Best colleges for exploring multiple fields? (creative writing, linguistics, computer science) [WA resident, 4.0, 1530, needs full merit ride]

College Search & Selection
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If your EFC is 25K and they’re not willing to contribute, it means they either take loans for you or you must commute to UW (if you get in, which is likely for creative writing but unlikely for all for CS due to the extremely low acceptance rate that make acceptance odds a lottery).
If you don’t get into UW, what happens?
If you get into a need-only college, what happens?
If you get a full-tuition scholarship, would that be enough?

With UW near you, I don’t think you should apply to colleges like Troy, SIU Carbondale, or Prairie View (look up their profiles).
Miami-OH might be worth a try.
LACs that offer merit scholarships, in case you’re lucky, also.

The basic set up is that parents should contribute to the best of their financial ability, roughly 25-30% of their income, through a combination of income and savings. (However if they can’t or won’t - too often the case with one divorced parent- then the choices are limited for the student. No one “forces” parents to pay something. It’s something they’re “supposed” or “expected” to do but if for whatever reason they don’t feel college is their responsibility there’re no mechanism to make them pay.)
Note that parents aren’t the sole people expected to contribute: students contribute through the federal loans (5.5K), savings from their part-time and/or summer job (if any), which may add up to 8K, 10K at the very most. Colleges may grant the student scholarships through various schemes but typically merit scholarships do not dent the “parents” contribution - often, if the student earns a scholarship, the loan is replaced with it, so that the student may take the 5.5K loan on top of the scholarship, but that doesn’t go very far.

Do you have a summer job? If you don’t, can you find one? (Basically whatever pays the most is what you’re looking for. Target, Cotsco, and Whole Foods are known to pay the most, and restaurants are desperate for reliable employees.) Then, save everything in a college fund.

Can your parents save anything, starting now, for your college? Even $50 set aside each month will help.

Full rides exist at some Southern universities for NMFs but by definition over 99% people don’t have access to those.

You really need to run the NPC on a couple colleges: UW, WWU, Whitman, Scripps (*) (for instance).

(* I was thinking Scripps or Pitzer might work academically, because being part of the consortium they offer lots of cross registration possibilities. Same thing for the 5College consortium in MA.)

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I would definitely prefer a small school over a large school, but I know that smaller communities exist at larger schools, so I guess my priority would then be having linguistics or a similar course of study available over size preference. Something I very much value though is the liberal arts atmosphere— I’m very drawn to how liberal arts colleges value the arts, focus on thinking, etc. I don’t think I could go to a science-focused research university that doesn’t have an active arts scene. So the arts atmosphere is very important to me, and while I would love to study linguistics, if necessary, there are alternate paths I could take— English, data analytics, etc.

I’m not religious at all and I think I’d be quite uncomfortable in that environment. I’ll do a quick look at the schools you mentioned though! Thank you!

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I wasn’t aware of this, thank you so much! Definitely helpful info to have.

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I think this was mentioned upthread, but as a resident of Washington State, you may find the WUE / WICHE program to be of interest. Basically, it is an alliance of some colleges in the Western States which grants significantly reduced tuition to residents of the other Western States. Please note that not all colleges participate, and that even in the colleges that do participate, some majors may or may not be included. But it might be worth a look:

Save On College Tuition | Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) (wiche.edu)

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I agree wholeheartedly - but OP has no $$. Not $25K. Not room and board at least now. And that’s why I showed them - well not SIU which wouldn’t be free.

OP wants to keep the hopes up of an “elite” school - and we all know that’s a dicey term because where is the cut off? Short of W&L Johnson and there’s a few others but they give to 10% of acceptees - who else offers that? Yes, a UVA and UNC and W&M, but those are entirely unrealistic and a lot of work. I think Davidson offers one, etc. But W&L is at 40+ with just an extra essay to apply and the rest, including SMU presidential - I believe smaller in quantity.

So I think the Miami Oho of the world’s are great - and are possible for free but again, very few - but even full tuition, which they wouldn’t offer, leaves a $15K hole, etc.

Often elite schools have no merit - and depending on what their specific NPC shows, there will be a contribution - at some more than others. So it’s less about whether you can get in (we don’t know) - but getting in isn’t relevant if there are no funds to pay.

