US Citizen, CT resident, Public School, First Gen
40k/year budget
Definitely Psych Major, Open to double majoring
3.4 GPA, (school does not do unweighted)
1250 SAT, Retaking soon hoping for a 1400
9 AP’s Including this year’s, 3 are going to be taken ECE through UCONN
Spanish all 4 years of HS
Tennis Captain, Varsity all 4 years
Executive Student Council, 4 years
Musical, 4 years
Summer job, 1 year
VP for class, 1 year
100+ Volunteering hours
Debate, 2 years
Mock Trial, 2 years
Leadership Academy
Looking for State Uni’s in the Northeast and California, (such as UCONN, Penn State, URI, etc.)
U Maine, U Vermont, U New Hampshire, San Diego State
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Sorry, I can’t really chance you but my son with similar stats got into URI with merit. If your budget is 40k then you can’t afford Penn State or any CA schools. They don’t give aid to OOS students. I know URI does give merit to OOS students but I’m not sure it would meet your budget even with that. Your best bets for finding affordable schools are CT state schools.
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You need to run the net price calculator for any schools of interest. Google school name + NPC and use the one on the school website, not a third party site.
Why are you only considering public universities? Many state schools exclude OOS students from need-based aid and may limit merit. For example, you are interested in CA schools but they don’t give aid to OOS students so your cost will be about $75k.
Start with the NPCs and remove any unaffordable schools. Your state and any nearby states with reciprocity should meet budget.
You may get some good information from this thread. Best of luck!
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SUNY–Geneseo.
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Clark MA is well-known for psychology. It’s a private college but they offer merit, especially if your test scores improve.
I confirm that Penn State and California state colleges won’t be affordable.
Usually public state universities don’t offer financial aid to OOS applicants and while some may offer scholarships, your GPA is a bit low for that at flagships.
Seconding UMaine or USouther Maine as safeties, SUNY Geneseo, SUNY Albany as a match or reach depending on the major.
Would you be recruitable for D3 tennis?
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For psychology, you will need at least a masters degree to work as a psychologist. So…keep that in mind.
What do you hope to do with your psych degree?
The public universities in CA will not meet your $40,000 price point…so if you were thinking about any of those, they can be removed from your list.
Penn State will be too costly also.
Southern Connecticut State University has a good psychology program, and their masters program is also quite good. I would suggest this as your sure thing for admission and affordability. Please visit and try to talk to folks in the psych department.
Eastern Connecticut State University is another option.
For ECSU and SCSU, you could possibly do two years there and then transfer to UConn. This would save you some money.
University of Maine does a match with the tuition costs (so would be the same as UConn tuition). Look there.
University of New Hampshire isn’t a sure thing cost wise, but you might get some merit there.
URI is likely for acceptance, but might not reach your price point.
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Is there a reason you’re only looking at CA outside the northeast? Or only at publics? Some other publics like ASU look like they’d give enough merit to get your cost of attendance below budget (just so at current stats, more breathing room if you do get your SAT score up).
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You might meet your budget at University of New Mexico also.
Can you give us your geographic preferences…that could help with suggestions.
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As others have said just forget about the various Universities of California. I am not sure about the CSU’s. UVM will only meet your budget if you get very good merit based aid. For us at least the NPC for UVM did accurately predict merit aid so it might be worth running it to see what it predicts.
I would definitely consider U.Maine, UNH, and various public universities in your home state. My guess is that U.Conn might be a low reach for admissions with your GPA, but your guidance counselor should know better than I would. Other public universities in CT would probably be more likely for admissions and should also fit your budget.
I do not know much about URI but to me it seems worth considering.
A psychology major is one where some form of graduate school is a significant possibility. To me this suggests that sticking to your budget and minimizing or avoiding loans is a good plan. I think that your budget should be possible to meet in-state and very likely at some other good public schools in the northeast, and possibly elsewhere.
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Some of the CSUs will probably be close to the budget for OOS but not all. However psychology is an impacted major at quite a few CSUs, and depending on OP’s CSU GPA calculation he may not meet the cut off for a number of them. @Gumbymom knows more but my understanding is the majority of CSUs do not use holistic admissions (and the ones that do I think are the more competitive onws)
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The title sats 3.4 unweighted, but then it says school doesn’t give unweighted GPA, so is it weighted or unweighted?
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Regarding California Universities (Private or Public), I do not believe there are any schools that would meet the <$40K/year budget.
Below is a link to the Cal State (CSU) instate costs and for Non-residents you need to add another $12,600/year for Non-resident tuition fees which puts all the Cal states above the budget.
