<p>Check out Grinnell - Excellent sciences with amazing resources due to a fantastic endowment, a strong work ethic and understated, unpretentious culture, very generous financial aid, including merit aid for which you will qualify with your grades and test scores (up to $15k p.a.). They also have beautiful facilities - sports, arts, etc…that endowment, again. And as an asian, you are a URM. Being male also helps at most LACs, where there are fewer male applicants because they don’t usually offer engineering, business or other pre-professional majors. And yes, you will work hard for your grades…</p>
<p>Grinnell is about an hour from Des Moines and from Iowa City. It’s a college town of 9,000 and the campus is part of the town, so you can walk from campus to downtown in two minutes. It’s definitely in a rural area, so you have to be okay with that.</p>