University of Seattle gives decent merit scholarships - we know a handful of kids admitted in past few years. That could cut costs. Won’t know until after acceptance what they will offer you but can look online at their scholarships and also do the net price calculator. Good luck
My thoughts (of which I’ve had this conversation with 2 kids):
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Follow the money
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Many kids think they can go far away or like the concept but many aren’t ready. I told my kids “Be sure you can be far away from your family because I will not be flying you across the country every time you get homesick.”
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Wanting and having are two different things. Meaning, desiring to go to Seattle is often far better than actually being in Seattle.
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My kids must convince me that they are sticking with their major (which OP has already changed), can make a living and pay back any loans for the outrageous price they’re going to pay, and that the ROI has played into the decision.
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Again, follow the money. It’s undergrad education.
Good luck, OP!
There are a number of colleges on the east coast that offer marine biology courses. The kid wouldn’t have to go to Seattle to do that.
again…if the OP clarifies this special special major, perhaps folks can make suggestions in terms of colleges that are closer to home, and not more costly than University of New Haven.
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chool I have shown interest in has been relatively close to home. Recently, I switched the major that I want to pursue and learned that very few schools offer
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what is this new major and career goal?
Lots of careers can be had thru various different routes and majors.
How much will you likely be earning as a new grad in this major/career goal??
Are you still in high school and just changing what you think you’d like to major in? Or are you at a college and now changing majors?
Your parents are fine with UNewHaven which is very expensive. Are they expecting to take out mega-huge co-signed loans that you’ll have to pay back? That’s a VERY bad idea…very bad.
How much will you be borrowing each year?
I don’t think it is fair to judge the OP for ‘changing’ her major. She might have just narrowed a broader interest, from biology to marine biology or goverment to urban planning A 16 year old who starts looking at colleges and careers can certainly find programs that they think are just perfect, anD in fact nevery knew such a program existed until she found it at Super Selective U, or at Far Away U. That’s the purpose of a college search, and that’s the whole point of college marketing. My daughter had no idea that she wanted to major in engineering until we’d looked at half a dozen schools. I didn’t consider that changing her major, but focusing. I don’t think a school should be chosen for one program because not only do 16 year olds change their minds, so do 19 and 20 year olds so the school should have options.
Being outside the preferred zone is a big factor. I just learned of yet another kid who went OOS to college but transferred ‘home’ to the state flagship within a year. She went to Portland (either Reed or Lewis and Clark) and said all the other students just smoked pot and she didn’t like it. She wanted an environment more familiar, even if that meant a school with 25,000 students and not 2500. I know at least a dozen students who have done the same thing, picked a school far from home for something (an academic program, prestige, athletics) and they transferred within a year. Cost is rarely the reason for the transfer, its usully that they didn’t like being away from home.
@blossom is right UNH is notorious for graduating kids with high debt. I’m not sure what the attraction would be for UNH except marine bio.
For that kind of money and those stats, there’s –
University of Maine Orono (the flagship school) which is offering tuition at your in-state price. It has Marine Science. Maine is a gorgeous state and you can’t beat the offer of tuition matching!
http://www.umaine.edu/marine/programs/undergraduate-programs.php
https://go.umaine.edu/apply/scholarships/flagship-match/
There are many many schools with Marine bio or Marine science that are also near Connecticut: UConn, Rhode Island, New Hampshire schools.
Try using the super match option on this site.
I think you can do much much better than UNH for less money and greater college experience.
I was not criticizing the OP for considering other majors. My point is…if he or she is doing this how…what would prevent them from finding something even more interesting once on college? OR deciding that the current choice just isn’t what they thought it was going to be?
If it’s Marine Biology…there are plenty of schools in the same time zone that offer this major.
I’m not going to speculate on the OP’s major, but Seattle University (NOT University of Seattle) is very well respected. It’s a 100+ year old Jesuit school which is highly ranked as a best value college for for undergrad and graduate school by the US News. We know several students who have chosen it over other “more prestigious” schools, in part because of the great merit aid. It’s also a school that focuses heavily on community service, so perhaps the OP’s major employs a strong community service component whereas her other choice does not.
