I am going into my senior year of high school with a 4.0 GPA, number 1 class rank, and 34 ACT score. I am trying to make some major decisions as to which schools I should start applying to.
I don’t know what I want to major in, I’ve had some interest in law and engineering but I am unsure exactly where I wanna go with that. I live in Arizona but I really have no desire to go to U of A or ASU. my parents have said that they will give me a max of 65k towards college overall, which is generous but won’t even cover a year of school at an Ivy, duke, u chi… Any of the well known privates.
I guess I am wondering is it better to try to and go to a public university that offers full tuition scholarships, or to try and pursue a very competitive school and take out massive student loan debt?
Also I’m prepared for brutal honesty- am I even qualified to get into a top institution?
How much would the non-free schools cost (check their net price calculators), and how much are your parents willing to pay?
It depends.
I would not qualify for financial aid, so I have the 65k and merit scholarships
Unless your parents are going to co-sign debt for you, you can’t get into much debt. The federal loan limits are:
$5,500 freshman year
$6,500 sophomore year
$7,500 junior year
$7,500 senior year
That’s it.
$65k over four years is $16,250 each year. Is that what your in-state publics would cost? Your grades and test scores put you in the range for a number of guaranteed full tuition scholarships, and make you competitive for others that aren’t guaranteed. So since you want out of state, look for places where you can land one of those full tuition scholarships. What your parents will pay would probably cover housing/meals/books/travel.
In more detail, it depends on many factors:
- Is your parents's objection to you going OOS based on tuition costs or do they have other reasons for wanting you to stay close to home?
- Where can you get scholarships OOS, and would you willingly go to those schools? Some of these can be quite prestigious. The guaranteed merit aid schools are generally not high-prestige, but some prestige schools do have competitive merit aid.
- Will your parents pick up any of the difference if you want to go to an OOS school that costs more?
- If not, are you willing to get a part-time job?
- What is your intended major, and intended post-graduate plan? For some paths (e.g. law school) the prestige of your undergraduate institution will be of minimal significance. For others (e.g. I want to be an elite Wall Street investment banker), prestige and network can be very significant.
- Would gaining admission to an honors program (such as Barrett at ASU) change your feelings about attending an in-state school?
To sum up, the decision is very much about you, your parents, your plans, and your circumstances. There’s no one size fits all answer.
HappyMomof1 and DreamSchlDroupout thank you for all the advice! I will have to talk over the loan limits with my parents and try to find some competitive merit scholarships I can apply for
Free is pretty prestigious
I believe you’d get a full ride at UAlabama-Huntsville, if you’re looking for more options to consider.
We are arizona residents and my first two kids have similar stats to yours. Both are going out of state to college on budgets similar to what your parents have given you.
You will be eligible for scholarships at the Arizona schools which cover nearly all of tuition, leaving $15-20k/yr in room and board, books, and other expenses. If you are a national merit finalist, it could cost even less. Many top students attend ASU and UA.
If you are not eligible for financial aid, and really want to go out of state, there are still many excellent schools for you to choose from that will be in budget if you can get automatic or competitive scholarships and you’ve set yourself up for a shot at those. It takes a lot of research to find the best fit for you. Examine the lists on the financial aid and scholarships forums. If you think you’d like a smaller school, try the Colleges That Change Lives. Many of those offer large competitive scholarships. one of my kids was a finalist for top merit scholarships at three CTCL schools and will be attending one of them. The other won a competitive merit scholarship at another school on the lists on this site.
If you want prestige, you have a shot academically at least. The prestigious schools are very unlikely to meet your parents’ budget and you should have a talk with them about what would happen if you got in, so you have realistic expectations before you apply.
You are academically qualified. Things like your ECs and recommendations will determine if you have a shot at acceptance. It doesn’t appear that they are economically feasible though. Merit awards are tiny at those schools.
Your state schools are well regarded nationally. I know it can be difficult to see that when you’ve grown up in the area.
If you do want to go out of state for school, the options offered above are worth considering. Also, have you looked at Barrett Honors College at ASU? That’s a ‘free’ gem right in your own backyard.
What are you looking for in a college? Why don’t you like your in-state options?
I agree with other posters that the answer to your question depends largely on what your longer-term educational and vocational goals are.
