Good morning, and happy last-day-of-March/top tier college stress.
This past week has been a little rough for me having not been accepted to any of my reach schools. That being said, I was accepted to a lot of safeties and have some decent FA offerings, but need a little help sorting through them all.
My EFC is 0 and that’s exactly what I’m going to receive from my family. I could really use as much financial assistance as possible and would ideally like to end up with less than 40k in debt over 4 years.
As a head’s up, I was all over the place with majors when I applied, torn between engineering/bio/animation. I know, a weird tear. I’m currently in favor of going somewhere more on the scientific route but would prefer to have an art minor available, or at least where I’ve been accepted for animation to have a science major I could switch into.
Nonetheless, here’s a list of where I applied to and the status of my application:
Cornell (rejected from CALS)
USC (rejected from SCA)
Stanford (rejected)
CMU (waitlisted as Undeclared)
SUNY Binghamton (accepted to Watson Engineering, would have to pay ~10k per year, including room & board & after $5500 in fed loans)
SUNY Alfred State (accepted for Computer Animation, received a full ride including room and board for all four years. Unsure of quality of school, not a huge fan of location)
RPI (conditional acceptance to Design, Innovation, and Society, haven’t received an aid package yet)
RIT (accepted to Computer Animation, scholarship covering full tuition and leaving ~15k room & board to pay. It says my prospective pay for succeeding years comes close to 30k though, to which I’m suspect)
Ringling College of Art and Design (waitlisted for Computer Animation, but can receive automatic acceptance to Illustration, Game Design, and VR Production, haven’t received aid package and it likely won’t be much. Probably not going here)
Champlain College (accepted for Game Art/Animation, left with 20k to pay per year, probably not going here)
Fordham University (accepted for Natural Science, received Dean’s Scholarship of 15k-30k, haven’t received official package)
Hofstra University (accepted to Biology, left with 23k to pay per year, unsure of quality & probably not going here)
My current top choices are Binghamton, RIT, and Fordham. Fordham would be excellent because of its location & their aptitude towards art, but I’m unsure of its cost. Binghamton seems like a quality education but lacks the art. RIT has had a rising reputation and is fairly affordable, and has pretty much exactly what I’m looking for. Unsure of location, I’ve already visited.
So that’s that! I’m a little disappointed but happy that I gave myself so many options. Had I been accepted to Cornell or Stanford I would have instantly gone there, esp. Cornell because I would have likely received close to a full ride. But I have what I have and I’m very grateful for that.
Any input is much welcomed.
Thank you!