If you are interested in applying, you should calculate out your Capped weighted CSU GPA: GPA Calculator | CSU
The calculator only uses 10-11th grades for the CSU a-g courses taken during this time. You get 1 extra Honors point for each semester of an AP/IB class taken up to 8 semester Honors points. The exception is Cal Poly SLO, which uses 9-11th a-g course grades with the 8 semester Honors point cap.
CSU’s admit by GPA, HS course rigor, # of a-g courses taken above the minimum, local admission area status and first generation. EC hours can be listed but you cannot go into detail about the EC’s.
Psychology is impacted at several of the top CSU’s so it may be very difficult for an admit. If you have some campuses that interest you, I would run the NPC first to make sure they are affordable.
Here is the Impaction matrix showing which campuses are impacted and also the majors: https://www.calstate.edu/attend/impaction-at-the-csu/Documents/ImpactedProgramsMatrix.pdf
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I’m guessing you’ll need regional type schools - a West Chester PA, Millersville, Salisbury MD. Staying in the NE, in addition to the Connecticut directionals, perhaps a Southern Maine or Plymouth State.
You do need to look at cost of attendance of any school you look at and merit tables for any that have - so that you can use your GPA / SAT to determine a proper cost.
As for CA schools, a regional state school like Cal State San Marcos would make cost but it’s more a commuter type school. Others, like Long Beach State, could with strict budgeting come about right (not accounting for inflation) but would be far less likely for admission. In other words, a well known (SDSU, Long Beach, Cal Poly, etc.) Cal State campus would be unlikely for admission.
Best of luck to you.
Keene State might be worth looking at.
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I used this source to look at how many alumni of the college went on to earn a doctorate in psychology between 2000-2018, as it could be a rough indication of strength of a department.
In terms of California publics, you might want to check these out:
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Cal State – Chico: About 13k undergrads
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Sonoma State: About 6k undergrads
In terms of northeastern publics, I would take a look at these schools (in descending order by the number of doctorates earned in psychology between 2000-2018…though I did not account for the difference in the size of the schools):
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U. at Albany (NY): About 12k undergrads
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SUNY Geneseo: About 4100 undergrads
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Indiana U. of Pennsylvania: About 7k undergrads
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SUNY Oswego: About 6k undergrads…not listed on the flagship match page, but you may want to inquire
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SUNY Cortland: About 6k undergrads
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West Chester U. of Pennsylvania: About 14k undergrads
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SUNY Fredonia: About 3200 undergrads
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Millersville U. of Pennsylvania: About 5800 undergrads
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U. of Maine: About 10k undergrads, and you can read about the flagship match program
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Shippensburg U. of Pennsylvania: About 4400 undergrads
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Eastern Connecticut: About 3900 undergrads
Here is the link for the SUNY flagship match program: https://www.suny.edu/go/tuition-match/
But I am going to add to the chorus of people who are wondering why you would limit yourself to public schools, as private schools will often provide need-based aid as well as merit-based aid.
For instance, you may want to consider some of these private schools, many of which are smaller liberal arts colleges while some are more mid-sized:
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Clark (MA): About 2400 undergrads
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Ithaca (NY): About 4600 undergrads
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Drew (NJ): About 1500 undergrads
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U. of Scranton (PA ): About 3600 undergrads
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Allegheny (PA ): About 1400 undergrads
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Muhlenberg (PA ): About 1900 undergrads
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Hobart William Smith (NY): About 1600 undergrads
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Siena (NY): About 3500 undergrads
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Seton Hall (NJ): About 6k undergrads
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U. of the Pacific (CA): About 3300 undergrads
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U. of Redlands (CA): About 2300 undergrads
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it’s weighted with AP Classes.
For admissions purposes, some colleges are going to calculate your unweighted GPA in core courses only…what’s that? You can calculate that yourself on a 4 point scale where any A = 4 points, any B = 3 points and so on. Some students with a 3.4 weighted might have a sub 3.0 unweighted and that will change attainability/categorization of schools.
Did you calculate your CSU GPAs at the link gumbymom gave you?
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I know how it works, sent 5 to college, high schools weigh honors/AP’s/DE differently, so in order to compare apples to apples, unweighted helps (core academic classes, A - 4, B - 3, C - 3, D - 2, add up and divide by the number of classes).
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Keep in mind too, that U Maine is a whole system: there’s the flagship in Orono, but there’s also USM, U Maine Augusta, and several others. I would look through the whole system and perhaps apply to several.