That’s an ambitious list. The problem is not getting rejected, though. It’s getting accepted and finding out later–after you got the FinAid package, you can’t afford it…after it’s too late to choose something more affordable. Private schools are a mixed bag of worms and are full of “not so great” surprises. I speak from experience as a parent with a daughter in college.
I’m thinking you’re a PA resident. I’m seeing a bunch of expensive schools on the list, then there’s Pitt and Penn State in there. I would go to an in-state school and not look back. It’s hard to go wrong for the price, and any leftover money can be used for graduate school. Generally bigger schools offer a much wider selection of majors to explore.
Pitt IMO is a good school to have on your radar and a fan favorite on this site. Pitt is among the mostly highly ranked schools that offer rolling admissions. If you get your application done early you can have results back even before you need to submit other applications. For a student with your stats you should get into their honors program and some merit money. I can’t speak to Neuro specifically but has a strong program in science and medicine.
Likely in that he would be admitted into at least 1-2 of those schools.
As I said, I think given his background he has a good/realistic chance of getting into 5-6 of the schools on his overall list (0 of the reach schools, 1-2 of what I labeled as likely schools and 4-5 of the so-called safety schools).
Good points, but why limit oneself to just Penn State, which is a massive campus, 2 miles end-to-end, with 42,000 undergraduates. SUNY Albany and the University of Maine both offer flagship tuition match programs through which a PA student will pay the same tuition & fees at those research universities as they would at PA State on smaller, more manageable campuses. At Maine you’ll even save a few dollars with lower cost for room & board.
Next year the cost of attendance (tuition, fees, room & board) is a little over $36,000. I believe that there are private colleges where this student could earn scholarships which would make the cost less or comparable to Penn State. I’d certainly apply to PSU, but I’d keep my options open.
One other factor is that Penn State does not offer a major in Neuroscience as such, which is this student’s intended major. They do offer majors in Neurobiology and Systems Neuroscience, each of which has its own particular focus and areas of emphasis. It would take a closer look to see if these programs match this student’s interest. In general, I would investigate the Neuroscience major at any college of interest because it is a still emerging field and different colleges take different approaches with some emphasizing the behavioral side and others emphasizing the biology. How the two are blended will determine if it’s a good match.
As it happens, Pitt’s Neuroscience Department is usually regarded as one of the top in the world. Like EduRank, which is a more or less objective ranking based on research output, puts Pitt at #12 in the US, #14 in the world.
I wouldn’t necessarily suggest this matters THAT much for undergrad, like I think plenty of LACs and such could be great for Neuro undergrads. But certainly this an area of strength for Pitt, which is good if it is an otherwise suitable undergrad choice.