@thaliorodrin, think about adding a truer safety and see how WI turns out. Yes, qualify the colleges for affordability and etc. Do this due diligence.
If someone predicts correctly, re: any college, you’ll find out later. If not, better to have another option in your pocket, no?
It’s at least one more app, but you’re a junior, with time to complete your assessment, learn about institutional factors and what the competition is.
Dream, Just Right and No Problem - have always been my terms.
When my colleague coined that phrase 25 years ago (I feel old), the safety and financial safety were two different colleges. I still do it that same way. I will leave the financial safety to the people who want to focus on that.
The reason safety schools have always been 95%ers is because you need to have 2. Then, the math works well.
= 99.75% (if considered as independent events)
Note that the inclusion of other schools, including realistic reaches, will increase the probability of gaining one acceptance even beyond that stated above.
However, college admission decisions are not fully independent events, since two colleges can consider some of the same applicant attributes.
Please focus on the OP and move on from defining safeties.
I would like to focus on the OP and say that Wisconsin and Reed are not common overlap schools. Therefore, those two schools should be fine for the candidate as safer. Financial safety would not be something I can comment on.
Thank you for all the information! Figuring out how this admission process is very confusing, especially when you’re in another country and have no one to talk to about it, so I may seem very uninformed about all this. I haven’t yet taken the time to run the hard numbers beyond a superficial level yet, mainly because fafsa for 2022-23 hasn’t come out, but going forward I’ll be sure to look at the NPCs before choosing safeties. In the country I am in now, we are (reasonably) well off, but factoring exchange rates, that could mean something very different for US standards. In general are state schools like UW Madison/UMich lenient with merit scholarships for OOS students?
State universities will generally be less expensive for an in-state resident compared to an out-of-state resident if the students have similar credentials used for merit scholarships and similar family finances used for need-based financial aid.
Since you are a high school junior, you do have some time to talk to your parents and run net price calculators before deciding on your application list. You do not want to be in a position of being financially shut out because all of your admission offers are to universities that are too expensive.
This resource offers an especially convenient alternative to NPCs:
It varies significantly by state university - some offer significant OOS merit while others offer little. Some that offer significant merit offer automatic amounts based on GPA and test scores, while others the amounts are more fluid. Therefore, you will need to do some research.
My recommendation would be to research which state universities have respectable programs in your area of interest and then figure out which offer automatic merit or history of high merit for your stats. For example, Arizona State has a respected engineering college and a chart of scholarship amounts based on stats. UofSC has a respectable business school, especially for International Business (#1 in US) and offers a number of OOS in-state tuition equivalent (and a few above that) or at least tuition reduction.
Off the top of my head others with generous merit include University of Arizona, University of Alabama, University of Tennessee, West Virginia University. Also, OOS tuition at Florida universities tends to be reasonable overall.
Utah has a strong math program and would be a true safety. They also offer merit and as a US citizen you’d be able to qualify for instate tuition after the first year. If you are considering some of the state flagships mentioned above then I would take a look.
You might want to correct this so that replies to your topic will be better informed.
This scares me to death! Very high stats DS, NMF and 1570 SAT, but we applied to Alabama just in case, so at least we know he’s going to college. Really hoping for presidential at UF or FSU though.
Oops, that was supposed to be a 760 for eng. Can’t edit it now for some reason
Many people define a safety as a school where there’s 100% chance of getting in and it being affordable. We didn’t go that route and I admit it’s a little risky but worked out both times. We depended on Naviance and our GC’s advice that our kids would be accepted to their safe schools.
Our S19 used Dickinson, Grinnell, and Kenyon as “safeties”. Our D21 used Denver, SCU, and LMU as “safeties”. We are full pay but felt sure that our kids would get merit at all of these schools and they did. Not everyone has to apply to an auto-admit type school.
That being said, notice that our kids did not just have one school in this category. If something wacky happened, they still had other schools where we felt their chances were close to 100%.
So maybe some good advice is to find one or two other schools to add to your list since UW can be oddly tricky sometimes and Reed considers fit in a big way. If you like UW, I’m sure you can find other big state schools to add.
And, no, UW and Michigan hardly give any merit. You can pretty much count on getting none. You’ve chosen two state schools that are expensive and give very very few kids any merit. Michigan is upwards of $70k per year and UW is a little over $50k full price.
With respect to refining your choices in general, you may want to access a print copy of Princeton Review’s college guide, which provides a sampling, “Great Schools for Mathematics Majors.” From your posted list, Reed and Rice are included, as are colleges such as Harvey Mudd, MIT, UChicago, Caltech, Harvard, Brown, CMU, Pomona, Haverford, Amherst, Hamilton, Williams, Bowdoin and Carleton. Schools with somewhat more accommodating acceptance rates, such as Grinnell, URochester, Macalester and St. Olaf, also appear.
Regarding your overall prospects, with well-crafted applications to seven or eight highly-researched colleges, you should feel confident you will have the opportunity to study in the U.S.
Neither UWisconsin nor UMich will give Merit Scholarships for stats, since theyhave plenty of high stats students. (Merit Scholarships aim at attracting high stats students who wouldn’t consider the college or poaching them from even more famous universities).
UMich does offer need based aid for OOS families making less than 90k.
UWisconsin has few merit awards, most of which are for applicants that represent institutional priorities. Don’t count on them.
It sounds like your family wouldnt have 60k for college (to be fair, few families do). As a result, you really need to start with NPCs.
Filing the FAFSA is free. You can get waivers for CSS.
You can run Fafsa forecaster and have an idea whether you qualify for Pell or subsidized loans.
Run the NPC on St Olaf. Very good for math, meets need, but need aware.
There are also schools that will waive the application fee for demonstrating interest or for submitting on a specific day.