I think maybe a read of this thread will be good for the parents because if they think there’s a magic wand of merit - well there is - but it’s at certain schools and it’s not necessarily 100% although it can get close at reputable schools. But again, OP is seeking Amherst and not Arizona.

But many solid, private LACs will go from $70K+ to $35-40K for a full pay and with need maybe that comes lower. OP can try.

But it’s the $0 that’s the issue. If they said, we’d pay $20K - it’d be different, etc.

OP - it will also cost you to apply. Is that a factor? You can see about fee waivers but they may or may not happen… Will your parents provide this?

btw - I know we’ve morphed into linguistics so not sure if CS is still a factor, but with a 27% acceptance into CS, the OP is likely fine at UW but there’s no assurance. Any other major - yes - fine.

And Seattle - especially when moving off campus - not inexpensive at all. And if OP will need loans or a job, maybe that should factor in.

For example, my son at Tuscaloosa - I just made his last rent payment - $699.

My daughter at Charleston (more akin to Seattle) - I paid her last payment for the year - well over $1300.

So cost is not just a factor for the first year - but for years afterward unless you’re at a school that typically houses kids for their entire time.

I do think you need to review this thread with your folks for some education.

You can do this alone but it won’t be at schools that you’d consider mainstream, whether you’d desire them or not.

Keep the faith - but do sit down with your folks for college costs 101.

btw -and each parent is welcome to their own opinion - but yes, we pay a lot to support our kids. But we knew that when we had them. It’s sort of an expectation but again, each family is different and I respect that.

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Right now, I would look at the costs of UW with your family: Estimated Annual Cost of Attendance for First-Year Undergraduates | Office of Planning & Budgeting. The Presidential Scholar is the largest scholarship listed on UW’s page and is $10k/year, which doesn’t even cover one’s years tuition which is $11,524. So if you are awarded a Presidential Scholarship, you would still have $1524 to pay towards tuition, plus $1515 in required fees (which doesn’t include course fees that might be required for various classes), bringing you up to $3039 in costs not covered. Then you add on room and board, because they would like you to have a residential college experience. That adds on $17,982, bringing you up to $21,021 that you will need to pay to UW. That does not include any expenses for books, a cell phone, any visits to the doctor/pharmacy, spending money, etc.

Ask them to work with you to figure out how you can cover $21k/year. How many hours per week would you have to work? You’re very fortunate that you live in Washington where the state minimum wage is $15.74/hour (many states are still at the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour). If you have a job paying that, you would need to work more than 1,336 hours (because you still have FICA, even if all the rest of your money is refunded back to you…which it is unlikely to be for $21k in annual income).

If you work 15 hours per week (which is definitely more than generally recommended for first year students), you would gross $7555.20 over the course of 32 weeks (two 16-week semesters). Then, if you were able to get a full-time job of 40 hours/week (which is not easy for temporary/summer/holiday work) for 18 weeks (giving you 2 weeks/year to find a job or take a break) that would get you $11,332.80 gross. So, in this idealized scenario, you would be able to earn $18,888 before taxes and FICA, and then would need to take out a loan to cover the rest. But notice, there were a lot of “ifs” in those statements. And as you discover what it is you’re interested in majoring in (and then doing post-graduation), you may find that relevant internships don’t pay what Washington minimum wage does. But those internships will be crucial in getting a job after graduation.

Basically, the above calculations are what would likely be needed for you to afford UW-Seattle as a residential student, if your family pays nothing and in an ideal situation job-wise (i.e. you working 15 hours/week during the school year, 40 hours/week for 18 weeks a year, and taking out the max federal loan). If that is something your parents don’t want to happen, see what they’re willing to contribute financially for that not to happen.

If your family is unwilling or unable to contribute anything more financially, then perhaps looking at all those calculations will make you more excited about any options that will offer you a full ride, even if they don’t have the cachet of a more “elite” name.

With the update on your preferences, I will keep a look out for more full tuition and full ride possibilities at schools that might be a fit.

In that case, the latter schools of that post are unlikely to be a good fit for you.

