Help me with some matches?

College Search & Lists
1

<p>Hello all, thank you for taking the time to help me. I’m applying to college this year but I need some help narrowing down the field. I hope someone can recommend a few schools to me.</p>

<p>I am looking for a strong program in the sciences (biology) with hopefully some a good internship program or study abroad opportunities. I would prefer a smaller school with a campus feel that is not in the middle of a huge city like new york. I live in California and I do not want to go in state or to the UC system! </p>

<p>Unfortunately I will be needing significant financial aid so it is important that I be able to get a good package for demonstrated need and that the school is private. For merit aid purposes I have a 3.68 and 32 ACT. I took the SAT subject tests but I don’t have the scores yet.</p>

2

<p>

Do you know if your family will actually qualify for financial aid or are they really middle class? If you are needy you can look at this list of schools that meet need: [Need-blind</a> admission - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need-blind_admission]Need-blind”>Need-blind admission - Wikipedia) If you are middle class you really need to look for merit aid. Here is a thread with some options: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/1348012-automatic-full-tuition-full-ride-scholarships.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>I will qualify for aid. Thank you for the list i will take a look</p>

4

<p>muhlenberg college
a must for you to check out!</p>

5

<p>With a 3.68 and 32 ACT, I think he can do better than Muhlenberg College.</p>

6

<p>This is the kind of post that it is hard to answer. There are LOTS of schools with good biology departments/internships/study abroad programs. Almost any top 100 school meets this criteria. Is the quoted GPA unweighted?</p>

<p>In addition to using the info on finding need-blind schools and merit awards, a good college search engine can help find other options, especially if there are other criteria the student can use to narrow down the search. CC’s SuperMatch lets you put in your GPA and test scores (and tons of other factors) and then ranks the results based on how good the “fit” is.
I also like College Navigator [College</a> Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/]College”>College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics) because you can download the results into a speadsheet. You can use selectivity factors and SAT/ACT ranges to filter out super selective or not selective enough schools.</p>

7

<p>Informative - I agree with you, some people think *their *favorite school is the answer to every question posed :wink:
I does help build brand awareness for less well-known or overlooked schools though.</p>

8

<p>informative…“do better?” you mean playing the us news and world report number game? as opposed to all around student happiness, quality and learning experience.
many students at harvard would have been better served going to muhlenberg or a school like it. (i.e. rollins college, kalamazoo college,rhodes college etc…)</p>

9

<p>That 3.68 is unweighted total. Of course the various different calculations go in their own weird directions. My GPA excluding freshman year is 3.92 but I don’t think that’s counted except in the UC system so I never include it.
I’ve been using those college systems like the College Navigator but I wanted some personal experience that people had at schools. I guess if I had to nail it down I want to go on the east coast at a school that is pretty diverse and doesn’t have a huge greek scene. The rankings aren’t really important to me but I don’t want to go to a school known more for its partying than its academics.</p>