<p>I’m confused by US geography let alone the college scene … looking for a great scholarship.</p>
<p>Can you give me a top 10 that meet these criteria?</p>
<li>Got 1250 SAT … want a college with good academics</li>
<li>Good tennis player … 5.0 NTRP … want good tennis team with facilities. Ranked D1 are looking for better than me (sadly)</li>
<li>I’m urban born and bred … would die in a “back-of-beyond” town.</li>
<li>Need good scholarship money … my parents are stretched!</li>
<li>Evangelical Christian … would love to be part of a growing dynamic church</li>
<li>Would be interested in doing a combined major with Math</li>
</ol>
<p>Can you tick most or all of these boxes for me?</p>
<p>Perhaps Wheaton College in Illinois, outside Chicago. Difficult for internationals to get scholarship money anywhere and no athletic scholarships at this D-3 school. There may be faith-based aid that you can access. Your SAT’s appear to be in bottom third of their class, but if your grades and essays are good you will have a decent shot. Wheaton is widely considered the best of the Evangelical Christian schools in America.</p>
<p>I doubt any US college is going to offer you much financial aid with that SAT score. You had better take it again and pray for a 2200+. Good luck …</p>
<p>As I said above good luck to you. I hope the tennis scholarships work out for you. All I meant was your SAT scores are too low to get you into a need blind school (HYP etc) and probably too low to get you much merit based FA from the other schools. Internationals trying to get into US schools are competing in a very tough field with hundreds if not thousands of very high scoring asians. If tennis is your “hook” then that just might be your ticket in!</p>
<p>I think what he was commenting on regarding your score is that Wheaton College’s website states that for their students, the “Middle 50% scored between 1240 and 1420 on the Critical Reasoning and Math portions of the SAT.”</p>
<p>Based on that, you are somewhere at the top of the bottom third of Wheaton students, with respect to SAT scores. Maybe 30th percentile.</p>
<p>I don’t think most people here would be able to comment on your chances based on your talent in tennis - really, all the chances threads are guesswork.</p>
<p>My comment unfortunately stands; I presumed it was not inclusive of writing. Your SAT is probably too low for any need-blind school of which I am aware (the comment about botton third applied to Wheaton.) You <em>might</em> get merit aid at some mid to low tier private school, or you might try for a public college where you would have to pay full rate but it would be less than a private school. For the smaller campuses, perhaps you could play tennis, but most tend to be quite large. Here is a list of possible such schools in or near urban areas where your SAT would put you in the middle or better of entering class, although not necessarily of those admitted, which tends to be higher as many better students are admitted than actually choose to attend:</p>
<ol>
<li> University of Maryland</li>
<li> U of California–San Diego</li>
<li> U of Pittsburgh </li>
<li> Rutgers</li>
<li> U of California–Irvine</li>
<li> SUNY at Stony Brook</li>
<li> University of Washington</li>
<li> SUNY at Buffalo</li>
<li> New Jersey Inst. of Technology</li>
<li>Arizona State University</li>
</ol>