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The problem is that my family makes just over 125k, so we don’t qualify for as much aid as we would otherwise.

I ran some NPCs (some of them required info that I don’t want to ask my parents for at the moment, it’s been kind of a hectic week as we prepare to travel) and in order of least to most expensive: WWU (22k), Oberlin, UW, Whitman, Willamette (34k). Besides WWU, this really surprised me. I had assumed UW would be the cheapest by far, but Oberlin and some other out of state schools I ran earlier seem to be cheaper?

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Oberlin also gives merit awards. May be worth calling their financial aid office to see if they stack the merit aid in top of the financial aid

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Um yes, my parents definitely want me to go to college haha. I explained a bit earlier what I think is their reasoning for not wanting to pay, but their attitude certainly leans toward the latter of the two you mentioned. In my previous response, I talked a bit about the NPCs I ran. My parents think I need to stop being so analytical with the numbers and just apply to a range of schools to see what happens— I disagree with them. I’m honestly not very sure how aware they are of the change in college costs since when they went to school; either they aren’t, or they’re keeping up this attitude in an attempt to get me to shoot for the most scholarship money possible, which I would anyway. I need to ask about the loans. I’m not really considering living at home as an option. They make just over 125k.

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Thank you for all the helpful info! I definitely am now looking at more WUE and in state options, and have widened my search to the South.

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Living at home is not something I’m considering— besides just residential life, it’s important to me and my family that I learn to live on my own.

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If you’re looking South and you are open to non-elite but solid - but look at Alabama where you’d get $28K off $32K tuition. So you’re $20K or less - it’s like a UW but more football and greek. If you did CS as a major, you’d get $30,500 off instead of $28K so tuition very small.

UAH - a smaller (think WWU size) school in Huntsville, which some label the best place for young people - and it’d be dirt cheap.

I already mentioned Arizona - where you’d be $32K off of $40K or so (+ room and board) so low 20s. They are WUE too - not sure if that would help in this case.

Others with great scholarship estimators - go to their merit aid page - Miss State, Mizzou, WVU., Truman State (small LAC in Missouri that’s well thought of- you’d get $8k off and total COA is $35K so high 20s.

Of course, there would be travel expense to all these schools too.

Out-of-State Freshman Scholarships – Scholarships | The University of Alabama (ua.edu)

UAH - Admission & Aid - Freshman Out-of-State Academic Scholarships

Freshman Admission Scholarships - Truman State University

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Look at Mount Holyoke and Sarah Lawrence, both of which have pretty generous merit aid. I don’t know how that stacks with need-based aid, though, and it definitely isn’t full-ride level. Mount Holyoke is part of a five-college consortium that would allow you access to the other institutions if you want to explore academic areas of interest that MHC doesn’t support. Lewis and Clark and Cornell College (Iowa, not NY) both offer generous merit, as well. You might be able to get extra merit aid for dance at either of these places (I know this is true for music).

I wouldn’t want to interfere with family dynamics, but your parents definitely need a crash course on financing college education. The idea that you should be able to put yourself through school because they did flies in the face of what we all know to be true of college costs – that they’ve risen far beyond the pace of inflation and cost of living. Your parents’ income will be a part of any need-based aid calculation, whether they like it or not, and it will likely prevent you from getting the aid you need. It also sounds like you’re being punished for being the high achiever in the family, if they’re reserving their college savings for your lower-achieving siblings, which is a shame, especially when your siblings might be good candidates for less selective state schools (or even a community-college-to-university pathway) that would be cheaper than anything you’re considering, with or without aid. This just seems very unfair to you, given all that you have achieved.

Your parents are absolutely overestimating the availability of “full-ride”-level aid, and they need to know this. Otherwise, there will be some very painful choices to make at the end of the process. Please ask them to do some honest and open-minded research into the process.

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I have never stepped foot on SIU Carbondale’s campus. I have, however, taken a look at some of the data of which schools are producing graduates who go on to earn doctoral degrees: Baccalaureate origins of doctoral recipients. Looking at the data from 2000-2018, I selected Illinois as a place of comparison:

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SIU-Carbondale produced the 4th highest number of doctoral recipients in that time frame. But how does the size of the college impact that number? For a rough calculation, I took the number of doctoral recipients and divided it by the number of current undergrads (per College Navigator) to get a rough ratio of how prevalent students thinking (and successfully completing) a doctorate are at a particular school. The schools are listed from highest ratio to lowest.

