Chance Me/Match Me: Senior needing realistic advice [GA resident, 4.469 W, 1280 SAT, B.Arch major]

It doesn’t appear that affordability has figured into the formulation of your list. I cannot remotely imagine that an out-of-state student with a projected “low” family contribution would have any path to making a school like UT-Austin work financially. You have a strong transcript, so maybe you could get in, but what’s the point? Who’s going to pay $70K/year for five years, for you to go there? Public universities don’t give need-based aid to out-of-state students. (The handful of exceptions to this statement do not have BArch programs.) If you apply to this list of schools, you will almost certainly end up at Kennesaw State. Not that this will be a bad outcome, but it means a lot of effort going to waste on applications to schools that aren’t going to work out unless they have large merit scholarships that you’re in contention for.

Echoing Machinations’ question: Have you already prepared a portfolio? Your grades and academic rigor could make you competitive even for programs that are difficult to get into, if you have a strong portfolio as well. (This means well-thought-out and meticulously presented, not just a strong assortment of raw material.) Your SAT is low for the most competitive schools, but you can apply test-optional to most (if your September score doesn’t make that unnecessary) so it’s the portfolio that’s really the crucial piece for schools that require it.

If you have those ducks in a row, then the question becomes, what schools are projected to be affordable if you get in? To begin with, try running the Net Price Calculator for Rice University. Rice is probably the most generous of the BArch schools, in terms of need-based aid. It’s very hard to get into, sure, but it’s a good starting point in terms of seeing whether any school exists that will give you enough need-based financial aid. Net Price Calculator

If Rice looks affordable, then try running the numbers for Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, University of Miami, Syracuse University, and Cooper Union (already mentioned above). How do your costs look for those? Try Tuskegee, since they do give need-based aid (although without a guarantee of meeting full need.) And if Tuskegee, why not Howard - see how your aid would look there. Try RPI and Drexel too; they might meet your need with a combination of merit and need aid.

But it all depends, not on what you can actually afford, but on what the financial aid formulae say you can afford based on your family’s financial profile. Start there. Once you’ve run the numbers, then you can assess the overlap between the set of schools you could afford if you got in, and the set of schools you have a decent shot at, admissions-wise (which comes back in part to the portfolio question).

However that assessment turns out, you do have one attainable in-state school which, given GA’s excellent in-state funding for strong students, should be affordable as well. At this point, that’s your default option, and then you build your list from there, with finances as the first filter.

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