Okay, I went looking for schools where there seemed to be a bit higher chances of admission (i.e. not 3%) that also tended to be pretty generous in how they define need. If you go on College Navigator (the feds’ website) and look under net price, it will show what families end up paying to attend the school, grouped by various income brackets. There are schools that might have a $4k net price for families earning less than $30k while another school might have the net price of $17k. Same family, same information, different calculation to meet the family’s need.
Additionally, even if affirmative action does go away, you are still free to discuss your ethnicity. For instance, if being Jamaican or Haitian or a different Caribbean ethnicity has influenced you, you can mention that in your essays.
So, here are some schools that remain tough admits, but are not quite as difficult. For each school I will list the net price for families earning less than $30k and then between $30-48k. For incomes above this, the data is available on College Navigator.
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Georgetown (D.C.): $596, $3182
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Washington & Lee (VA): $769, $743. Also W&L has been trying to attract more minority students.
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Bates (ME): $4735, $5268
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Hamilton (NY): $7555, $8702
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Mount Holyoke (MA): Women’s college; $7687, $11,140
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Trinity (CT): $8252, $10,965
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Union (NY): $10,627, $17,999
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Vassar (NY): $10,697, $14,383
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Colgate (NY): $10,923, $14,024
A couple schools who have much more approachable admissions rates that would seem to offer generous need-based aid to accepted students include:
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Drew (NJ): $8914, $9717
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Lycoming (PA ): Not as generous, but again, a much likelier get. $12,700, $12,679.
Also, check the calculators/net price for the New Jersey publics, too,. When I was looking on there, there was definitely a range that could be quite significant in comparison to your EFC. Do you live within commuting distance of a New Jersey public?
And yes, you should definitely look into Questbridge.