What college would be best for me?

MWolf
Sun, 29 Mar 2020 05:31:31 +0000

First of all, it is as difficult to get into UChicago or Duke (single digit acceptance rates) as it is to any of the Ivies but Harvard and Yale (maybe Princeton), and LACS like Amherst and Williams are not much easier. Since you wrote that you are looking at the 20%-40% acceptance rates, neither Amherst nor Williams is there - their acceptance rates are in the lower teens.

kathlit;d-2180066:

Lastly, I’d really like a school that has a great financial aid program. My family income is around 175k which isn’t enough for a substantial amount of need-based aid so any schools with merit aid or loan-free programs would be especially appealing to me.

I’m considering liberal art schools like Amherst or Williams, but I also really like the core curriculum aspect of UChicago, and the friendly vibe I got from Duke.

These two things are incompatible. Schools like Amherst, Williams, UChicago, have very little merit support - they focus on need-based financial aid.

The thing is that colleges offer merit funding in order to attract academically accomplished students to apply there. Colleges like those on your list don’t need to do so - they are already rejecting more academically accomplished students than they are accepting.

if you are chasing merit funding, you need to start looking for colleges based on whether they have good merit scholarships, and then cull them based on whether they check the rest of your boxes.

Good luck - you are early in the process of college applications, and you are asking the right questions, and looking for the right things.