Just drove thru Utah State. Drove by the Agricultural buildings 9 miles from campus, then had ice cream at the on campus creamery. Voted #1 in Utah! Campus was nice with a lot of green lawns. Logan is a nice small town, though pretty much 1 street and not as nice as Ogden.
The Logan cemetery divides the residential areas and athletic fields from the rest of the campus. Not really, an issue, but it was interesting, because the Greenfield cemetery seems to do the same on the University of Wyoming campus
Overall, D liked University of Utah the best, followed by Boise state. I wished UU would give a WUE eligibility chart based on SAT/ACT and GPA. (However, I saw in another post that they are looking for an ACT of 30-31 for WUE, which is currently out of range for D).
They really did push becoming a Utah Resident. We’ll have to make a plan of when she’ll be in the state and out of the state to meet residency requirements.
- Does anyone know if you can check into the dorms early before fall semester? (We were thinking that if she first arrived around August 1, 2020 for a family vacation until she could check into the dorms, she could get residency by August 1, 2021 and then spend some of her summer before sophomore year out of state.
- Does anyone know if this would work?
The first week and a half are August stayover (https://housing.utah.edu/apply-reserve/break-housing-stayover/) when the dorms are closed for maintenance and cleaning. But you just need to be in the state with evidence of that (spending on her debit/credit card is the usual way to prove it). So you would need to extend your vacation until move in (for freshmen usually the Thursday before classes start).
Remember that the following summer, she’ll want to either take classes (those are at in-state rates in the summer) or be there as an orientation adviser all the way up to the beginning of summer stay over (that’s what makes you eligible for summer housing). So really there’s only about 1-2 weeks of opportunity to go home in any case. Christmas is longer, but most people go back right after new year for a holiday (skiing is the obvious choice) and limit their time out of state to about 2-2.5 weeks.
Most people stay at fall and spring break (good for national park trips) and often for thanksgiving (last year was the BYU football game so no one wanted to leave, that’s not the case this year).
I’m a little confused on the August Stayover.
- Are the dorms closed, except that a few are open for August Stayover?
- Is this option available for incoming Freshman?
Regardless, we’ll probably use the “Red Cart Storage” (mentioned in the link you sent) to store her stuff and then vacation as a family. However, it’s good to know that there is an August Stayover option.
I’m guessing if she is at home in NorCal during the summer of 2020 before she starts at UU, then arrives for either August Stayover or family vacation on about 8/4/2020, then she could get residency about 8/4/2021? If this works out, she might get a week in NorCal visiting high school friends before school starts up for her sophomore year, which she may like after spending her first summer in Utah.
Anyhow, it sounds like getting residency is quite doable, and the school isn’t fighting against you. I figure on the breaks, she could just come to NorCal for a few days and then we could vacation in Utah, probably camping or skiing. Also, I saw that the “learning abroad” programs on the breaks count toward residency, even though they are outside Utah, so that provides another option.
Took the D on a tour of UN Reno today. The UNR rep said that they changed the WUE requirement to accept either a 3.25 GPA “or” an 1160 SAT:
https://www.unr.edu/tuition-and-fees/tuition-discounts
This makes it significantly easier to get WUE, since they use to require “both” a 3.25 GPA “and” a 1240 SAT:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180217020155/https://www.unr.edu/tuition-and-fees/tuition-discounts#WUE%20Freshman
This helps my D, because she had the GPA, but not the SAT score, but now she only needs the GPA. Woo Hoo (ee)!