It always strikes me when parents here tell a student poster something doesn’t make sense if it’s not a school THEY don’t know much about. A friend of mine is an education professional and deeply involved in finding the best options for higher education for all types of students. She is sending her D there. I consider that a very strong endorsement.
Thank you @sseamom Seattle university is what I meant.
@sam9919 OK, if you want to convince your parents to support you, you need to do the following:
Ask them what they are willing to pay annually and if that’s a gift to you or there is an expectation that you will repay some or all of the money. What kind of loans are they envisioning? Is your family low income enough to qualify for Pell grants or other forms of need-based aid? I’m not asking you to disclose specifics on a public forum but you need to have a frank conversation with them about financial constraints.
Sit down with them and run the NPCs (net price calculators) to see if either UNH or Seattle U fits within budget.
Saddling yourself with massive amounts of undergraduate debt is a really bad idea. If neither of those schools works financially, then you need to find a place that is affordable for your family.
If Seattle U offers merit scholarships for which you might be eligible, sit down with your folks and share that information. Maybe they will relent. If they refuse outright to pay for a school that is so far away, then you will need to work within their guidelines because you will not be able to afford school on your own unless your family’s EFC is zero and the schools to which you are applying guarantee to meet full need of those that are accepted.
What is this mystery major? Maybe there are other options that would be both affordable and acceptable to you and your parents.
If they aren’t going to pay anything, look at schools that have full tuition awards for merit. If you have strong GPA/test scores, you may be eligible for some of these. Do check each school’s website individually as criteria may change from year to year.
@sam9919, My daughter went from SO CAL to Buffalo NY, but she had a plan. More on that later.
This is not gonna happen. You’re not being realistic. You, yourself, cannot get this kind of loan. You get a grand total of $5500 per year. That’s it. $2750 per semester. WHere is the rest coming from?
I don’t think you realize how much money $50k is (x4!)
I made my children work. After they all worked “good paying” union jobs in the summer, they complained about how many hours they had worked just to earn a couple of thousand dollars over the summer. Your parents would have to take out huge PARENT Plus loans. That’s only if they were to qualify. Did you know that some of these loans require immediate payback while you’re going to school?
Really SEATTLE? Have you even visited Seattle? Every time we’ve gone there it’s rained. It gets LOTS of rain. Summer’s are okay, but you wouldn’t be there in the summer, would you?
If you’re planning on majoring in marine biology, have you checked the job pay and stats for that? http://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/zoologists-and-wildlife-biologists.htm
Let’s just say that some grads work other jobs to make their rent. (My colleague went back to school for a second masters degree because her degree in MB didn’t give her a livable wage).
DD’s PLAN:
Dd started off majoring in bio because she thought she wanted to be a physician.
So she applied to schools all over the place that would give her free money for her stats, AND with a path to med school, AND on the path of a Southwest AIrlines route.
One of those schools was SUNY Buffalo. She also let us know that she wanted to “get away from us and sunny southern Cal” and explore other areas of the country.
Because she found her own funding, and did her research, and because she had always been a very level headed student, we let her go to a place where she didn’t know a soul. She changed majors to engineering and graduated from UB.
I suggest you apply to Seattle. You might not get in. You might not get any funding. Since you’ve really thought it through, without parent support, maybe you can figure out how a lender will give you at least $200k. FYI: lenders do not lend large amounts of cash without collateral: home, or other property.
Now, if you pitch a fit, guess what? They are not obligated in any way to fund, pay for, or support your costs for ANY college. There is no LAW, that says they have to fund you. There are a number of students, here on CC, whose parents have done or are doing just that. Now they can’t go to or finish college because their parents won’t pay.
Well first off, thank you to everyone who has responded. From reading the comments, I can see that there was some confusion in my post so let me try to clarify a few things:
1.) Yes, I did switch the major that I want to pursue. Since the start of 7th grade, up until half way through my junior year in high school, I intended on going to school for Forensic Science, which is available at the vast majority of schools across the country and even around me. After realizing that I would have to pick a concentration in either Chemistry or Biology (neither of them being my strong suit), I decided to change my major to Forensic Psychology and Behavioral Analysis. As far as I have found (and my high school guidance officer) no undergrad school offers that as a specific stand alone major, but only as a concentration under a criminal justice degree. Even then, the number of schools that offer it only run in the single digits (again, what my guidance counsellor and I have both found).
