than Mizzou. And sometimes Illinois gives in-state and is part of the reason why I’m sort of looking at U of I, but it’s still not south. Do not think any southern states will give tuition reciprocity with Missouri, but maybe I’m looking in the wrong places. I know it sounds annoying, and I am at least a little open minded to staying a bit North, but unless it’s Harvard, there are health reasons to why the South is much more plausible to me.
I also don’t really expect the college to cost more than 15k, but what I would hope is to get a decent percentage in work study, student loans, federal aid, and merit aid to where it comes around to only costing my parents around 15k if not a little more.
But still, I might be asking for too much, I think my best bet is to dig deep and find some good merit scholarships or financial aid packages at a private school. I added Tulane to a possible school on my list last night because I am reading online about how it gives a lot of aid to OOS, but I really need to start running these financial aid calculators.
Side point for anyone, is there a good thread where I could find examples of what other people similar to my position got in financial aid? Just seems like a good way for me to get a better idea of what to expect.
I also might add that my GPA isn’t really 3.74, I used that number in a old thread because the UC’s don’t include freshmen year which sounded amazing to me as I got a 2.8 freshmen year (rough start), but when you take that out I have about a 4.0 weighted or 3.7 unweighted. (with it, I have a 3.6 and 3.3).
Are you going to be a CS or eng’g major?
I would rather do computer science because first of all I simply like that major a little more and a minor kind of reason is that I hope to get into computational science in grad school (don’t want to look too far ahead in life though), and software engineering would probably be fine for that anyways. And I realize there is a difference between the two but if some school had a much better software engineering program, I would be 100% open to going into that major instead.