Match Me - First Gen looking for Liberal Arts Colleges!

Chance Me / Match Me
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1

Hi! I just started my college search and I’ve become really infatuated with the idea of attending a liberal arts college, so I’m looking for some schools that might match me! Note: I have two in-state safeties that I’m very happy with, so I’m looking for some more reach/target schools.

Demographics:

US Citizen (Dual Citizen)
Junior
State: Connecticut
Public Magnet School
White (Bosnian)
Other: First Generation

Intended Major(s): Political Science, International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores:

Unweighted GPA: 4.24 out of 4.33
My school does NOT weight GPA’s, or rank

I am taking dual enrollment courses at a local college, and I have a 4.0/4.0 there, just in case it’s relevant.

SAT Score: 1420 (Definitely retaking and trying to get up to 1450+)

Coursework:

My school does not offer APs or Honors courses. Instead, we have a dual enrollment program with a local college that starts Junior year. I took 8 DE courses this year and will take 6 next year. My counselor says that it’s a record for my school!

Awards:

  1. QuestBridge College Prep Scholar
  2. Full Scholarship to Envision Law & Trial Program at Stanford
  3. Full Scholarship to Bill of Rights Institute Constitutional Academy
  4. Accepted into the Youth Leaders Summit
  5. Some school-wide awards: Excellence in certain academic subjects, a Book award
  6. A few state/local writing competition wins

Extracurriculars:

(Sorry for the length of this section, some of my ECs sound strange with no explanation so I tried to elaborate. My school doesn’t have a lot of EC’s so I mostly did outside stuff)

  1. Teaching Assistant/Community Organizer at Local Mosque (5 years): I teach classes in Arabic/Islamic History across the week and organize community events, usually attended by 100-200 people.

  2. Project Manager at Genocide-Awareness NPO (10th-present): I work with a recognized Holocaust/Genocide Awareness NPO on a variety of projects. I develop school curriculum/lesson plans based on genocide, interview genocide survivors, and then edit their video testimony, create graphics for use in lesson plans/on our promotional materials, manage our website, and some other things.

  3. Editor in Chief - School Newspaper (10th-present): Self explanatory.

  4. Research Assistant w/ a college professor (11th-present): Met him through my NPO. He’s a well-known expert on the Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide. I’m currently helping him write several papers on the Bosnian genocide. I also do research for use in some of his lectures and TV interviews.

  5. Leadership Council Secretary (10th-present): Basically what we call our school government. This year I’ve mainly drafted plans on how to make online learning more dynamic, organized school workshops and events in order to build a better sense of community, campaigned (and achieved!) change in attendance, dress code, and grading policies.

  6. NHS Officer (10th-present): Typical NHS volunteering and such. Aiming for president next year.

  7. Model UN Treasurer (9th-10th): COVID unfortunately cancelled this activity in Sophomore year, I was hoping to gun for president, but oh well!

  8. Some volunteering, about 100+ hours.

Essays/LORs/Other:

Can’t really guess at the quality of my essays, since I just started them. I’m getting recommendations from one of my dual enrollment professors and a math teacher (both Junior year teachers), who I both know outside of the classroom, so they should be good! Same with my counselor.

Cost Constraints / Budget:

I’m low income. Below 30K or so. Definitely looking for LACs with great aid haha.

Thanks for any help!!

2

How does your UW work. Normally it’s on a 4 or 5. Your scale seems odd

Goodie schools that meet full need. Start there. Your Vassar, Amherst, etc.

Then go in the NPC of 2nd tier LACs and see how the costs look. Skidmore. Dennison. Occidental. Etc

See how the money looks. Want to learn more about your gpa

3

Does this mean that your school uses +/- as +/- 0.33, and most of your grades are A+ grades?

(For whatever reason, it is most common for high school GPAs to be calculated with A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, F=0 without +/-.)

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First off, thanks for the school suggestions. I’ll definitely look into all of them.

From what I understand, at my school a grade of A equals a 4.0, and an A+ equals a 4.33. So if you had all A+'s, you’d have a perfect GPA. It is odd, but it’s what my school advertises on our school profile.

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Hi! I believe that that is how it works at my school. As I detailed in another reply, my school gives an A a value of 4.0 and an A+ a value of 4.33. Most of my grades are A+'s, which is why my GPA is a 4.24. It’s definitely an odd scale!

6

Based on your academic interests, these sites can serve as a source for ideas:

This site can be helpful for estimating costs:

7

Are you going to be doing the Questbridge match?

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I’m thinking about it, but at the moment, I’m leaning towards ED1’ing to a school!

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9

OK - much better info. You should Questbridge. I personally, and others disagree, would not ED if you definitely need aid. You can run the NPCs and people say they should be accurate but a lot of times kids enter in the wrong inputs. ED has better odds - but it also includes recruited people. Don’t let the schools sucker you into a bad situation for yourself.

So my daughter, with stats not nearly as good as yours, is doing international studies with a 2nd, unknown major. It’s required in her program because international studies is not a pre-professional major - i.e. it doesn’t prepare you for a specific job, like accounting or engineering might.

So - really great schools will be American (gotta demonstrate interest), GW, and Gtown. My daughter hated GW - it’s very urban - but if you love that, you have BU and NYU as well. They are not LACs but they might fit given their political pedigree.

