As to yearly tuition raises there are schools I know Miami of Ohio being one that fixes tuition room and board for all four years. There are others that do the same.
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No matter where you end up enrolling for your first year of college, Iâd walk into it with the attitude that youâre planning on staying there all four years. If youâre thinking of transferring from the get-go you may not get as involved or build as strong of relationships with your peers. You donât want to live your life always thinking about how to get something âbetterâ which oftentimes doesnât end up being what you thought it would be.
Students from the safeties on your list regularly make it into âTop 20â grad programs every year. The focus will be on GPAs and test scores, and your high school record shows that you excel at both.
Iâm unclear if youâre including grad school in the âeventuallyâ part or referring to getting into a T20 sometime in your undergraduate years. But how would you feel if a school you attend was in the T20 (not gettting into semantics about whoâs definition of T20), and then falls out of being in the T20. For instance, the most recent year of USNWR had some methodology changes and there were some schools (I think Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, and Tulane among them) that had some big swings downwards. Nothing had changed with their instruction or the experience that students were having from one year to the next, but the ranking changed because the methodology changed. How would you feel if that happened at whatever institution you enroll in?
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Oof, I missed that comment about safeties and transferring.
Yeah, what @AustenNut saidâthe idea that you only go to a safety as a place to fill time and earn a few credits is at the very least misguided.
(Not to mention, if your safety is a state flagship or co-flagship, what do you even mean by thinking that you canât get into a top graduate program from there?)
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This should be setting off all sorts of alarms as WashU is a key member of the COFHE group of colleges and universities, representing the American colleges with the most generous need-based financial aid payments:
Consortium on Financing Higher Education - Wikipedia
If the NPC for WashU is telling you it is too expensive, that would indicate bad news for Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Columbia, Penn and virtually all the eastern seaboard LACs,
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Thank you so much for informing me that ASU does not offer WUE on their main campus. I didnât know this until now, and it will be important in making my final decision. Also did not know that WUE is limited to certain majors, this is certainly new information. As for SJSU I will most likely take it off my list as I am preferring a more traditional college experience but I am open to change. Also did not know that U Alabama ended their recognition program scholarships; thanks! Also did not know that Alabama scholarships stack and you receive more aid for engineering. Also will be retaking tests and if I receive a near perfect score(1600 or 36) Iâll consider the presidential elite scholarship. Also did not take inflation into account, thanks in advance.
Oregon State would not be full pay, would receive about 4.5K off in merit every year with up to 10K off after that. Also have good change of in-state OSAC scholarships as well as a possibility for OOS OSAC scholarships. Also have good chance at merit for UO; considering applying early for stamps(full-ride) scholarship.
Will consider other schools not on my list like Stevens, UMN, UGA, SMU, and others mentioned. Any pointers for differentiating between colleges? All of their websites look the same. How do I know what the school/programs are really like?
Unfortunately for international schools the Canadian ones Iâve looked at require a 4 or higher on AP Calc(which Iâll be taking this year) before the exam results are released for me so likely not a possibility but I will look into other international schools.
T20 goal is a vague statement that includes grad school/PhD and is not actually based on a ranking system but on a general consensus of which schools are the âbestâ. In no way did I mean to suggest that getting into a top grad school program was not a possibility from state school nor that being âsuccessfulâ was based on what college you went to. I will continue to take suggestions but for now I think I have a pretty solid list built, my biggest concern(for the list) right now is finding a safety I actually want to go to and some solid target options. But I will still take into account any advice/suggestions regarding colleges and outside merit scholarships that I qualify for. Thanks a ton!
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A few ideas:
Make a spreadsheet (and possibly another document with more extensive notes). Keep track of a variety things, so it can help when the colleges start blurring together. Some things you may want to include:
- Distribution of class sizes (general categories of many schools can be found in this aggregator, but more detailed info is available in section I-3 of a schoolâs Common Data Set) and itâs always best to verify info from any aggregator with the CDS.
- Clubs of interest (and whether the club is open to all or if it requires an applicationâŠand if so, how competitive it is to get in)
- Living learning communities of interest
- Requirements for entry into the honors college, and the benefits and requirements of being in the honors college
- The type of schedule (i.e. quarter, semester, 4-1-4 or 4-4-1, etc)
- How many classes/credit hours are typical per term for your proposed majors
- Any other factors that are important to you, whether itâs availability of football tickets or places to rock climb or flexibility in dorm contracts for doing a co-op, ease of getting to a drugstore/movie theater/Target, etc.
One thing that might be able to help you narrow down your focus is to do a few 4-year schedules for colleges with different types of schedules. For instance, maybe you do a 4-year plan for Amherst, Georgia Tech, and U. of Chicago. This means seeing how many classes students usually take per term and then filling in the schedule with whatever distribution requirements are needed and major requirements. Are there way more classes to fulfill distribution requirements that youâre interested than you need? Thatâs great! Or are you having a hard time finding classes of interest (or you hate the distribution requirements all together)?
Additionally, the reason why I keep harping on the number of classes per termis that a number of people end up having definite preferences. Some people like having fewer classes at a time because they donât have to spread their focus too thinly on an array of subjects at the same time. Others, however, feel that being limited to, say, 4 classes/semester is way too limiting to be able to take as many classes as theyâre interested in. At some schools the expectation is that they will take 32 classes over their 4-year career. At otherâs itâs 40 classes. Whatâs your preference? There is no right or wrong answer with the preference, but if you have a preference, it can eliminate a good chunk of your list, one way or the other.
Additionally, if youâre on social media, you can subscribe to some of the schoolâs accounts (including the accounts of clubs of interest, etc). Pay attention to how often theyâre doing things that interest you. You can also ask to speak to a student and/or faculty member with particular interests and then get a better idea of what the feel might be like as well.
Itâs great that you are focusing on finding a safety you would like to attend. Thatâs the most important school on your list. If, after reviewing the colleges that have already been suggested, you still canât find a school you like, please let us know what you didnât like about the other schools and more of what youâre hoping to find so we can try and give you better suggestions. Ditto for targets.
Good luck with this whole process; weâre rooting for you!
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You can get more specific information for the specific colleges for the specific subjects (e.g. CS, math) in the class schedules of many colleges. The class schedules may also help you check how often each course listed in the catalog is offered.
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ASU with the $16.5 youâll get per NPC is still under $45k.
Bama for you is still under $20k. And note they have a scholarship app where you can get more. Iâm not sure if they purposely eliminate the natl recognition or they removed it due to the Supreme Court ruling. Only way to know is apply, list on the additional scholarship app and see. Apply only if interested.
UMN and UGA are big flagships. UGA and Bama, for example, have a lot in common. Both an hr-hr 15 from a big city airport. Both in small cities. Both large campuses. UF is another like this and Purdue too although academically Purdue is more STEM-Y.
UMN is another huge flagship - but itâs in the city. Fly Portland to Minneapolis, get on the light rail and within an hour you are there. Easy peasy. Itâs also in a huge metro with a significant # of corporations right in the area.
Of those you listed Stevens and SMU are outliers. Stevens has many non tech majors but theyâre an Institute of Technology. Itâs male dominated as youâd expect.
SMU is a smaller, private version of those previously mentioned flagship schools with a wealthy audience and access to big time sports like the others mentioned.
The best way to tell schools apart - visit. If you canât, lots of people, plus the schools themselves, have online tours.
Btw you have safeties, targets and reaches already and you can build that way but only one bucket is required - safety and under $45k. The rest can be as you desire.
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