I need advice/stories of colleges and their finaid process/recommendations that would be a good fit for my stats and what I am looking for!
I am open to any school in the United States with a good Computer Science department! Really good need-based financial aid packages for OOS students and location (urban area/maybe suburban) are the defining factors for my choice. It seems that for every fantastic story of a finaid journey I find at a particular college, I will quickly stumble upon a finaid horror story.
Ohio OSU, RIT, UIUC, UT Austin, BC, and BU are some of the colleges that have interested me thus far! I am not opposed to applying early decision for better finaid/admission chances to any school but the uncertainty of finaid has scared me from committing to an ED thus far.
INFO/STATS:
• First generation college student
• Senior
• Female
• Mixed race (Native American (Chickasaw on my CDIB), African American, and white)
• Home state is Oklahoma, have lived here my entire life
• My family’s income is $38,500 per year (single mother)(6 person household)
• 3.8 weighted and 3.667 unweighted GPA
• Unweighted rank of 21/150 (top 15%)
• 26 composite on my only ACT attempt (Reading: 32, English: 27, Math: 17, science: 28)
• In ACT tutoring for the first time & expect to get a 28-30 composite on the October 27th date when I get my terrible math score up. I am averaging around a 27 consistently on math practice tests in tutoring and on ACT Kaplan Prep right now.
• Taking SAT in November and December for the first time
• My entire school career has revolved around tech/the sciences: things like robotics team, attending tech leadership conferences at every chance I can, math honor society, math club, science club, BPA, lots of CS electives
• Leader and founder of Students Demand Action (SDA) chapter at my school this year
• 4 on English Lang AP test, and 2 on APUSH
• In AP Psych, AP English Lit, and AP Calculus AB right now
I haven’t really seen any posts by people like me, in my income bracket, on the extreme end of “low income”. People always say that very poor and very rich applicants have it easier on the financial aid front but I have been struggling to find any definitive information.