Two of these schools happen to be New Haven and Seattle University, while a few of the others are online schools, which I would not be interested in.
2.) Due to fairly good grades, at SU I am eligible for around 20,000 dollars of merit scholarships (I’m planning on taking the ACT’s again in September and hope that the score I get will raise that up a bit). I have also started looking around for outside scholarships and grants through an app called Scholly.
3.) Yes, both schools are extremely expensive, but like mentioned above, I should be able to pull a solid scholarship. My parents are fully aware that New Haven is only a few thousand short of Seattle’s tuition. I also have talked to them about myself being responsible for paying for travel and shipping costs as I have had a job since I was legally allowed to.
4.) No, I never have been to Seattle before, and I can’t be 100 percent sure that its the perfect city for me, but I have done so much research that leads me to believe it would be a good place. I have grown up in a very conservative and boring town. As a very liberal person who likes to volunteer and help the community, and not to mention I live for overcast and rainy days, Seattle meets a lot of the criteria that I have for somewhere I would like to go. Also, a lot of musical history has happened in/coming from Seattle and as an alternative/independent music buff, I think it would be very appealing to that side of my interests.
5.) I don’t think it is the price of tuition that is bothering my parents. Yes, it is high, but a lot of the schools that I would consider applying to around me are just as, if not more, expensive than Seattle University. Again, this doesn’t include the cost of travel but as mentioned before, I am sure that I would be able to contribute to airfare to and from Seattle. The schools around me that I would be looking into (New Haven, Villanova, Saint Joseph’s,Syracuse) range from 53,000 to upwards of 60,000 for tuition, room and board, books, ect.
One more thing, I am a rising senior in high school, not a college transfer student. I would be applying as a freshman and as mentioned before, am eligible for quite a bit of scholarship money.
@sam9919 The reason schools don’t offer a major in forensic psychology is because it is way too broad (edit: I meant narrow). And to be a forensic psychologist you will need a doctorate. That means you need to save money cause you’re not just going to school for 4 years. That’s gonna be more money for your family to pay off.
Here’s what I would do:
1- major in psychology, maybe minor in criminal justice or something of the sort
2- pursue specialized education
You need a school that is affordable so you will be able to make a way for yourself later on.
Edit: if you can get merit at Seattle you should be able to get into Penn State, Pitt?
@sam9919 said:
@TheAtlantic said:
It’s not too broad—it’s too narrow! As someone who majored in psychology and has a family member who is a PhD psychologist, I think it’s a mistake to select your college based on the availability of this particular major. If you want to be a forensic psychologist, you will need a PhD. Major in psychology as an undergrad. This major is available at probably 99% of colleges and universities in the country.
@brantly YIKES! I had a huge brain fart haha. I meant narrow but wrote broad, time for me to take a nap. I-)
Being eligible for scholarships, is a LOT different than actually getting one and meeting the COA.
FYI, if you have to retake the ACT, it a big clue that your scores weren’t automatically the tippy top scores that gain automatic merit money. $20k in scholarships is a drop in the bucket when you have to add other costs.
If your parents didn’t save in a 529 account or other college savings plan and have to rely on Loans, you will be stuck.
Please check with another student here on CC who has receive lots of scholarships @CourtneyThurston. She’ll tell you about those scholarship websites.
The OP never said anything about marine biology as far as I can tell! I used that as an example of a type of major that might only be available in certain parts of the country. I just want to clarify that point, because it looks like people took that and ran.
OP, how do you intend to cover costs at either schools that aren’t covered by scholarships? Let’s generously say you get $25K per year. You can borrow $5,500 in federal loans your freshman year. So that leaves you with $23,000-$28,000 per year that is not covered. You would be buried in student loan debt for years if your parents borrow and you are trying to pay them back.
Go to a school that is cheaper and close to home. Major in psych and minor in criminal justice.
@“aunt bea” I didn’t take the ACTs yet, only the SAT’s once and got a 1220 out of 1600 which is considered above average on the new test. The 20,000 that was predicted was based on GPA and that score alone