College Suggestions

BurningIce
Fri, 05 Oct 2012 05:12:38 +0000

I am a US citizen currently schooling in Asia, and I will be applying to colleges in a few years time. We fly over once 3-4 years, and for next year’s trip, I figured that maybe we should start preliminary college visits since I may not visit again.

I go to one of the best schools in the country that has one of the highest Ivy admissions rate outside the US. Hence, for a kid here, it is probably a no brainer our list would consist of Ivies, a couple of comparable schools, with local public universities as a safety schools. However, after a brief browse through this forum I have started worrying about the financial aspect of it.

Usually local pupils will obtain government scholarships, but my problem is that I am not a citizen, and neither I nor my parents would like to convert due to family and other issues, and there is a bond to the scholarships. However, having lived overseas most of my life I have no domicile residency in any state, meaning no in-state tuition for me. My parents have an income that is too high to qualify for need-based financial aid.

My parents are willing to pay for college fees, high as they are. However, we are not exactly rich, as my parents worked for many years in China and that money due to inflation now amounts to nothing. We also support grandparents and other relatives, and their paying will mean that they have to sell the house and live in a smaller apartment in retirement, and other things. I don’t think this is fair to them after all that hard work.

The option of lower tier schools offering high amounts of OOS merit aid is possible, but due to the environment I have been brought up in it is not very socially acceptable to go to a school that no one has heard of. Furthermore, my parents would not want me to go to a lower tier school just because of money, and if they are not happy about the arrangement then such sacrifices defeat the whole point.

I am looking at schools such as some Ivies, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Barnard, William and Mary, which are all pricey schools. Hence, I was wondering if anyone could suggest any schools I should look at that are rather competitive, but would offer decent merit aid for stats within the Ivy range? It does not have to be a specific list, just some suggestions that I may look at for our itinerary during the trip. I have not really thought about college and the type of school I would like, I had wanted this visit to start me thinking and exploring the different environments. I’m not very hopeful about this, because after all nobody owes me a free college experience, but I wanted to ask just in case. Also, if there are other financial aid suggestions - including scholarships and other things, that would be great seeing many US scholarships don’t apply to locals here and thus I am not familiar, but I would probably only start worrying about those a few years down the road.

Or maybe I’m thinking too much, and too far? I’m not going to be doing anything just for college, or worry about college too much yet, but I thought that it would be a good idea to do an early college visit since we’re going to the US anyway.