I’m sorry you’re hating it!
Right now I am wondering about something, and hope you’ll really think seriously about the answer. How would you feel if come March of next year you only have one acceptance, and it’s to USF? If you would happily enroll, looking forward to spending four years there with no ill-effects from all of the rejections, then your list is fine. But if you would be disappointed, or trying to find other options at the last minute, or trying to figure out how quickly you could race through USF because you really don’t want to go and didn’t think that would end up as your only option…if you would be any of those things, I would strongly urge you to add additional schools to your list that have likelier odds of admission.
I know you said you were primarily interested in chancing info, but if you need help brainstorming additional possibilities, let us know. From what I recall, you were hoping for a school with at least 5k undergrads, a racially diverse student body with a definite proportion of that population being black, located in a city, and it needs to meet a $15k budget. With that tight of a budget, you might not get everything you want. Which items are you more willing to compromise on? Also, does that $15k budget include federal loans (max of $5500 your first year…max of about $28k total for undergrad)?
And in a previous thread (before you disclosed your budget) you said this:
Swarthmore is loan free (source) so that $19k should not have included a loan. If your family can pay $15k, then you’d be able to take a loan out to cover the remainder (i.e. the remaining $4k).
Make sure your family runs the NPCs at all the schools you’re applying to and look at whether or not they include loans in their aid package. If they include loans in the aid package AND the cost is over $15k, those colleges should be eliminated, unless they offer merit aid as well. For your reach schools, I don’t think you would be likely to receive any merit aid, so just look at the NPC for those.
Also, UGA and UMich will not be affordable for you as they don’t provide need-based aid to out-of-state students, I believe. Thus, you can take those two schools off of your list. (UVA and UNC are the only two public colleges in the U.S. that provide need-based aid to out-of-state students.)