Type of high school: Public, rural, less than 60 graduating in my grade
Other special factors: nope
Cost Constraints / Budget
Parents can contribute ~12k per year, and they are very passionate about no or minimal loans, so I will be needing grants and loan-less scholarships. I also wouldn’t be opposed in any way to a part-time job and/or saving up as much as I can either.
Intended Major(s)
I’m still deciding between math and engineering but for the sake of this post I am majoring in applied math.
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Unweighted HS GPA: 3.94
Weighted HS GPA: 4.11 (out of 5 from AP classes: A-5, B-4, etc.)
Class Rank: I don’t think my school does this but to the best of my knowledge my GPA is the highest in my grade.
ACT/SAT Scores: Haven’t taken either, awaiting my PSAT/NMSQT score.
List your HS coursework
I worked with my councilor to take a bunch of classes online, I will denote this with (o). AP Lit, AP Calc AB, and AP Gov are the only AP classes my school offers in person, but I also took AP CSP online.
English: 10th grade English, AP Lit (3), College Writing (dual enrollment), (I took 10th grade English as a freshman so I don’t know what I will end up taking during senior year, likely a class at my local cc)
Math: geometry (o), algebra 2 (o), pre-calculus (o), AP Calculus AB (5), discrete math (cc), calculus 2 (cc), differential equations (cc), vector calculus 1 & 2 (cc), linear algebra (cc), (I haven’t taken all of these yet but this is what’s planned and feasable)
Science: physical science, AP CSP (online, didn’t take the test), biology, chemistry, intro to chem (cc), physics 1 (o), I also plan to self-study AP Physics 1
History and social studies: world history, us history, economics (o), AP Gov (haven’t taken yet)
Language other than English: 3 years of Spanish (o)
Other: Health (o), PE, AP Calculus TA
Awards
3rd place at a calculus competition out of around 30 other high schoolers.
Extracurriculars
Worked at McDonald’s for 1 summer.
Leadership in STEM club and NHS.
Over 50 hours of volunteering.
Math tutor for elementary, middle, and high schoolers.
Essays/LORs/Other
I’m just a junior so I haven’t started essays yet, but I am really close with one of my core teachers who will probably write a pretty good rec letter (fingers crossed).
Schools
I am only applying to schools on the west coast but other than that I’m not really sure (hence this match me). I prefer warm weather, urban or semi-urban, any size is fine, and I have no preference for LAC or not.
I have looked into schools like Stanford, Claremont schools, Caltech, and in-state schools, but after reading through some posts on this site I am realizing my app is pretty bad compared to what would be needed for some of these.
Extra Notes
Since I’m a junior I don’t have the best info to properly match me, sorry. I know my coursework is pretty weird with all the online classes, so I guess an extra question would be if colleges dislike this kind of thing? It’s worth noting the reason for most of them is because I felt the normal grade level was too slow so I wanted my own pace (math), or the class wasn’t offered in person (physics), or it never fit within my schedule (Spanish). Any and all criticism is greatly appreciated, and bear with me as this is my first post here. Thanks in advance!
As @circuitrider wrote - University of Oregon as starters. With that GPA and likely decent test scores, UO should be a safety, as would be Oregon State and Portland State.
Oregon also has some great Liberal Arts Colleges, which may be affordable, depending on the amount of financial aid they are willing to provide.
Depending on your test scores, there are a good number of very good public universities which provide pretty good merit aid to out of state students with high GPAs and high test scores.
Given how advanced you will be in math, for smaller colleges or those with small math departments, you may want to check if they have the breadth and depth of offerings to keep you interested as a math major. Students as advanced as you will be may want to take graduate level courses while in undergraduate.
Regarding budget, have you and/or your parents tried the net price calculators at University of Oregon, other Oregon public universities, and various private schools of interest?
Thanks for letting me know about the math department thing, I will be looking into it. As for the budget: my estimated cost per year at UofO is ~35k, OSU is ~28k, Pomona is ~19k, and Stanford is ~10k, all after need based aid, without taking into account loans or merit aid.
That means that at UO and OSU, your chances are based on getting a large enough merit scholarship, not just admission. Pomona would be a stretch on work earnings and federal direct loans, while Stanford is within the $12k parent contribution, but both are reaches to begin with.
