R.E. Prairie View:
Award availability is limited and is awarded based upon admission date and competitiveness.
From University Scholarships - Office of Scholarship Services
Tuskegee is another option
Note that Tuskegee and Troy are HBCUs
Troy is not an HBCU. Itās an Alabama public that per the last CDS - was 53% white.
Iād compare it to schools like Marshall, Coastal Carolina, Ga Southern, W Carolina, etc
Prairie View is an HBCU.
In the end, OP has no money one can go for things like Stamps and will 99.9% chance strike out or can go for what appear to be sure things.
Itās kind of like - do you want to go to college or not. If you do, these are your choices.
Of course OP doesnāt have a test yet.
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Letās be real: OP is attending a competitive-entry STEM magnet in the DMV - sheās not attending Prairie View or Troy when she has better options nearby - colleges where the average SAT is about 1000-1100 vs one of the best community colleges in the country or excellent public universities - especially if all else fails and none of the MD public universities are affordable, they may attend Montgomery College with a merit scholarship or with a county grant. (As of now, OP qualifies for Montgomery collegeās Honors and the CC a definite safety.)
Just a few examples.
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And then where are they going year 3-4 for free.
What if OP says no to community college ?
I am being real.
How do we know what they qualify for - they are upper middle class - per the student.
They may not attend the free four year but then they are just kicking the can down the road two years.
And yes those free four years have costs - transportation etc.
The point being - itās providing a range of options - as are you. OP should know possible options.
Does med school and community college mix ? Itās possible but is it realistic ? Potentially another concern.
And we have no idea yet how OP will test.
We do - to get into that STEM magnet, OP had to be among the top 5% test takers, though with that GPA top 1% is more likely.
Youāre right that getting into one commutable 4-year college with free tuition may not be a certainty not to mention earning a Hail Mary full ride is a lottery but I simply canāt imagine this student travelling across the country to attend Troy or Prairie View.
Hopefully OP can return and provide details wrt financial situation and what colleges are commutable.
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Most OOs and private colleges accept based on region, not on particular school. Acceptance rates from magnet schools tend to be higher than from other high schools, since the AOs are more likely to have heard about these schools.
What possibly happens is that far fewer kids apply to these universities from non-magnet publics. So if a class of 700 has only 7 students applying to U Michigan, the fact that all 7 were rejected wonāt be a major point of discussion among students, and more importantly, parents. However, if 120 from a class of 600 were applying, the fact that only 20 were accepted would create the impression that U Michigan did not like accepting students from that magnet high school, especially if that stateās flagship was accepting 70% of the applicants from that magnet school. Since the students and parents are all talking about this acceptance rate, the impression becomes part of the school lore.
Also, people tend to make snap calculations, and often assume that "since 80% of my kidās friends (or my friendsā kids) are applying, that means that most of the graduating students from my kidās school are applying. For example, most of my kidās friends (and most of my friendsā kids who attended that high school) applied to the state flagship. I was, however, really surprised to find that only around 20%-25% of their graduating class actually applies to this university.
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My nephews all attended UMBC. 2 started at the CC and transferred in. Donāt know if they got the transfer scholarship but funds were probably a consideration for them.
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You are not correct. We have actual experience, not hypothetical one. I had a kid in the same magnet. Kids were heartbroken when out of 50 only 1 was accepted to Umich and 49 waitlisted. No college can accept kids only from the same magnet program. They indeed do it by region but when you have all top 50 kids from the same school, they take 1-2 from this school and then 1-2 from another etc.
For reference. SAT will not be a problem for this kid. Prediction is 1560 or higher. Kid will not be NMF due to very high cut off in our area.
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Do you mean to say that they are all HWCUs?
I mean to say they are in a similar realm - ie athletic conference / mid size regional, alternative schools to the flagships.
Most schools are historically white so no I was not making that comparison.
Maybe it was bad year for a particular school? Blair at Silver Spring does not have the college acceptance data from school profile, but this link showed some data Where do MoCo students attend college?āÆ
82 applied, 15 accepted and 6 enrolled, which is very good. Poolesville is not as good, but it is not known to be a STEM school.
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If you have a 4.0 GPA, and your parents arenāt contributing, you may want to apply to all of the scholarships you can get. That can make college affordable and minimize debt. Also, thereās absolutely nothing wrong with community college. Thatās basically free college for your first two years.
