@Momminit Given your D20’s reaction to Wooster, I’d recommend checking out Beloit. We visited with S20 in October. They have a similar vibe and good merit aid. Not sure about a climbing wall.
Grinnell sounds perfect for her. Our S17 attends and it’s been great. One of the best schools to offer strong merit aid. Sounds like you already have a visit planned. There is a climbing wall on campus. Ask to see it as it is not on the standard tour. It’s in the building that houses the pool (don’t forget to look at the pool while in that building…it’s incredible and also not on the standard tour).
[quote]
[/I don’t know about Wesleyan, but Williams offers terrific climbing venues, both rock wall and real mountains, plus extensive music performance opportunities, even for non-majors.quote]
Eckerd College in St Petersburg has a nice merit aid and financial aid package. Very much geared to social justice, lots of spring break service trips, study abroad during semester, winter term and spring into summer classes. Have a resident diplomat, brand new visual arts building, a nice theater dept with a local theater company on site as well, student improv, environmental film festival, reflective service learning, honors college, freshman research projects, senior capstone project, Phi Beta Kappa, BA or BS in psych, internships. Very strong mentorship program, a collaborative learning environment. There is indoor rock climbing about 10 to 15 min away in downtown St. Pete and ropes and zip lining courses about 30 min away. Eckerd is a CTCL school/
You daughter is competitive for Carleton, and Macalster would almost be in the Safety School range
My kid is also looking at Neuroscience, and was looking at an arts minor (though is more interested in dance or creative writing nowadays) and both were on her list. If your kid is a potential National Merit Scholar (which seems very possible, based on her SSI), Macalaster does have National merit Scholarship funding.
@Momminit Your D sounds quite a bit like my D17 in terms of interests and stats. We were also on the midwestern merit hunt. As others have mentioned, merit at midwestern LACs might get you to 30-40K COA; 25K will be tough. Here’s a summary of our research from two years ago.
St Olaf and Wooster - merit maxed out at half COA; these days, that would be low 30s as your cost
Oberlin, where my kid enrolled, ticks all the academic boxes for your daughter but COA assuming maximum merit is likely to be 40K+
Macalester and Dickinson topped at 20K merit 2 years ago; may be higher now. She got better offers elsewhere. Mac’s National Merit award is 2K/year.
You might get to your budget target at Ohio Wesleyan, Knox, Earlham, Beloit, Lawrence, Ursinus, or Susquehanna.
Mount Holyoke has a few full tuition awards as does Denison and, I believe, Muhlenberg, Centre, Hendrix, and maybe Rhodes.
Grinnell used to have some full tuition awards but I read somewhere on CC that they had been discontinued. Check their site.
Case Western and Wash U both have some full tuition awards by separate application - highly competitive but your daughter’s stats are sufficient to toss her hat in the ring. Case has institutional affiliations with both Cleveland Music and Art Institutes. It also offers merit awards without separate app up to the low 30s. Demonstrated interest is important there.
I’ll second Lawrence U in Appleton, WI (half an hour from Green Bay) as a very good low match/safety if the finances work. They are quite good for a LAC in the sciences – they offer a Biochem major and Cog Sci minor – and they are great in music.
Some great suggestions and feedback here. Unfortunately Beloit and Ursinus are way too small. Grinnell was as small as she was willing to go at 1800, and only because it seems to be a great fit in every other way.
@Andrew2199, she already has plans to get to Grinnell a day early so that she can see and hopefully get to climb on their wall This is a fairly new hobby for her but she has really taken to it for both exercise and relaxation.
We’ll have a better idea of exact budget once we do taxes and this year’s finances. We might be able to stretch to $30K but it would be tough. And with 2 more kids coming behind her we need to be careful about overextending ourselves.
@mwolf Carleton isn’t going to get down to $25K given their situation.
Does the $25K include her taking her federal loans? If not, you could stretch to $30K. I agree that Lawrence might give her enough merit to get to $25K.
Yes, cost is the big issue here, especially with 2 younger siblings involved. Please don’t over promise to your oldest at the possible expense of your youngest two. If you are having to look that closely at your budget, you don’t want to get in a bind every year with looking at finances and being worried about increased cost. It’s not uncommon for parents to set a budget with the first , up to instate cost for instance. Truly wealthy parents obviously have more leeway. Figure out a number you can live with and present it to your child. Then, you can go from there- if they want a more expensive school, they might need to take out loans or look for merit. Ideally, top budget is all settled before applications go out.
