If your D is willing to consider a women’s college, Bryn Mawr offers merit aid but also is part of an outstanding consortium where students can take classes at Haverford, Swarthmore and Penn. BMC offers Russian.
It’s not that simple. Many need-blind/meets-full-need colleges are unaffordable for the donut-hole families who make too much money for need-based aid but not enough to plunk down over 250K for an U/G degree. Pursuing merit aid is a must, but many private colleges that offer great merit discounts for good students are also the kind of colleges that don’t have strong and deep offerings in less popular academic disciplines such as languages. It’s a dilemma.
After @JHS’s post, I think it’s best to simply just look for schools with study-abroad to Russian and/or French-speaking countries (where you can still apply your scholarship money for study abroad) and major in something else.
@aroundhere I am not trying to make decisions for her. I am trying to help educate her on what different options offer.
Would studying abroad for 2 yrs through UKy be a better or worse option than IB with French and Russian at USoCarolina and less time abroad? I have no idea. But school choice in this situation matters bc it influences what she can afford to do and how she approaches her UG studies.
“Would studying abroad for 2 yrs through UKy be a better or worse option than IB with French and Russian at USoCarolina and less time abroad? I have no idea. But school choice in this situation matters bc it influences what she can afford to do and how she approaches her UG studies.”
You (she) don’t have to decide that now. Until you see financial aid packages, you won’t have all the facts you need IMO.
There are also opportunities to intern abroad. I am sure it is country specific though and I don’t know anyone who has done it in Russia. That is one way to cover some of the cost if she can find a company that offers it.
Agree with @gettingschooled – at this point, you are just deciding what is worth applying to. In April she decides where she wants to go. When she gets to her school, she decides which of her many opportunities she wants to take advantage of over her years there, not all in the first week. You don’t need to, and probably can’t, map all this out in advance.
Also, remember that there is no one right answer. Chances are that her options aren’t uniformly better or worse than each other. Each will have its own pros and cons. Maybe both of those options you’re trying to rate are just fine and she should just pick the campus where she feels most at home.
I do want to add one extra tip, though. One thing I noticed with my own DDs search: read the fine print on merit aid and study abroad at each school. Some merit aid does not apply to study abroad at all and some is limited to one semester or one year max.
@gettingschooled I do understand that. We are assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that she will progress to NMF. UKy is essentially a full ride for NMF. USoCar still fits our budget with the Lieber award combined with one of the smaller awards. UKy is financially clearly the winner as far as her ability to study abroad is concerned. But, it is not the winner in other categories and their Russian dept is weaker than other schools she is considering.
We have received conflicting information about foreign languages which is why it is so confusing. @JHS’s comments are just another variation of the confusion caused by the two threads I referenced. At dept visits (which we have done a lot), the comments have always been that a student fluent in Russian and French is highly employable. But reading on CC and other sites makes it less clear.
What is more valid? Study something else like Econ and add on the languages. Study the foreign languages, literature, and culture and she will be fine. Study the languages and add on another area. The advice is conflicting and confusing from all directions.
Most scholarship applications have an Oct 15-Nov 1 deadline. We have been researching schools since the beginning of her 11th grade. She pretty much knows where she is applying. We are just discussing what her options are and just how much time abroad is more or less beneficial.
Perhaps a better question is does anyone have any sites or books they could recommend for her to read in order to understand some of the differences that the different options might lead toward career-wise? I
In both organizations, you have to be a US citizen in order to apply. Plus, there is no bus or DC Metro service to the NSA building, so you need your own transportation.
It is possible to get internships in the US Consulates abroad but I do not know if they pay anything.
There are some Federal scholarships but you have to be committed to work for the US Government for at least a year. In case you did not find this yet: http://www.borenawards.org/
I believe at this time you cannot use federal dollars to study in Russia so you may end up in some place like Estonia or Kazakhstan
I will second many posters here. It is wonderful to study what she enjoys, but to me the major has to be practical. Unless she wants to work in intelligence, I would not consider Russian a practical skill given current state of affairs with Russia and the number of available Russian native speakers here (I am one of them). Could she possibly use her language skills volunteering as a medical interpreter or teaching continuing adult Ed, while pursuing a different major?
Cornell University has a good Russian program and offers a commitment to low income families (see if you qualify).
“Families with a total family income of less than $60,000, and total assets of less than $100,000 (including primary home equity), will have no parent contribution.”
I work for a large company. We have people with political science degree working in IT, criminology major in production management, and a theater major in training department. They all have stable and well-paying jobs, just not what they envisioned in college. Would your daughter be OK if she does not work in her field? We tell our boys to have a backup: if your field is not in demand, how would you support yourself? Are you good with computers, know a second language, can quickly adapt? If she has does not have a backup, I would worry about job prospects with these majors.
@LoveMyPuppies We don’t qualify for any where near enough need-based aid to make Cornell affordable.
We have heard conflicting info about native speakers. At one top Russian program, she was told that non-heritage speakers have an advantage over heritage and native speakers over certain area. She was also told that intelligence agencies recruit foreign language literature majors as analysts.
She definitely wants to pursue a field that will allow her to be employable: it is trying to figure what that is that is the question. Her thoughts have been along the lines of international relations, international business, or Econ. The threads I linked in my first post seem to be all over the place as to what is valuable in terms of education and future employment.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek, sorry I haven’t looked into the major(s) of interest, but off the top of my head, which you probably already know, what are these schools like in your D’s areas of interest? I believe all have full tuition scholarships.