My daughter, a rising college sophomore, turned down a free-ride merit scholarship at a top-ranked “regional university” (to use the US News jargon) in order to be just another student–with financial aid and lots of loans–at a more prestigious national university. Was it the right decision? I think it’s too early to say.
In effect, her decision committed her to rejecting certain low-paying career paths that she might be interested in (e.g., public school teaching), since the loan debt she/we have taken on is too great to be discharged by her following those paths. Law school is a trickier question, since acceptance at T14 schools tends to be based more on GPA and LSAT scores than on the “prestige” of the undergraduate institution; if she ends up going to law school, she probably will have made the “wrong” decision, economically speaking, since she would have done just as well on these objective measures at the free-ride school . . . while saving tens of thousands of dollars that could have been allocated for law school tuition.
On the other hand, she didn’t like the vibe of the free-ride school and feared that she would end up feeling lonely and alienated there; it was also weak in her areas of academic interest.
In sum, you need to weigh a range of quantitative and qualitative factors that will be unique to your situation. All things being equal, free is good . . . but if you simply hate the free-ride school’s environment, or if it doesn’t offer you the academic resources you need, or if it doesn’t feature the industry/alumni connections (or the “prestige”) to get you into your dream vocation, then you’ll need to consider how much you are willing–and able–to pay for these benefits.
For competitive merit, here’s a good starting place. http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/
Note, however, that this list is far from comprehensive. Many other schools offer competitive merit aid that, if not full ride/tuition, is close enough to it to be a significant help. Check the website of any school you are remotely interested in to see what scholarships they offer.
If you are interested in engineering, your choice should be easier. There are many scholarships available for women engineers and admission is generally easier because of the lower number of applicants. I’d start by running the NPC on some of the better engineering schools to get a good idea of what it will cost.You will need a comprehensive list of your family assets and income to calculate it. Then start exploring scholarships including merit scholarships specifically for your target engineering schools. As an engineering student you also have higher earning potential as an intern during the summers.
Some OOS schools like Michigan, Ohio State, Michigan State, etc. give very good FA for desirable candidates. You may find that private colleges cost less than public because of better FA.
Another path is through the military, including ROTC or the service academies. Navy ROTC is particularly attractive for engineers.
You can go to law school after engineering. You will be qualified for more technical law areas (like IP) with an engineering background.
Parsing this to mean either law or engineering… If you mean to combine them then the obvious route would be patent law. For general law work at hi-tech firms I don’t think many of the lawyers have an engineering background.
If your friends or parents know some people that are engineers talk to them to get a sense of what the career is like and whether you can really see yourself doing it. Engineering is not like many other majors where you can decide sometime before junior year its what interests you. There are so many required classes that you need to start as a frosh. Nor do those not really committed to it tend to make in thru; the dropout rate nationally for engineering is 50-65%. If you don’t enter college sure that its what you want (although of course you may later change your mind) then I doubt you will get far because the courses are so challenging. This helps your search since you don’t need to restrict yourself to schools with engineering programs.
As for top institutions, they don’t appear likely. Maybe you can get accepted, but top schools don’t have to give away merit money to entice kids to come. Merit money comes from lower-ranked schools that want to tip the scales to bring in strong students that normally would go elsewhere if costs were similar.
One program you should look into is the Western Undergraduate Exchange http://www.wiche.edu/wue which offers close to instate rates at some public colleges in the West. There are rules on major and so on, but if you’d consider a public in another state its worth looking into.
I think free is better than prestige.
Employers are going to be impressed that you got the scholarship.
Consider University of Alabama. You would be eligible for a Presidential Scholarship at over $107,000. What you don’t spend on undergrad they let you roll over into law or graduate school there. Sweet deal.
You only need to get a 3.0 to keep the scholarship. http://scholarships.ua.edu/types/out-of-state.html
Presidential scholars at any big state flagship get a lot of special handling and networking opportunities - chances to hobnob with big university admin and alums, internships, early registration, basically treated like the state’s royalty.
If you do not qualify for need-based aid (double check, first of all), and your parents are unwilling to cosign on loans, you will not be able to go to an Ivy. Ivies do not offer merit scholarships last time I checked.
If it helps any, you can major in pretty much anything-engineering, for example-and still be competitive for law school. However, it’s my understanding that grading is tough in engineering school, and since GPA is a major factor in LS admissions, majoring in engineering may put you at a disadvantage.