Yes, cost is the big issue here, especially with 2 younger siblings involved. Please don’t over promise to your oldest at the possible expense of your youngest two. If you are having to look that closely at your budget, you don’t want to get in a bind every year with looking at finances and being worried about increased cost. It’s not uncommon for parents to set a budget with the first , up to instate cost for instance. Truly wealthy parents obviously have more leeway. Figure out a number you can live with and present it to your child. Then, you can go from there- if they want a more expensive school, they might need to take out loans or look for merit. Ideally, top budget is all settled before applications go out.
@sevmom I totally agree. We have made it very clear to her that we will give her a college budget this spring and that it is non-negotiable. While we would love to give her the college experience that she dreams of, we can’t do it at the expense of her siblings or our retirement. Grad school is probably in her future, so we would also prefer that she avoid any student loans.
@intparent and @MWolf regarding family costs of attendance at Carleton College: The following chart I gleaned from a Carleton fall 2018 admissions publication titled “be your self” (yes, it was lower caps!) might be of help in gauging family costs of attendance.
Family Income/ Avg Fin Aid Award/ Avg Net Cost
Less than $40,000/ $65,784/ $5,572
$40,000 - $80,000/ $62,350/ $8,854
$80,000 - $120,000/ $52,171/ $19,064
$120,000 - $160,000/ $44,839/ $26,405
As always, it is best to evaluate one’s own financial situation by going to Carleton’s financial aid estimator at:
@MinnesotaDadof3 We did not find Carleton’s aid to be this high for a $120K - $160K family a few years ago. In any case, the OP says in their initial post that they do not think they will be eligible for much FA. So I suppose if the OP is mistaken about whether they’d get need based aid, then Carleton might be a fit. If there is a chance for FA, the OP should run the net price calculator everywhere. But I’m taking their post at face value that they’ve already looked at this with meets need colleges, and determined that the calculators aren’t providing the COA they are looking for.
If her grad school is the type she probably will have to pay for (law, MBA, masters program without PhD), then this makes sense. If she is going into a field where a PhD is really optimal, then she will get paid to go to grad school and complete her PhD (they actually waive the tuition during the years when they are taking classes for the masters portion of the PhD program, and pay a stipend for TAing and eventually researching). So any PhD program worth completing should fund her experience and she shouldn’t need additional loans if that is her path.
Often something on the wish list has to go when finances are concerned - size, location, a specific major. Although she thinks she’d like an LAC, I’d recommend she look at where that NMF prize will get her a free or almost free education. Some of those schools have really nice music or performance programs and strong STEM programs for her other interests. An honors program or LLC might make a big school much smaller. Not every school is full of 300 student lectures and there are plenty of seminars or small group discussion classes.
My daughter really wanted a smaller school but finances didn’t allow for that (at least in places she was interested in) so she went with a flagship (although a smaller one). She is SO glad she did as she changed majors a few times and had lots of choices. My other daughter went to a mid-sized school (3500) and often wished she was at a bigger school as her choices were limited as far as professors, activities, new friends. Especially by senior year, she was ready for a bigger world. She had the same professor for 2 classes, her senior project, and she worked for him her last semester. Yep, ready to move on.
Kentucky, Oklahoma, any of the Florida schools through Benacquisto scholars. A friend of my daughter’s went to UCF and I was so surprised as I thought she’d go to an LAC or a school like Emery. Money was not an issue. She absolutely thrived at UCF and had got the lead in a musical within days of arriving on campus.
First rule of grad school: NEVER start a non-professional graduate degree unless you have been ensured 100% financial support. If you need to take a loan to do your PhD, MA, MS, or MFA, (I differ from @intparent on this) than you should not do it. Find a school that will pay full tuition and provide guaranteed paid assistantships or a stipend for the length of the degree (at least 2 years for a master’s or 5 years for a PhD), otherwise, Just Say No.
I agree that many masters degrees aren’t worth paying for. But in reality, it is a lot harder to get funding for a standalone masters. But that might be a different thread.
On greek life at Depauw, while it is very high participation percentage, our sense is that there is a greek life home for anyone who wants it. We know a music performance student who doesn’t check any sorority stereotype boxes – she is geeky, totally into her instrument, not into fashion, not a size 0, and found her very happy greek life home at Depauw. So, the participation rate may not be a reason to second guess fit. I’d keep it on the list at least for now.
I’d second the Muhlenberg suggestion: they have Neuroscience, a lively arts scene, some Greek that the administration keeps very firmly in hand, and those stats will likely bring decent merit money. Plus it’s not an extremely stressful environment so the cut-throat academics shouldn’t be a problem.
This is a fairly new hobby for her but she has really taken to it for both exercise and relaxation.