Illinois Schools # of Doctoral Recipients # of Undergrads Ratio
U. of Chicago 2,880 7,636 0.377
Wheaton 805 2,341 0.344
Northwestern 2,663 8,847 0.301
Knox 344 1,156 0.298
Illinois Wesleyan 403 1,653 0.244
Augustana 390 2,338 0.167
UIUC 5,332 34,779 0.153
SIU-Carbondale 1,174 8,147 0.144
Lake Forest 190 1,661 0.114
Illinois Institute of Technology 336 2,998 0.112
Millikin 193 1,812 0.107
Bradley 435 4,331 0.100
Western Illinois 453 5,394 0.084
Eastern Illinois 514 6,903 0.074
Loyola Chicago 854 11,819 0.072
Northern Illinois 840 11,834 0.071
Illinois State 926 17,674 0.052
U of I - Chicago 1,164 22,279 0.052
Northeastern Illinois 227 4,608 0.049
DePaul 573 14,294 0.040
Southern Illinois-Edwardsville 396 9,967 0.040

To provide a point of comparison, here are the same data with the colleges in the state of Washington:

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Washington Schools # of Doctoral Recipients # of Undergrads Ratio
Whitman 573 1,559 0.368
U. of Puget Sound 558 1,866 0.299
Evergreen State 459 1,849 0.248
Pacific Lutheran 321 2,373 0.135
Walla Walla 184 1,402 0.131
U. of Washington - Seattle 3,580 36,201 0.099
Whitworth 226 2,309 0.098
Seattle Pacific 245 2,640 0.093
Gonzaga 386 4,986 0.077
Northwest 52 778 0.067
Seattle 275 4,241 0.065
Western Washington 801 14,019 0.057
Washington State 1,106 24,278 0.046
Eastern Washington 363 8,217 0.044
Central Washington 279 9,566 0.029
Saint Martin’s 30 1,358 0.022
City U. of Seattle 20 1,145 0.017
U. of Washington - Tacoma 26 4,327 0.006
U. of Washington - Bothell 14 5,454 0.003

So SIU’s ratio is quite close to UIUC’s (the state flagship) and is in the same range as that of smaller liberal arts schools that (in my opinion) punch well above their national reputation’s weight. And its ratio is much higher than at other schools that are also well-respected and mentioned much more frequently on CC. And when looking at the ratios of Illinois schools as compared to Washington schools, I think that the comparison is very favorable to the ones in Illinois.

In relation to SIU-Carbondale, it offers through a doctorate in CS, so it should have more than sufficient depth in the department to satisfy OP’s interest. It also offers a Master’s (6 recipients in the most recent year of IPEDS data) along with a Bachelor’s in linguistics, so there should be adequate strength there, too. There were 9 students in the most recent year of IPEDS data that got an MFA in Creative Writing, so the undergrad program should also work for OP. And it offers a full ride for which I think that OP would be extremely competitive.

I stand by my suggestion of SIU-Carbondale for OP to investigate.

And in looking at price totals, right now SIU-Carbondale would be $18,366 for tuition & fees plus room & board based on 23-24 costs (after the guaranteed level of merit aid) and OP would be eligible to compete for the full ride.

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Whitman has an Early Financial Aid Guarantee, one of only a few colleges in the country that do this (College of Wooster is another). Online form has you upload your unofficial transcript, your proposed senior year schedule, and SAT or ACT scores (optional) and within a few weeks, they will get back to you with your estimated merit aid award (and need-based aid if that applies). This is before you even apply, and awards will be a guaranteed minimum (will not be less than projected, but could be more). We filled out this form today for my D24 (also in WA state), and are looking forward to seeing their response.

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OP- are your parents OK covering the costs of you getting to and from college a few times a year? Airline tickets add up- especially Thanksgiving and Christmas when you are not the only person trying to get home. And-- make sure you check each college for their health insurance requirements. If you stay on your parents policy (usually the cheapest option) you need to make sure that the coverage you have meets each college’s requirement. If not- the cost of health insurance is “one more thing” added to the total.

