Sadly my school doesnt offer the RPI medal, so that may be out of the running. And I was asking for aid for Biola in merit scholarships and such, as may parents will generally pay more for a higher ranked school.
I’ll remove it.
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Perhaps (and I don’t know how it works) you can contact RPI to ask how to get a school added?
Anyway, you have Arizona at #5 (as I said, top 10 on several rankings) and in today’s world, you’ll get $30K off. I can’t tell you if merit changes next year.
So you have a safety net - if it’s say $25K a year vs. others on your list which full pay (they don’t have merit, just need aid) near 4x that.
Your parents will get an economics lesson very quickly.
Tons of schools offer merit - tons.
Drop Biola…it’s not for you - as you’re not very religious.
As of now, I know theyd be fine sending me to UCSC without merit scholarships for the instate tuition, or for that matter any UC. However, I think they stated that anything at top schools like ivies or private like stanford and northwestern - but not as much for something like rice or usc. And thank you for the clarification, sorry about that.
Thanks for the advice on Biola. Ill try contacting RPI, as they do have the medal for other schools in my district.
I would get clarification from your parents on this, because schools like Rice and USC (if talking Southern California) are considered top schools.
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I agree to figure out what you like (and how many schools you want to apply to), but if you have UofA, ASU, and UCSC, you don’t need to add CSUs unless you want to. If you like any particular Cal States or want to include the Cal Polys, that’s likely to give you options, but with an UW UC GPA of 4.0, I’d be really surprised if you didn’t get in to some of your “reach” UCs (maybe all, I have no solid guess and grades aren’t the whole story, but some).
And none of these will be in budget if they can only pay $50k per year.
Instead of a generic list of elite schools, do they also care about schools that are considered top schools for astrophysics? There is no one way to define “top schools” for any major, and rankings should not be the main criteria, but if that’s how your parents are approaching this, take a look at the list @tsbna44 posted above.
Which of these schools would they be willing to pay for?
And how much will they pay for non California schools that they don’t consider as “highly ranked”? Or are they saying they wouldn’t pay for those at all?
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University of Arizona currently lists a $30k per year scholarship for 3.90-3.999 HS GPA. List price is $63k in campus housing (common in 1st year), $59k in off-campus housing (common for 2nd year and later), so net price would be $29-33k per year (or a bit higher from college cost inflation) if the same scholarship is available when you apply.
https://financialaid.arizona.edu/types-of-aid/scholarships/incoming-first-year-transfer
https://financialaid.arizona.edu/cost/incoming
Arizona State University has a scholarship estimator that currently lists a $16.5k scholarship for your stats on the main Tempe campus, for a net price of $35k.
https://scholarships.asu.edu/estimator
There is also a National Scholar (NMF or CBNRP) award, but it is currently the same $16.5k amount that replaces other scholarships. Do you have any such PSAT-based status?
https://yourfuture.asu.edu/national-scholar
Are the net prices listed above acceptable to your parents? However, be aware that list prices and scholarship amounts may change next year.
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It would be helpful for OP to ask his parents and let us know here how much they would be willing to pay for “non high ranking” colleges, especially those outside CA.
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The AZ colleges had 4K in transport and miscellaneous built in.
I think this goes back to the - high ranking for the major - U of A is often top 10, #5 in the link i put above.
The CA colleges can be great - but have the risk of rejection where the AZ colleges don’t - so that should be factored in too.
For example, UCLA or UCSC or CP SLO, etc. are the #1 choices (if they are) but if I don’t get in, etc.
OP should look through all lenses.
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If you’re covering the reach-school bases as delineated by your current list, I’d include Pomona too. Also excellent for physics, and you can take Harvey Mudd classes as a Pomona student, and vice versa. Mudd is Claremont Colleges physics with a Caltech-like core curriculum, and Pomona is Claremont Colleges physics with a Stanford-like curriculum. Your list says to me that you could be happy with either.
I agree that if you have top-notch backups like the Arizona publics, and you have the CA publics, then you might as well shoot the moon with the rest of your list, at schools with generous aid and super-strong programs.
There’s also Reed, in Portland, as a very strong physics school (makes every list for sending grads to physics PhD programs) that meets need. It’s a very different vibe from others on your list (no more of an outlier than Biola was, but in a completely different direction!) and it’s not extremely astro-heavy, but it could be worth a look just to rule it in or out.
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Alright, ill try narrowing it down to cal polys. Thanks for the advice!
I think theyd be willing to pay for something like penn state which is on there, and maybe umd and osu. Are these schools around that 50k yearly coa?
Yes, they would be willing to pay those prices. I do not have any psat awards regretfully.
Thanks for the recommendation on pomona, but I’ve recently been wondering how good it would be to go to a top LAC when pursuing a PhD in physics. How would I go about getting research opportunities there?
I’d suggest touring both Pomona and Mudd, and making contacts in the Physics departments to ask about research. But these schools (Reed too) routinely send many physics students to PhD programs, relative to their size. There’s a fair amount of info about research on the website:
Pomona physics students are also well-represented among those winning major awards like the Apker Award, and NSF Fellowships.
It’s okay if you have a preference for a research university, but I don’t think you’d have to worry about feeling limited at the 5C’s.
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You have quite a good list of Astronomy and Astrophysics schools. Without cost considerations I would change it slightly to these:
UofA, UW, UCSC, UCSB, UCSD, UCLA, UCB, UNC, JHU, UV, PennState, U Chicago, Caltech, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford.
If you are interested in doing some hands-on observational astronomy, UCLA, UCB, UCSC, Caltech, and UofA would all be good. If you are most interested in theory, any of the schools above are good.
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Penn State this year is $53K for tuition, room and board. Hard to get to. Merit highly unlikely.
UMD - $60K, unlikely to get merit but better odds than PSU.
OSU - can get to the price. It’s massive both population and size - if you like that?
but again, why over cheaper and since you’re into rank, higher ranked Arizona. PSU might be the best of those three - why - it’s a leading school in atmospheric sciences which you might have interest in as well.
Ok this makes me feel alot better abou the claremont colleges. Thank you!
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