<p>Hi all...We value the opinion of so many on CC. The advice we have received on these forums have helped us tremendously throughout the college application process. Now we have a decision to make. We are helping guide our daughter in choosing her college (she actually wants us too! :)...a very good kid!).</p>
<p>She has been offered admission to 12 fine universities. She has narrowed it down to these 3... Pepperdine, Chapman and ASU, Barrett The Honors College. She has received some amazing merit offers from Pepperdine ($25,000) and Chapman ($29,750) and ASU, BHC ($8,500) however the COA is so much lower @ ASU that the bottom line on the costs for all 3 schools is almost the same. </p>
<p>She is majoring in Creative Writing.</p>
<p>Which one of these schools would all of you wise folks recommend?</p>
<p>Lots of posts include BHC as a school in contention. I am in So Cal myself, but am not all that familiar with either Chapman or Pepperdine. ASU as a whole is so different from both of them. I am familiar with the Honors College because I have a nephew who will be going there and I have lots of family in Az. I encouraged my d to apply but she didn’t want Az. Barretts functions almost like a LAC inside a huge university. While ASU does have some well-known programs the overall reputation is not stellar. The honors college, on the other hand is well-known throughout the country; grad schools, etc know what it means to say “I come from BHC vs. ASU”. It is a great education with access to many features of a large university eg. school spirit, sports teams, class etc. Everyone I know who has gone to a reception with the dean has been really impressed. I think it comes down to what your daughter wants. Even though you are guiding her, which is great, she ultimately has to feel comfortable where she is going.</p>
<p>Good advice…Thank you. You are correct our daughter needs to know where she “feels” the most at home! Thank you also for the information on Barrett’s, we are hearing more and more good things about it! :)</p>
<p>I’d check out Chapman for creative writing purposes. I know that the school is mentioned as an alternative for those who want to do film studies but can’t make it into USC or UCLA. I wonder if they have a creative writing program that is a notch above?</p>
<p>Any Chapman alumni or current students aboard?</p>
<p>My biggest problem with any state university is the financial hole that state governments are in that might impact funding of state colleges. I know that BHC is a crown jewel in the Arizona system, but I would google Arizona universities and funding to see what the locals think about how ASU will be affected.</p>
<p>^ Agreed. Barrett has its own endowment, but your D will be majoring and taking many classes in ASU proper.</p>
<p>My nephew and niece attend Chapman with great merit awards. They are loving it. I have two who went to UCs and one at a small Chapman like private and she is loving the attention.</p>
<p>Not sure how that compares to AZ honors, but with today’s budgetary issues I would be inclined to take private over public if the cost is similar.</p>
<p>Pepperdine v Chapman, both have a religious base, Pepperdine is stereotyped as more yuppie, more monied, more blonde & malibu 
Chapman I see as less yuppie, but still attended by people valuing private. </p>
<p>Chapman is newer and less famous than Pepp., but it is getting all sorts of good PR. Between those, I would visit and go with her gut feeling for fit!</p>
<p>^Even my senior D has mentioned her fear of attending a UC because of budgetary reasons and has said that she’d rather go to a private college. Of course, she isn’t footing the bill…</p>
<p>This may sound like a silly question…so the students at ASU Barrett’s only live together and eat together but they attend classes on the big campus with the rest of the ASU students?
I think what attracted my daughter to the ASU/ Barrett program was that it was small, 2,700 students. She really is looking for a smaller school experience and I know ASU is huge! 
Does anyone know if the Barrett students attend all there classes on the main campus?
Thank you!</p>
<p>All Barrett students take a two-semester freshman humanities sequence called The Human Experience, and only Barrett students may take it. It gets rave reviews.</p>
<p>Barrett has a lengthy list of courses offered through Barrett – either unique courses or Barrett-only honors sections taught by Barrett faculty and tightly capped in enrollment size.</p>
<p>For other courses, Barrett students take regular ASU courses, which they can choose to take on an honors contract (with added requirements and honors recognition), or as a regular course. But, Barrett students get preferential enrollment. </p>
<p>What we’ve seen in looking at Barrett:
- Many of the GE courses can be taken through Barrett. We’ve heard great things about these.
- All of her language courses will be “regular” ASU courses, possibly with an honors contract, but started at a high-enough course level due to AP credit.<br>
- Because ASU is huge, they have a lot of faculty members in most departments. Because professor ratings are out there (ratemyprofessor and others) and you can speak with other Barrett students about their experiences, we think D will be able to choose professors that are challenging and good. Preferential enrollment means you can get into more of the classes you want. (And on ratemyprofessor we’re thinking that the professor marked as challenging but hard is not particularly a problem.)</p>
<p>Barrett isn’t nearly perfect, but we had some other issues with many of the liberal arts colleges to which she was admitted: price was one, but we also noted that quite a few of the possible majors she was interested in had only two to four faculty members at these colleges. That isn’t a huge amount of depth, particularly when only one or two of them are tenure-track. This may have been a different decision if she was interested in something like Econ where most of the LACs have much larger departments, but that’s our thinking.</p>
<p>One other thing for us is that with Barrett’s cost structure and merit scholarships for OOS students, we can afford to let D consider summer opportunities and internships that don’t involve paid work. For us that is simply not an option at any of her fine LAC choices.</p>
<p>Wow…^^^ Thank you! Great information. you have really done your homework. I will share this with my daughter. Thanks again! :)</p>
<p>[ASU</a> Budget Cuts](<a href=“http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/news/ASU_Budget_Cuts]ASU”>FOX 10 Phoenix)</p>
<p>“Arizona State University says $88 million in state-imposed budget reductions will force it to enact an enrollment cap and close some four dozen academic programs.”</p>
<p>Just double check to make sure that the program your D wants to pursue isn’t one of those axed.</p>
<p>my top three college choices were also pepperdine, chapman, and asu barrett.
it was a really tough choice between pepeprdine & asu, but i ended up choosing asu and am excited to move in next month.
i never would have thought someone else was deciding between those same three schools! :)</p>