Vanderbilt
WUSTL
CMC
Davidson
U Pittsburgh
Baylor
Emory and/or Tulane may have them, too?
Very true they are fiercely competitive, but worth a shot given your limitations. And I assume you’ve consulted with a financial aid expert and run numbers on the most generous colleges (Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton).
I hope it works out for your D. She sounds amazing!!
I don’t claim to be an expert on advising kids but I do tell mine to think about what kind of lifestyle they want. As an example my dh has a very demanding and successful career which requires a tremendous amount of hours working. My ds has indicated that he wants a quality of life so therefore is thinking about jobs that will afford him time to do the things he loves. I can’t help but think about teaching with your daughter’s gift of language. Is teaching something she would be interested in? I didn’t notice what state you are in but I am in New York state and we have some amazing state schools that would also give a student like yours terrific merit money on an already good tuition price. Good luck to your dd. She sounds like a lucky girl to have so many talents.
This is mostly baloney. Although an average heritage speaker probably has limited reading and writing ability but if she avails herself to formal Russian instruction (some universities offer intensive courses for heritage speakers) she will have a leg up over your daughter. Some heritage Russian speakers actually get formal instruction in reading/writing in their childhood from either parents/grandparents or Russian language schools for kids. Some kids are sent to Russia for the summer to stay with relatives.
Now, the native Russian speakers may have deficiencies in their English (if they did not get here when they were young) and this may render them unqualified to translate fiction into English and do a few other things. However if they need to scout Russian forums over the dark web, intercept signal intelligence or conduct business negotiations with Russian oligarchs while drinking vodka - they will be at an advantage.
95% of fluent Russian speakers in the US do not use this language in their day job. Those who do - mostly serve Russian-speaking communities that are contracting as there is not much immigration. As was mentioned above business ties between two countries are practically non-existent and business/computer people in Russia are now fluent in English. I do not see much application of Russian language beyond limited opportunities in the military and government service. Actually, my daughter sampled a L3 Russian class at her university - every student in this class was a member of the ROTC.
Just a quick note to build on something someone else mentioned. You say you looked into the “critical language scholarships” but they focused on study abroad rather than UG. This is true… I’d just like to suggest that you don’t completely dismiss them as an option? Your daughter sounds like an ideal candidate for NSLI (which has Russian!), and doing that program as a gap year could give her a real boost for large merit awards–she’d go from an “ordinary” extraordinary student who has a gift for languages to a unique extraordinary student who won a competitive government scholarship and lived abroad for a year–something most Americans, let alone American teenagers, never do. Students who complete programs like this have an edge in that it makes them memorable, and also attractive–students who are selected for and complete these programs tend to be more independent, mature, open-minded… and they can claim a fluency in a foreign language that most students otherwise cannot.
I did one of these programs in high school (CBYX–Germany/German) and I believe it gave me an edge for merit money at BU–I met other former CBYX program participants once I was there, so I believe my alma mater in particular had a thing for us haha. It can give you an edge some places (and is generally life changing and ideal for anyone who has a passion for languages, international culture, and a possible career in foreign service). Your daughter’s language acquisition skills sound top-notch, and she may really benefit from something like this! Study abroad programs in college are nothing like high school programs–they are less immersive and it’s different to live abroad at 21, 22 vs. 16 (or 18). I recommend it!
(also, take a look at BU–it’s a crap shoot school, re: aid. You’ll either get little money or, with preferential packaging and competitive aid, could get a lot… but they have a Russian major and Russian study abroad options. BU may be worth the gamble, re: aid, depending on your daughter’s overall profile.)
As someone who to a LAC, has lots of friends who went to LAC’s and is married to someone who,got a liberal arts education at an Ivy, I say, don’t worry about a practical major. All the liberal arts people I know are gainfully employed. Some of their majors were more practical, relatively speaking, than others. Some have careers related to their majors and some do not. There’s no particular connection between the practicality of their major and how closely aligned their career is.
Employers of people with the kind of intelligence and drive your daughter obviously has like liberal arts students because they learn to think, to analyze and to learn. Skills can be taught. I would urge your daughter to go to the best school she can go to that she likes and can afford and to major in whatever most fascinates her. A career direction will come. It really will. And even if she doesn’t go directly from college to an entry level job in her chosen career, even if she futzes around a bit deciding and trying things, so long as she can support herself, so what? Sometimes you have to try stuff and a false start or two in your 20’s is hardly fatal to long term career success.
As for money, are you SURE that you can’t get the financial aid she needs? Eight kids including one who is disabled and will never be entirely self-supporting is a significant financial load to carry. It may be that on-line calculators don’t give accurate readings for families in your situations. I wonder what would happen if you picked a couple of LAC’s that might be her dream reach schools, money issues aside, and called the financial aid office and asked to have an informal, no commitment conversation with the dean of financial aid to see if whatever you’ve been looking at gives an accurate picture of what your expected contribution would actually be. I say LAC’s only because IME (which was admittedly a long time ago and covers very few schools) financial aid offices at the LAC I attended were more inclined to pay attention to unusual circumstances, to recognize where the usual formula didn’t work and generally to want to work with you than the two large research universities where I went to grad school.
Your daughter sounds like an amazing kid. Good luck to her.