Cost of attendance up to $35,000-40,000 with merit scholarships. For an ethnically diverse, liberal, non religious, LGTB friendly student wanting to major in political science. UC GPA Unweighted 3.91, UC GPA Weighted 4.26. 9-12 Academic GPA 4.5. Four APs Sophomore and Junior years, three Senior year, three Honors Freshman and Sophomore. No SAT yet, PSAT 1270. Leadership and extracurriculars.
I was a little confused by the format of your descriptions.
So, if I can paraphrase:
You are looking for a safety school within a budget of $40k (per year?) and hope for additional merit options.
Safeties, are your in-state publics, but you haven’t indicated in which state you reside.
Safeties also need to be affordable and those that would admit you.
You can apply to private’s, but there are no guarantees that you will get merit, so they wouldn’t be safeties.
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My state is California, that’s why I included the UC GPA. Will definitely apply to a variety of in state publics. Our total budget for cost of attendance is $35,000 to $40,000 maximum, which is approximately the cost of attendance of University of California. What I am trying to find is private colleges generous with their merit scholarships for a student like mine that will likely bring the cost of attendance down to our range.
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Willamette?
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Since you’re looking for merit dollars, and the Pacific Northwest is your target, you may want to start first with the Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE). The universities in the West have a tuition exchange agreement whereby you pay 150% of instate tuition costs. There is a catch. Not every university participates. Some of the larger universities, like UW and the majority of the UC’s, limit their WUE numbers because they need those out of state funds.
When you go to the WUE website, you will see which universities have WUE capacity. It does make sense for someone who would like to go out of state at an affordable rate.
(Yes I saw the UC GPA, but you have to understand that on this website, there are hundreds of thousands of students, from out of state and internationally, who apply to the UC’s and convert their GPAs using the UC Roger hub calculator.
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Lewis & Clark. We are from CA. DD applied early action and got offered more than 30K/yr merit. They value UC-qualified students and are a lovely, quality school.
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to that point: one of my daughter’s “safety” options is Western Washington, a great WUE choice. not only did they offer her WUE status (at some schools, it’s not automatic; you have to earn it) and a scholarship, they have some awesome, unusual majors (Spanish-French dual major, anyone?). I was very impressed. I also liked NAU but of course that’s not in the PNW.
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I am looking both in California and the Pacific Northwest. I will look in more detail at WUE. Is there one Oregon public that has a better program for political science?
Willamette is definitely in the list!
That is great to know! Did the total cost of attendance come down to under $40,000?
Linking:
Also, I think Portland State is WUE. If you go to WUE, you can plug in your preferences.
Edited to add: try to get her into a school that’s near the State Capitol so that your daughter can do internships at the Capitol-if that’s the area that she’s looking into.
Our daughter attended Davis and had friends that majored in Poli Sci who worked at the Capitol in Sacramento and had paid undergrad internships. It’s 20 minutes down the road from Davis.
So if that’s the area that your daughter has an interest in, that may be a location issue to include in your needs/wants.
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Yes, it is. I am already at the WUE website looking at options and cost.
maybe a little more. around that. don’t have it in front of me but if memory serves it came to within 10K of a typical in-state, no-aid UC education. i know that is a lot more annually, but in the overall scheme of things, i figure what you’re getting in return is smaller class size, instruction by professors who want to teach undergrads instead of TAs, and a host of other private-y perks. it seemed like okay value.
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Good luck!
This is true. Thank you so much for your thoughts.
When my D was applying, Willamette, Lewis and Clark, and University of Puget Sound brought the cost down to 40k with merit (she was pretty high stats, and this was 2016). Willamette stood out as a good school for political science (across the street from the Oregon capitol bldg as I recall) and we liked all three of them.
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