I'm currently a junior at a pretty affluent (and competitive) school. My mom lost her job over the summer and I'm not sure how long she'll be unemployed this time considering that she's almost 60 and seems to spend less time looking for jobd every week.
Family income fell from $100,000 to $50,000-60,000 including unemployment, which is far above "low income" and not enough for reduced lunch or need-based outside scholarships. We have high mortgage payments that reflected the former income, not the latter. My dad also had surgery the day after my mom was laid off (we were on mom's insurance I believe). No money in a 529 and my parents have said that they can't pay.
My current GPA is 4.3 W, 4.0 UW. Will have completed 8 AP classes by the end of this year. Decent ECs, but nothing *wow* worthy, especially considering that my school pumps out an unreal amount of competition math awards. I'm taking the SAT tomorrow and will probably update come December 22.
My current school list:
Brown (ED)/MIT (EA) I'm leaning towards Brown ED but I'm worried about financial aid/commitment issues.
Rice
Harvey Mudd
URochester (possible merit)
Case Western (EA, free app)
Pitt (applying as soon as possible, looking for application waiver and merit)
Santa Clara (EA for merit)/Lafayette/Bucknell
UA (hopefully full tuition and $2,500 eng. scholarship)
Local Directional (merit)
Is there any way to reduce application fees besides asking my counselor to write letters to all these schools? I suppose that I could axe SCU/Lafayette/Bucknell but I don't really want to change my list otherwise. I'm still open to all suggestions though.
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