Help me, an average student, choose

albo23
Sun, 11 Apr 2010 15:14:55 +0000

I’m going to be in the class of '15 and I have a lot of decision make. I’m an above average student but I have a lot of financial need.

My parents cannot take out any loans and cannot pay for any of my tuition. I’m also not smart enough to make get full rides to any local colleges. I have a 3.5 GPA, 26 ACT, top 20th% in my class. I am also Student Council President.

Literally, the only colleges I can get into are the ones with no-loan financial aid. I narrowed them down to:

Amherst, Bowdoin, Brown, Claremont, Colby, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Davidson, Emory, Harvard, Lafayette, Lehigh, MIT, Northwestern, Chicago, Penn, Pomona, Princeton, Rice, Swarthmore, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Washington & Lee, Washington U in St. Louis, Wellesley, Yale, Middlebury, Grinnell, UNC, Texas A&M, Stanford…

These are all ridiculously good colleges. I am clearly not a ridiculously good student.

When I look at them on collegeboard.com most of their student population were in the top 10th of their class. Do I have a legit chance at any of these?