To get great merit, you want to look to schools like Arizona, FSU, and U of South Carolina - and they have great merit - but it might be unaffordable for you. Not LACs but the Honors Colleges reduce the size so can make them feel as such.

The tops LACs and many other schools such as Miami, UN, and UVA meet 100 of need. Most will have strong intl studies/poli sci. But again, the last three aren’t LACs. But colleges meeting aid should be most important.

Here’s Every College That Offers 100% Financial Aid (prepscholar.com)

My daughter got into Washington & Lee - but got no aid. They do meet 100% of demonstrated but they also have the Johnson Scholarship and you might be a great candidate - you go for free.

My daughter is actually going to to the 16th rated of the 17 she got into - but at College of Charleston she is both a Charleston Fellow and an International Scholar - sometimes it pays to be the tallest in the field. Should you go to a high rated school, you’ll fit fine - but everyone will be like you. C of C is like a public LAC.

So given you want an LAC - I’d suggest - given your #s and it sounds like you’ll apply to UCONN - then you can reach for the fences with the rest and you have a chance:

  1. Charleston - it’s a definitely safety but you can excel - stand out.

  2. W&L - get on their email list and you’ll apply free. Match/Reach

  3. Middlebury - reach

  4. Macalester - target

  5. Vassar - reach

  6. Occidental - match

  7. Hamilton - reach

  8. Kenyon - match

  9. Dickinson - safety

  10. Connecticut - target/reach

You didn’t give geographies, etc. so this is a diverse group. Hope that helps.

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Questbridge is like a ranked ED application. If your favorite school is in Questbridge, then you can rank it first but also effectively be able to apply ED to other schools that you like, with commitment only if not admitted to one you ranked higher.

This is a better deal than applying ED to just one school.

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and you don’t pay for tuition, room, board or books.

QuestBridge | National College Match

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12

If you are excited about LACs, also take a look at Denison, which just joined Questbridge.

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Good list, but what’s the difference between “match” and “target”? I’ve always used the two terms synonymously. In any case, in our search in 2019-20, we considered Kenyon and Macalester to be exactly the same level, given their similar stats and acceptance rates (and my daughter got into both with identical merit). Kenyon is not a Questbridge partner, it seems, but they do give pretty generous need-based aid, even to middle-class families.

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Dickinson’s strength is it’s emphasis on global awareness across several different majors. Very nice quality LAC that (I think) would be impressed by your background. You’d be competitive with your stats. Not known for being especially generous with aid, but you might be a good candidate for one of their top scholarships…worth checking out!

I don’t think William & Mary has much financial aid for out-of-state students, but if the school is a Questbridge partner, that’s another story. Very LAC-like small university (6000 students). Rated highly for study-abroad. It also offers a semester program in DC and has a dual enrollment program with St. Andrews University in Scotland, where students study two years on each campus and receive degrees from both universities.

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Definitely take advantage of Questbridge match! @ucbalumnus described it perfectly above – it’s like getting to do ED at 10 schools – you just have to rank them.

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Match/Target are similar - but when Questbridge uses the term, it’s different because while we would not qualify, I imagine it’s not an automatic.

Sorry - looking at my list - yes, I confused you - match/target the same. i have ADD for sure - can’t keep anything straight :slight_smile:

17

Congratulations on your accomplishments! I’m a parent and have one at Amherst College & the other will attend Williams College in the fall. These are both QB schools and one or both accepted around 18 or so Questies I remember reading somewhere. If you apply ED both schools are need blind that meet 100% of demonstrated need which could be without loans based on that income, but you will have to run the Financial Aid Calculator on each school’s website to see what it looks like. I recommend you do that before falling in love with any school.
I wish you the best!

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Thank you so much for all the information! I’ve definitely been back and forth with QuestBridge but all the support for it here is making me lean towards it.

Thank you for the list of LACs as well! I’ll look into all of them, and some of the research/public universities you mentioned above. I’ve heard of Honors Colleges at bigger schools before (like the one at Penn State), but I’ll definitely do more research into them.

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Sometimes what you’re looking for is right in your own backyard. For what you’re interested in, I highly recommend that you take a look at Connecticut College in New London.

Why Conn College? Because Peace & Conflict Resolution is one of those majors that you don’t study in isolation. It involves understanding cultures, their history, their economies, their politics. It involves learning conflict resolution strategies and how to apply them both locally and globally.

A few years ago, Conn College completely rethought their approach to the liberal arts. They developed an approach called Connections through which students with the help of their advisors develop plans to integrate their entire program for all 4 years so that everything you do is “connected”. They developed a second approach called Pathways in which you develop theme(s) that you pursue for 4 years and build your program around. These are really decision making tools to help you find ways to have your academic experience match your aspirations.

Peace & Conflict is one of their “Pathways”. You can build your 4 years of study around this theme in whatever way makes sense to you. And you’re not alone in doing it. You have an advisor to mentor you and help with your decisions.

I have a feeling that you’d find at Conn College what you’re looking for and that they’d love to have you. The good news is that you can drive there from anywhere in Connecticut - and get back home easily whenever you want to.

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I’ll be another person who recommends Questbridge. You have nothing to lose, and a lot to gain.

By “first-gen”, does that mean that you are the first in your family to attend college, or that you are the child of immigrants? Only the former will provide you with the status of a URM.