Based on your combination of interests, you may want to research colleges that offer a major in public policy. This site offers some — albeit highly selective — examples:
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I will throw out a slightly different suggestion: Rhodes College in Memphis, TN has a Health Equity major, here: Urban Studies | Rhodes College ; which may be similar to what you might be interested in. Rhodes has a good number of enrolled students from Texas, who have been shut out of the automatic entry program to UT-Austin (is it now the top 8% of each graduating high school class?), and when I visited there with my daughter a few years ago, a sizeable number of other visiting students were from Texas. Rhodes has a lovely campus, and highly regarded academics; further, Rhodes offers a number of merit scholarships, here: Scholarships and Fellowships | Rhodes College ; and if you land one of these, you could get close to your $35,000 annual budget. Rhodes might be worth a look.
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Another school that you might take a look at is the University of South Carolina, in Columbia, SC. It has a public health major, here: Public Health | University of South Carolina ; and in the past some OOS kids I know have gotten pretty decent merit scholarship money (although I don’t know how much that has tightened up lately). Here is a link to merit scholarships for non-residents: Scholarships for Nonresidents - Financial Aid and Scholarships | University of South Carolina; if you qualified for the Stamps, McNair, and Horseshoe Scholarships, then you would be within your budget.
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Students that go OOS are either rich, on a huge scholarship, or are up to their eyeballs in debt from co-signed student loans. If these options don’t apply, there are plenty of other schools to choose from. Don’t be too caught up in your potential major. An average college student will change their major 2-3 times. What interests you now probably won’t interest you in 2 years from now when you start actually exploring your interests. Just choose an affordable school with a wide variety of majors.
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You might want to check out these threads, as the students seeking colleges had similar interests of international relations and public health:
- Input on college list for intl. relations or public health for D22 please (from a Louisiana resident)
- Match for my S24 for Political Sci - International Relation and Pre-Med [TX, top 15%, 3.85, 1340, 31, <$28k] (from a Texas resident)
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Or sometimes if you are full pay and not rich an OOS public is less expensive than a private. W&M out of state tuition is 42K with a total cost of attendence of 64K which is dramatically less than full price for most private schools
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Yes, $25000 less than a private that my son considered.
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One could argue that you are still rich if you can cover a $64K nut, especially when lower cost and similar alternatives are available!!
I don’t think @coolguy40 was off in his description but of course people have the right to spend as they desire.
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I would love to hear the similar options at a lower cost for someone who is full pay! People save to be able to afford these schools, rich is quite relative depending on who you are and the word is a loaded one.
Sure - depends on the state.
I personally felt Miami of Ohio was similar - albeit bigger.
But W&M is a mid size, suburban school, in a small town. Are there not other schools similar in size - perhaps not in stature.
Nearby is Christopher Newport…it doesn’t have a national pull but it’s not so dissimilar. A school like Salisbury. How about a public like U Maine, SUNY Brockport, or New Paltz. Other states have mid size publics that are well thought of - whether a Truman State, UT Chattanooga or Martin, or TCNJ, Marshall University, Coastal Carolina. U of South Dakota anyone?
Cheaper privates could be a Denver, Trinity (TX), and then schools like Bryant, Butler, jesuit type schools and other privates.
If someone is full pay -ihey need to choose a school with a lower price point or merit if they don’t want to pay full freight for a school. There’s a ton out there.
Should they decide it’s W&M or bust, they’re entitled.
But to say there’s not lower cost schools, similar in size, often in geography and still provide an excellent academic excellence is not correct in my opinion.
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Funny that tsbna44 mentioned Salisbury - A friend’s child was accepted to W&M, but it was too expensive out of state, so went to Salisbury U., 2 and a half hours north of Williamsburg. Did the Honors College. Studied abroad in Scotland (in exchange program where it was the same cost as going to Salisbury; all scholarships “travelled”). Followed graduation from SU with a fully funded Masters degree in Scotland. Now in law school at Wake Forest. Got his BA and MA with no debt.
In sum - this example of one student, the lower stature school ended up quite well for him. I suspect he would have had a similarly good experience in so many others - Truman State, Chris Newport, TCNY, etc.
I am a booster for Salisbury, though, and SU does have a strong college of health sciences, with public health, and international studies is strong (the school was the no. 1 Masters level college producer of Fulbrights last year).
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