My HS senior is struggling to figure out a good balance of schools to apply to. She has a 3.87 GPA, honors and AP classes, and is not submitting test scores. She doesn’t have any rock star stats or activities, and wants to find a not-tiny school with students who care a lot about their studies but aren’t overly competitive, fun and friendly but not a party school. We are middle income with savings and can contribute, but wouldn’t bother with schools that have no hope of financial aid. She’s applying to our state school (University of Maryland) but would love to be more out of town. Wants to be in or near a city or decent sized town. What kind of acceptance rate is a target for regular good student? Without test scores it’s very hard to use the calculators. Any suggestions for where to apply?
I’m unclear from your post if you qualify for need based financial aid or are you hunting for merit? If you are needing merit aid, then acceptance rate really isn’t that helpful in determining the list. You want to look at schools with high acceptance rates where your D’s GPA puts her above the 75th percentile.
Your description of her wants, and needing aid, had me thinking of Xavier in Cincinnati.
Unfortunately you are too close to the EA deadline of 11/1 for some of the other schools but Xavier’s is 12/1.
Hopefully others will chime in with other suggestions.
Thanks for your reply. We would qualify for some need-based financial aid. I was focusing on that over merit aid.
Look into Wheaton for strength in humanities and proximity to Boston.
Posters can provide better recommendations if you give us more info…
Is the 3.87 GPA weighted or unweighted? Any AP test scores?
What can the family afford per year for college?
Any geographic limitations?
Initial ideas would include U Dayton, Butler, Miami Ohio, James Madison.
Perhaps Christopher Newport
Salisbury or Univ Delaware ?
Dickinson?
Oops, I think I edited out location by mistake.
- Northeast or MidAtlantic is preferred, but might consider Ohio. Definitely doesn’t want rural/isolated.
- 3.87 is unweighted. Weighted is 4.58
- Has a 4 on one AP exam
- I am struggling to figure out where to go on cost. I don’t want her to have a ton of debt but I’d like her to at least explore out of state schools. $15,000 is a guess? That sounds scary.
College costs are scary!
Is U Maryland affordable? Your D can take out $27K in total loans over the 4 years of undergrad…$5,500 the first year then $6.5K, $7.5K, $7.5K. Any loans beyond that will be on the parents, either directly or as co-signers.
None of the initial schools I suggested above will get close to $15K per year. What that means is that you are looking for full tuition award (alone or in combo with need based aid).
I second looking at Salisbury, would add Towson and St. Marys. Run the NPCs to see what the estimated cost is for each.
OK, if $15,00 isn’t close then I think I misunderstood how to phrase it. I feel like we could come up with $10,000/year to contribute and the rest would be loans. So maybe I should have said $25,000.
We compared some net price costs in a very general way on Niche without going into detail, and the average seemed to be around $25,000.
I was thinking St Mary til you said not rural or isolated.
Kalamazoo but it’s a bit past Ohio.
Franklin & Marshall meets need. But no merit aid.
The first is a likely; the second a target/slight reach.
Muhlenberg is another to look at.
My kids with higher stats and test scores were only able to get OOS publics in the northeast down to $35,000. UMD comes in at a nice price for in state students.
You have to run the net price calculators at each of the schools…we don’t know if the EFC that schools calculate for you is affordable. If not, then meet full need schools won’t work.
OK, thanks so much. I do care about cost of course, but my main issue is figuring what schools to investigate. Then we can cut out those that seem out of the question financially.
That is so helpful. I was wondering about OOS state schools. Pitt seems interesting.
My daughter only got $8000 in merit so it moved closer to the bottom (she applied to 20).
Yes, and Pitt merit aid is rapidly decreasing, with their focus to increase need based aid for in-state students.
Plus it’s a TO student and I think that makes it further unlikely. Historically Pitt has wanted high test scores for merit. And even that often isn’t enough.
I believe that getting into an unaffordable school is worse than a rejection. I would rather not apply. I think that you really need to run a Net Price Calculator on a school that says they do full need to see if her net price gets into the 10-15k range. Also, I don’t think that you mentioned any areas of interest for her. Some schools don’t have everything.
I totally agree with you on not applying to unaffordable schools, and she’s not going to do that. I feel like I messed up my question by trying to guess a dollar amount. What I really want to know is, to make a list of schools to even think about, which ones with her location/size/etc criteria accept decently good students who don’t have those “extras”. Then within that group we’d see which are good in her areas of interest (possibly gov’t/poli sci), which are financially acceptable, etc. Maybe that’s a backwards way of looking at it, we’re inexperienced!