UO has rolling admissions (and may have rolling scholarship awards). It is better to apply as early as possible to rolling admissions schools, since they or the scholarships may get more selective as they fill up.
We do not have your SAT results yet. You might want to either update this thread or start a new thread when you do have SAT results.
However, I am not sure that I would give up completely on Stanford or other top ranked schools. For example…
Schools evaluate GPA in the context of your high school. As one example, my high school GPA would not have put me in the top 20% if I had the same GPA at a public school in the US. However, it put me #2 in my grade in the high school that I did attend, and I did get accepted to MIT coming out of high school. Being at the top of your class is about as much as any school can expect, even the top schools.
Does either the U of Oregon or Oregon State give merit aid or need based aid to in-state students? Either would be a good option. You are also in a WUE state which might open up some options.
Again this might be useful information when it shows up. Obviously if you were a national merit scholar that could go a long way towards helping out the financial aspects of attending university.
If you read the “applying sideways” blog on the MIT admissions web site, as I understand it, it recommends that you do what is right for you and, whatever you do, do it very well. This sounds like exactly what you are doing.
It is early in your education path. I think that you need to just keep doing very well, and have faith that this will work out one way or another.
Can I have some examples for the public OOS’s with good aid? From what I’ve seen public schools never really give merit aid to students from other states, but I might be missing something.
On need-based aid only, both UO and OSU are far above the $12k parent contribution with a gap that is unlikely to be bridgeable with student work earnings.
For need-based aid, UVA (Virginia) and UNC Chapel Hill are the usual ones (but check their net price calculators).
For merit scholarships, most of the larger ones that are not hypercompetitive are in the south or southeast, but even many of those may not get close enough to $12k net price. Many of them are based on ACT or SAT scores as well as GPA.
Oregon is in the WUE region, but that gives 1.5 times in-state tuition at the other-state public universities in that region that offer that (many of the most popular ones like UW Seattle, UCs other than Merced, Arizona State do not offer WUE tuition discounts). In addition, additional financial aid and scholarships beyond WUE may be hard to get or non-existent, so getting to $12k or close to that may be very difficult.
This is really helpful, thank you. UO and OSU both give merit aid that I can apply for, but they give pretty bad need based aid.
As for the “applying sideways” blog, I have read it and have been trying to follow it as best I can. Unfortunately, my parents think that this kind of approach is the exact opposite of what I should be doing to get into a top school, but what can you do right?
The “applying sideways” blog was written well after I was at MIT, but it does pretty much describe what I did to get into MIT. “Do what is right for you, and do it well” also pretty much describes what my wife did to get into Columbia for a master’s degree, what our oldest daughter did go get into a very good DVM program, and what our youngest daughter did to get into a very good PhD program. However what each of us did was almost entirely different. The approach has worked for us at least. Of course all of this assumes that whatever “is right for you” is productive and responsible.
If you get significant merit at one of your in-state schools they could be good choices, but I gather that this is something that you cannot count on. I have heard that Arizona State is quite good with merit aid, but no one in my family looked at it (we live in the northeast).
One friend of a daughter was a very strong student with divorced parents, a mother who was unemployed, and a father whose small business was struggling. She went to community college for two years, and did very well there. Then she transferred to an in-state public university (the #2 in her state, not the flagship) with a full merit based scholarship. I happened to run into her in a nearby store about one month before she graduated university. She looked to be doing very well with a marketable major, great grades, and a big grin on her face. Community college plus a transfer is of course one option if nothing else works out. I am hoping and expecting that something else will work out for you.
Arizona State has a scholarship estimator at https://scholarships.asu.edu/estimator , but it appears to be much less generous now than it was several years ago. With a 3.94 GPA, it looks like the net price is about $38k at the Tempe campus (slightly lower at the other campuses that focus more on non-traditional students). Adding a maximum possible ACT or SAT score or being a “National Scholar” (National Merit Finalist or College Board National Recognition based on PSAT score) lowers the net price by a few thousand dollars.
It sounds like your parents’ SAI (and income) may be too high for questbridge…based on Stanford’s NPC result of $10K it doesn’t seem like you qualify for a Pell Grant, and most questbridge finalists have an SAI of 0 to -1500, qualifying for a full Pell grant. Did the Stanford NPC estimate that you would get any Pell award?