Boston College

Metropolitan Boston would be a great place to look. Three good schools that are suburban but near the city are Boston College, Brandeis University, and Eastern Nazarene College. The first two are big research universities west of Boston and the third one is a small liberal arts college on Boston's South Shore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_College http://www.bc.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandeis_University http://www.brandeis.edu/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Nazarene_College http://www.enc.edu/

Top notch colleges in the Boston metro area include the following: School Princeton Review Academic Rating Harvard 99 College of the Holy Cross 98 Boston College 87 Tufts 89 Brandeis 88 MIT 97 Boston Univ 84 Northeastern: 79

Why not consider a college that meets all of your demonstrated financial need? Most of your college expenses will be covered, you'll have a place to stay, and you can get loans to cover the rest. This isn't a complete list, but here are some of the schools that meet all or most of a student's demonstrated financial need: The following schools meet 100% of demonstrated student need (per the FAFSA): Amherst Barnard Bates Boston College Bowdoin Brown Bucknell CalTech Carleton Claremont-McKenna Colgate Cornell Columbia Dartmouth Davidson Duke Emory Franklin & Marshall Georgetown Gettysburg Grinnell Harvard Harvey Mudd Haverford Holy Cross (MA) Lawrence Macalester M.I.T. Middlebury Mt. Holyoke Northwestern Notre Dame Oberlin Occidental Pitzer Pomona Princeton Reed Rice St. Olaf Scripps Smith Swarthmore Stanford Tufts U. of Pennsylvania U. of Richmond USC UVA Vanderbilt Vassar Wabash Washington U. in St. Louis Wesleyan (CT) Wellesley Williams Yale The following schools meet at least 90% of demonstrated student need: Adrian -- 98% Agnes Scott -- 97% Allegheny -- 92% Babson -- 97% Berea College -- 92% Bethel College (IN) -- 90% Boston U. -- 90% Bryn Mawr -- 98% Colorado College -- 91% Cornell College -- 91% Denison -- 93% DePauw -- 98% Dickinson -- 96% Earlham -- 95% George Washington U. -- 94% Hamilton -- 99% Hampshire -- 96% Hood -- 90% Hiram -- 95% Illinois Wesleyan -- 90% Johns Hopkins -- 96% Kenyon -- 98% Lafayette -- 99% Lehigh -- 98% Loyola College (MD) -- 98% Marietta -- 92% Muhlenberg -- 95% Ripon -- 93% St. John's College (MD) -- 90% Southern Methodist U. -- 91% Tulane -- 94% Valparaiso -- 90% Vanderbilt -- 99% Virginia Military Institute -- 90% Washington College -- 90% Washington & Lee -- 99% Wooster -- 93% You can also consider going into the military first. They'll house you, train you, and provide funds toward college afterwards. And military vets in some states (such as Illinois) get free tuition at state universities.

There are many private schools that will meet 100% of your demonstrated financial need (per FAFSA) once they have admitted you. However, they tend to be the better schools in the country so it's hard to get admitted to them. If your grades are good, however, it's definitely worth checking into some of these schools. Here's a partial list: The following schools meet 100% of demonstrated student need (per the FAFSA): Amherst Barnard Bates Boston College Bowdoin Brown Bucknell CalTech Carleton Claremont-McKenna Colgate Connecticut College Cornell Columbia Dartmouth Davidson Duke Emory Franklin & Marshall Georgetown Gettysburg Grinnell Harvard Harvey Mudd Haverford Holy Cross (MA) Lawrence Macalester M.I.T. Middlebury Mt. Holyoke Northwestern Notre Dame Oberlin Occidental Pitzer Pomona Princeton Reed Rice St. Olaf Scripps Smith Swarthmore Stanford Trinity College (CT) Tufts U. of Pennsylvania U. of Richmond USC UVA Vanderbilt Vassar Wabash Washington U. in St. Louis Wesleyan (CT) Wellesley Williams Yale The following schools meet at least 90% of demonstrated student need: Adrian -- 98% Agnes Scott -- 97% Allegheny -- 92% Babson -- 97% Berea College -- 92% Bethel College (IN) -- 90% Boston U. -- 90% Bryn Mawr -- 98% Coe College Colorado College -- 91% Cornell College -- 91% Denison -- 93% DePauw -- 98% Dickinson -- 96% Earlham -- 95% George Washington U. -- 94% Hamilton -- 99% Hampshire -- 96% Hood -- 90% Hiram -- 95% Illinois Wesleyan -- 90% Johns Hopkins -- 96% Kenyon -- 98% Lafayette -- 99% Lehigh -- 98% Loyola College (MD) -- 98% Marietta -- 92% Muhlenberg -- 95% Ripon -- 93% St. John's College (MD) -- 90% Skidmore -- 94% Southern Methodist U. -- 91% Tulane -- 94% Valparaiso -- 90% Vanderbilt -- 99% Virginia Military Institute -- 90% Washington College -- 90% Washington & Lee -- 99% Wooster -- 93%

Olin College is free, and specializes in engineering. After that, there are the UMass campuses. UMass at Amherst is the "flagship" campus and is reasonably good in pretty much every subject. UMass-Lowell is the next most respected campus, and is competitive in quality with Amherst in engineering and music - maybe even better in some areas. The other two are at Dartmouth and Boston and are not perceived nearly as well. Among the private schools other than Olin College, Northeastern is the cheapest major one. It offers all subjects, but it's most respected in engineering and business and its cooperative education model makes it pretty good for people who want a clear path to a career. Then there are the major national private schools and elite liberal arts colleges. They all cost about the same amount. The big name small colleges are Amherst and Williams are the most prestigious, while Smith and Wellesley are two of the best women's colleges. There are also a few other good ones - Clark, Hampshire (although it's a bit of a hippie school, which may be good or bad depending on what you're into), Mt Holyoke (another women's college). They're all pretty good in basic academic subjects, but most don't offer career-oriented majors like engineering and business. They have 3-2 programs set up with other schools for engineering. Among the major universities, MIT is the only one that's really specialized, in science, engineering, economics and architecture. The other big name places are Harvard, Boston University, Boston College and Tufts. There also a few real specialty schools that are quite good - for example Emerson for performing arts.