I’m a high school senior, and I’ve been looking at which colleges I want to apply to. It isn’t important for me to be in the “majority” of students as far as opinion goes, but what schools would a socially liberal, fiscally conservative libertarian leaning person feel comfortable at? I want to go somewhere with a diverse, middle of the road environment where I can really challenge myself intellectually. I’ll post my stats below so you can suggest schools in my range.
GPA: 3.65 (Estimate, it’ll fall somewhere in the 3.6-3.7 area)
7 AP classes
ACT: 30 (R: 34 E: 32 S: 28 M: 24)
SAT (CR+M): 1290 (CR: 660 M: 630)
Two highly involved marketing internships that involved me creating and executing marketing campaigns on my own
Participated in Men’s Chorus and Baseball
Good amount of volunteer hours (organizing community garage sales for charity, volunteering at the local courthouse and library)
Worked part-time on and off throughout high school, averaged about 25 hours a week
I plan on taking the ACT and SAT again. I know my ECs are lacking, but I got really involved and invested in the things I did do. I plan on majoring either in something business related or something like International Relations.
I live in Texas. My family makes around $150,000 a year, and I’m willing to take out loans. I’d be fine with staying in Texas, but I also wouldn’t mind trying somewhere new and different.
Okay tips, first you don’t give any criteria for a school. Only for student body you would fit and vast majority of schools are liberal, vast majority of student aren’t thinking about fiscal issues except maybe in DC. Ok you gave a tip about majors but I would look at a different set of schools for business than for IR maybe. Maybe think of usual suspects for each and look for overlap. Maybe you will like DC area schools. Have you flipped through a Fiske Guide or some such to try to get a feels for what is appealing? This is a bit late in the game to just be learning about hundreds of schools but it can be done.
Second you as a student can only borrow about 5 to 7k per year so that idea isn’t going to work as far as covering the majority of costs. And if your parents would actually borrow it for you in their name, then the debt is going to be too heavy for a new grad to cover and they will have to pay it. So I recommend that you put pricing right in there in the place of honor it will hold in the search. And by price I mean price to you, not sticker price.
I’ve talked to my parents about it, and they’re willing to pay roughly $20K per year and take out loans to cover whatever excess there is. I know most colleges are liberal, but I guess I was trying to say I’d rather be somewhere that tends to lean more towards the middle, opposed to a place like Brown which is known for being very liberal. That’s not the most important thing to me, but if I could find it that would be nice. I’m willing to go to school in any part of the country, so long as the school is located in a big city (500,000+ people). I don’t know what the Fiske Guide is, but I’ll look it up and check it out. Btw, thanks for the DC tip! DC is one of the cities I had been looking at, along with New York, Atlanta, Boston, Miami and Seattle.
Are they willing to cover 40K/year in “excess” cost via a loan? I think you need to have a thorough discussion about money with them if you are considering colleges where you are not in the tier receiving merit aid. Run the net price calculators for colleges at various levels of admissions difficulty with your parents and have a discussion about costs and exactly how much they are willing to take out in loans. Then, target colleges where the estimated costs align with your parents willingness to pay.
Well, I ran that estimated contribution calculator and it said they’d need to contribute $22K or so and the rest could be covered through various loans which they’d pay back. My dad is an accountant so he obviously knows about that kind of stuff much better than I do (I know I’m not explaining it well, I hope you guys know what I’m trying to say) and he said if that’s the route I wanted to go, I could. I’m still considering in-state schools and cheaper out of state schools, but I figured I’d at least check everything out before making a decision on what to do.