We are looking for a good academic school with music as well. My kid likes English, philosophy, History, and plays in a marching and a concert band. Also plays bagpipes. Has a 4.0 GPA and a 32 on the ACT, where should we be looking?
Macalester for the bagpipes. 
St. Olaf, Lawrence.
College of Wooster also has bagpipes!
^ My first thought - CoW.
One question to ask yourself is how big a deal you want the music to be. Do you want a bunch of music majors around? Do you want the school to offer a Bachelor of Music degree? There’s quite a number of schools with strong music departments and very strong academics where a kid with your S’s stats would be comfortably in the heart of the distribution of fellow students. There are fewer that have serious conservatories or schools of music that are also highly selective academically. Check out this recent thread for some of both: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19332593/#Comment_19332593
Does he want to participate in marching band in college ?USC has one of the best marching bands in the country s well as the highly acclaimed Thorton school of music.
If so, USC deserves a look.
at this point, definitely looking for Academics with music as the secondary, not a degree in music
there are hundreds of great colleges where he could get a degree in any of those subjects.
What grade is he in?
Is money an issue? Can you afford $60-80000/ year total to send him to a private college?
If Money is an issue-
Did he take the PSAT and if so does his score qualify him for NMSF in his state?
Does he have any geographic preferences?
Does he have a good instate public college option?
She is in 11th grade,
we are in California,
She is taking the new SAT on Saturday, got a 1380 on first new PSAT out of 1600
no geographic preference
not sure about $$ yet, hoping on somekind of scholarship
You need to calculate exactly how much money you actually CAN afford to spend, without scholarships. Now is the time, not after she has applied to colleges.
Run the Net Price Calculators at various colleges to see how much you they actually EXPECT you to pay. And how much of it would be in “loans” , which are not free money and must be paid back.
When kids come to CC for the same kind of advise, we tell them to have the “money talk” with their parents FIRST, so they do not apply to colleges that their family cant afford to send them. You need to figure out what you can afford first. Thats what the NPC’s are for, though a word of caution, they are NOT as accurate if you are self employed.
Her PSAT score is too low to qualify her for National Merit, so that eliminates many scholarships offered by a lot of lower ranked colleges, unfortunately.
Yes, the net price calculator on each college website (usually on the “afford” or financial aid page) is something you need to do at each college. A few notes on it:
- Not very accurate for parents who are divorced, have a small business, own rental property, or have trusts. It will show you getting more aid than you will really get.
- Many of them do not show possible merit aid, unless the merit is automatic (awarded because of stats, usually test score and GPA).
- You can tell something about merit awards by Googling the school name and “Common Data Set”. Look for the total number of students who get non-need based aid and the average amount. Does your kid’s test scores fall in that percentile? Say 10% of kids get non-need based aid, is are your kids’ test scores in the top 10% for that school? It is a rough way to gauge it, but at least gives you an idea if they are in the ballpark for merit and the average amount given. You can also carefully read the school website on scholarships, but they are pretty cagey sometimes about amount given and number of students who get them.
Agree that you need to do that very hard calculation of what you can really afford. What do you have in savings, divided over four years, for this kid (don’t know if you have others, but you can’t short change them)? What do you think you can pay out of current income? Can your kid earn some (summer and part time work at school, most kids can come up with at least $4,000 per year of their own)? Are you willing to allow your kid to take out federal loans ($5,500 per year freshman year, increases a little each year after that)? Are you willing to take out additional loans (really not recommended out here most of the time – better to find a school that fits your budget)? It is heartbreaking for everyone when kids apply to schools that they can’t afford, much better to do this now and lay out her limitations now.
The good news is that with a 4.0 and a 32, there are a lot of terrific schools that will give your D significant merit awards, even if you do not qualify for need-based aid, but it is helpful to determine relatively early on in the process whether or not you want to be targeting those schools, because it will impact your search in a material way.
Also, apologies for mis-assigning the gender of your kid in my first post. I think I misread “has” as “his”.
Notre Dame has a large marching band, a concert band, a bagpipe band, and great academics. You would need to research if your D might get merit aid there.
For humanities and music, but not in all cases marching bands and bagpipes, these schools would offer her a range of options:
Boston College
UC-Berkeley
UCLA
Colgate
Cornell
Hamilton
Holy Cross
Kenyon
The University of Rochester
Southern Methodist
Excellent need-based financial aid, merit scholarships, or both, are available at most or all of these schools.
Will you need “need based financial aid” (your family makes less than 150K a year) or “merit aid”, or a combination of both?
Run the NPC on St Olaf (very strong academically and musically), Wooster (special bagpipe scholarship!), Notre Dame, Agnes Scott. The results are likely to be very different.
An ACT 32 will result in full tuition scholarships at many colleges.