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Excellent point. My kids qualified for waivers for the health insurance fee because our health insurance plan covered them at college, but if it hadn’t, then for one kid it would have been about $2k a year and for the other $4k a year. Extra on top of tuition and room and board.

Also, OP – most colleges also charge a student health service fee in addition to requiring health insurance. This student health service fee is for using the on=campus clinic and in our family’s experience can range from $400-$900 a year. And make sure you and your family realize that colleges charge tuition, fees, and “room and board”. Sometimes students hear about a full-tuition scholarship but don’t realize that they are still responsible for fees, room and board. Fees can add up, while room and board is typically around $15k a year or so.

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I 100% understand your reasoning and thank you for explaining it. I still wouldn’t pick SIU Carbondale if UW were both affordable and offering a major of interest
but yes OP should investigate SIU Carbondale since it looks like a decent CS safety (especially with Honors) and an alternative to WWU.

@meesmash:
how does Geography/Data science look to you?
Could you email UW and ask whether a double major in Geography/Data Science (or whatever interests you) and Linguistics is possible? What about English/Creative Writing and Linguistics? What about English/Creative Writing and X?

Showing your parents that the highest merit scholarship amount a student admitted to UW can get is $10,000, leaving over 20K to pay, may help hem understand your situation.

Note that the 125K threshold tends to be for a family of 4 with typical assets, so if your family has 5 it may be okay to be a bit over 125K - however the West Coast primary residence financial value may hurt you.

Create your “college email” and join the mailing lists at all colleges listed. “Interest” matters: it means opening their emails and clicking on the links you find interesting. (If you’re no longer interested in a college, unsubscribe :p)
Especially express interest at WWU and Whitman since WWU may be you most affordable option so you want to maximize the scholarships, same thing at Whitman you want to make sure they know you’re really interested :slight_smile:

Note that St Olaf has dance merit scholarships open to high level dancers who don’t intend to become majors; however that scholarship would replace loans. Not sure you’d be able to afford it but you can investigate.
https://wp.stolaf.edu/dance/program-timeline/

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I’ve looked into UNM quite a bit since we toured it this spring for D24. Your stats would get you an auto-merit scholarship at Univ of New Mexico. You’d automatically be applicable for either the WUE Plus or Amigo scholarships, both basically get you the NM resident in-state tuition rate, which brings tuition, room & board from ~$34,000/yr to $21,476.

Note that this figure does not include other expenses, like transportation, books, spending money.

UNM Regents Scholarship requires separate application, must apply by 12/1. You should consider applying for that.

Travel there would involve flying into the Albuquerque airport. This will mean you’ll be changing planes from Seattle to ABQ. For example, if you’re flying on Southwest, that might mean changing planes in Las Vegas or Phoenix.

UNM has a large out of state student presence on campus because of its great OOS merit awards.

Computer Science major info → Bachelor's Degree :: Department of Computer Science | The University of New Mexico
Linguistics dept info (they have this as a major) → Undergraduate Program :: Linguistics | The University of New Mexico. By the way, you can take Navajo language classes here. And ASL.

No library science at UNM though.
No Creative Writing major or minor options, but the English dept does have a 3-yr MFA program in Creative Writing. So it would be worth looking up creative writing undergraduate course options because maybe you’d find something there that floats your boat.

I did a whole big post in the Colleges your child crossed off the list after visiting, schools that moved up on the list. Why? - #6741 by sbinaz earlier this year reporting on our UNM visit, in case you’re interested in reading that. Included some photos as well in the post right after # 6741.

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And Mississippi State (where, full disclosure, I have a kid who’s thriving) and North Texas (where another kid will be starting in the fall) would both give you a stats-based waiver of the OOS surcharge plus a nice merit scholarship on top of that—and they’re not remotely alone in that, they’re just the two I know from recent personal experience (plus UAH, already mentioned by @tsbna44). It wouldn’t bring you down to $0 out of pocket, and there would be travel costs, but those sorts of deals would be a head start.