Please tell me my chances of getting in [MA resident, 3.7 GPA, 1220 SAT, psychology, <$10k from parents]

Asian, Senior, MA, Public HS - wanting to pursue psych

GPA: 3.7
Rank: n/a
SAT: 1220

14 Honors
2 APs

4 years of english
4 years of social studies
3 years of science + neuro, APCSP, anatomy
Currently about to complete pre-calc
3 years of language
3 visual arts courses

NHS
Silver Award for Essay writing in the Korean New England chapter
Honorary mention - Spanish Language

Part-time job (2+ years)
2 WBLA internships
ELE teacher’s assistant (2 months during the summer)
ELE teacher’s assistant (1 month during summer)
Teacher’s assistant for a school year every Saturday
Korean School Graduate (ages 4-16)
Asian American Club Treasurer (1 year)
Hand in Hand Co-prez and student rep (1 year)
Fishbowl 256 (talk show for Asian American Club)

UCD
UCSC
UCR
UCI
Santa Clara University
SDSU
Syracuse
Fordham
Umass Boston
Umass Lowell
Northeastern
Umass Amherst
University of San Francisco
Rutgers
SUNY Binghamton
SUNY at Buffalo

Ty!

JV Track (9-11)
Track sportsmanship award (9)

Do you have the annual amount your parents can spend on your college education?

Have you run net price calculators for all of these colleges. Are the net costs affordable for all four years of undergraduate school?

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Is the 3.7 unweighted?

Test scores? Budget? Approximate class rank (even if your school doesn’t rank?)

Calculate your UC GPAs here: GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

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1220 SAT. In the OP.

Thanks, the 2 AP scores would be helpful too

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I am planning to take out loans. My mom gave me a rough estimate of 10k a year

Yes. My class size is around 360

I am not submitting my APCSP score and I am currently taking AP psych

Also, on the UC website it says I have a 3.93 W

You can take a $5500 federally funded Direct Loan in your name only for freshman year. The rest would have to either be taken out by your family or cosigned.

I would suggest you remove all of the UCs from your list. They will cost you $75,000 a year or so…and CA doesn’t give aid to out of state students. SDSU is $42,000 or so…again…no aid.

Most of the other colleges on your list will be too costly.

UMass Lowell, and UMass Boston might be affordable, if you can commute to one of these colleges. Can you? I think you will get accepted to these also.

You really need to do the net price calculators for your list. Please do that.

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If you only have $10k from your parents, $5k from loans, and maybe $5k from working you will not have much flexibility. The UMass schools are the only ones that will be affordable. There are some schools that will give merit for your stats but they are much lower ranked than what you are looking at. For example, my son with similar stats got merit from URI and Duquesne. It wasn’t enough to get the COA down to $20k but I’m just giving you these examples to show where you could investigate.

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How did you select these schools in particular?

You have a LOT of out of state and California schools, many are not going to give you a dime of financial aid.

The California State University system (like San Diego State University) will run you $42,000 a year. You appear to be only able to afford half of it.

The University of San Francisco is a private Jesuit college; it runs about $80,000 a year. They may have some financial aid for you but, more than likely, you can’t afford it.

Since you plan a major in psychology, you will need more schooling after the bachelors degree to actually work in a career in psychology. You will need to save up a lot of money to fund your graduate studies. Financial aid is very limited for psychology majors in masters and PhD programs.

So I again ask, how did you come up with this list of schools?

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Are you very low income? It’s possible that you also might be eligible for a portion of the Pell Grant if you are.

Please, please do those net price calculators.

You mention your mom said $10,000. Are your parents married? If not, please take the NPCs results with caution.

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Clark, which is well-known for Psychology, should be on your list. Apply EA and complete all the “optional” questions.

UMass Lowell is a good bet, you could even try and apply to the Honors Program.

None of the out of state publics will work.

What’s your SAI?
https://www.mefa.org/student-aid-index-sai-calculator#efc

Do you have a job? If not, can you look for one and save all the money you earn?

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If your parents are not married, check the college’s web site to see if it requires both parents’ finances, or just the custodial* parent finances, for financial aid. If it requires both parents’ finances, any use of the net price calculator much include both of their incomes and assets to have any chance of being a reasonable estimate. A common net price calculator mistake is to include only one parent’s finances in a net price calculator at a college that requires both parents’ finances, which results in an overly optimistic estimate.

*Custodial parent is the one providing the most financial support.

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The only schools I see that should stay are the three UMASS and Northeastern only if the NPC comes in at $15k or less.

W Carolina is $20k all in - perhaps with your parents, a loan, and working you can get there.

The others won’t likely come even close on budget.

Good luck

https://npc.collegeboard.org/app/northeastern

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