Prestige is a luxury not everyone can afford but that doesnāt disqualify you in the least for medical school. Youāll do great. Good luck!
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Interesting. Illinois Magnet schools do better. At least in 2023, IMSA had 13 acceptances, and they only had 198 graduating students. IMSA is very much a STEM magnet school.
According to Whitney Youngās profile page, at least three of their 2025 graduates will be attending U Michigan. That means that the number accepted was higher. The info is more difficult to get from other Magnet schools, but New Trier High School, a high school which serves a very wealthy community, and is also high performing, had 7 students from the class of 2024.
U Michigan doesnāt seem to be limiting acceptance of students at Illinois magnet and high achieving high schools to one or two. Maybe itās a Maryland thing.
Genuinely thanks to everyone for all advice and discussion. It took me a while to read all the posts and digest all the info. I read each comment carefully, and will take all of it into consideration!!
I tried again to ask about financial limits (such as an upper cap) and the conclusion was that my parents would decide later (probably summer before senior year), based on my academic performance and effort, how they would help. However, they also mentioned they believe the financial concerns of my education shouldnāt be my highest concerns (and that they would be responsible and would most likely not leave me with 0$, as I previously thought).
What Iāve learned/gained from this:
- PSAT, SAT scores are important and coming up, so Iāll study hard for those.
2. Unlike the general consensus of people in my school, lesser-known schools and state/community schools are not bad, and I will consider them more thouroughly. The name of the school matters less than how much I learn and achieve in the school.
3. There are opportunities to work in fields related to Biology/medicine without going to medical school. As said above, I canāt know 100% if I really will become a doctor. Maybe Iāll realize a passion for another career in college!
4. My parents do have hopes for me to āgo to a good collegeā, which has become less important to me through this feed, but from our discussions they will support me to an extent (e.g loan caps), because they are able to (if, again, they believed Iāve worked hard towards my goals).
Thanks again to all for the help. I will bookmark this page and make sure to come back after test scores. Very very grateful!!
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Much appreciated that you came back with such a lengthy reflection. 
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Best of luck to you . You seem very thoughtful and mature!
When you prep for the PSAT and SAT/ACT, I have found that it is best to use official practice materials as third-party prep-materials can often be too easy or too difficult. (Exception: A lot of people really like the free Khan academy prep materials).
Make sure to practice under timed conditions, as gaining mastery and speed is also important. Make sure to really understand the questions you missed. If you run out of time on a timed practice test, make note of how many are left and then go ahead and complete the test. You want to be able to distinguish between what content you donāt know and what content you just need to get better/faster at. As you gain mastery, you should find yourself being able to complete more and more of the practice test under the time constraints. (At least this was true in the paper-based testing world that my kids took. I know itās all moved to online and adaptive (meaning the questions get harder the better you do). But if you use paper-based testing materials, the above is a good methodology. Note that if you donāt have time to sit for a full timed practice test, you can always take timed sections. But do take at least one or two timed full-practice tests so you get used to the whole experience.
You can use SAT materials to prep for the PSAT, as its basically a more advanced version of the PSAT. As noted many times above, the PSAT can unlock merit scholarships, but the cutoff for attaining semi-finalist and finalist status is state-dependent and others have posted that Maryland has a very high cutoff. So definitely prepare, but be aware that it is much more challenging to obtain for a student from MD (and CA, NJ etc) than for a student from most other states.
Once you finish prepping for the PSAT, you can decide if you prefer the SAT or ACT for that testing component. They are similar but different and some students prefer one over the other. Note that the ACT science section isnāt really a science section ā it is much more a data interpretation section. Familiarity with this will really help ā you will get much better at this as you do more of them. Make sure if you decide on the ACT to prep a number of science sections, as you want pre-exposure to the various types of charts and graphs and data presentation that they use.
Youāve got this!
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Adding on that if you donāt get national merit status but did score high, make sure your parents understand about the cutoffs in different states and donāt use that as evidence that you arenāt working hard enough.
Also you should be able to get official practice tests from the official sat/psat sites and act sites. You be can also purchase them from Amazon in book form, although they may be older tests. Make sure they say āofficialā.
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