Hi, What are the best schools in the Northeast for solidly good (but not necessarily great) students? If your child didn’t qualify for an Ivy League or otherwise highly selective school, where did he/she end up going and has it been a good experience? My daughter is in middle school now and is smart, but I don’t think she’ll have the stamina and drive in high school that will make her a candidate for a top school.
An ideal school would have a strong liberal arts curriculum and maybe a good English and art program.
There are hundreds of schools that have strong LA curriculums and good English and art programs. If you have a middle schooler now, it’s way way too early to be worrying about a college list. So much maturation happens, interests change, and you really have no idea what her stats will be by the time she’s ready to apply to colleges.
IMO, the best things you can do is make sure you are saving money for college, encouraging your child to develop good study habits, and that she is having fun with her ECs.
There are too many to list. For example, apparently there are 114 colleges and universities just in Massachusetts.
If you include New York State and anything east and north of NY, you would probably find at least a few hundred schools.
For nearly all students, and specifically for any student who is going to study English or Art, avoiding debt is very important. This means that your budget and your home state will be important. I do not think that we could make any realistic suggestions without knowing this.
At this point your daughter is still young (they grow up fast!). You will see how things go over the next few years.
One thing is implicit in your question which is a good point: Students need to figure out what pace is right for them. In the US our high school students are under way too much stress. It really is not necessary to go to Harvard or MIT to do well in life. The number of students who are pushing too hard to get into top schools and who suffer from stress related illnesses probably vastly exceeds the number of students who would actually do well at a highly ranked university. We all need to take things at our own pace and find a path that is right for us.
Thanks for your replies! I hear what you’re saying and I know it’s way to early to be figuring things out. I was more hoping to hear personal experiences from parents about their kids and where they ended up.
To answer your question directly rest assured that there are hundreds of colleges that can fit the niche you are looking for.
In my family, my son went to Fordham University and my daughter went to Lafayette College -
both had fabulous experiences and got great educations. The trick is finding the right fit. Your daughter will likely go thru changes as she matures, develops new interests etc. over the next few years. For that reason I truly believe it it way to early to think about any specific colleges for her. I recommend that you wait until late sophomore/early junior year to focus on college fits.
In the meantime if you want to get a head start for fun I’d suggest you get your hands on a college guide book such as Fiske, Princeton Review etc and start reading. Focus not on specific schools but rather on the many different types of schools that are available.
Run the NPC on Skidmore, St Lawrence, Dickinson, Muhlenberg, SUNY Geneseo, SUNY New Paltz, SUNY Bing, Bates, Temple, Villanova, Fordham, Brandeis, Miami Ohio, Penn State, UMaine, Allegheny, Elizabethtown, UDelaware, Christopher Newport, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke.
(Those are all different, public in state, public OOS, private, small, large, rural, urban, religious…)
Do this for yourself so that you can figure out what seems doable. Prices will be VERY different 4 or 5 years from now, but at least you can see what costs are, what colleges factor in (your income? assets? results? - you can tweak things and enter 4.0, a 3.0, etc…) and you can save what you can (keep in mind most scholarships come from the colleges themselves; onlyabout 80 colleges out of thousands “meet need”, the others will offer whatever they can or feel like. All calculate in their own mysterious way but NPCs tend to be relatively indicative).
Set money aside.
Keep in mind that a job is a good EC - no need to pay thousands for a club sport or something fancy. And e-sports are a thing now so remember there are many possibilities for ECs ;)… basically help your middle schooler and HS freshman try out tons of activities with no expectation beside having fun, so they can figure out what they really like. Doing something they really like will matter for college but also to ensure that they enjoy their teen years.
Well, from my circle of friends I’ve seen over and over again, that some kids who seemed to lack drive and interest, suddenly “woke up” in high school, when the conversations around them and amongst their peers were increasingly about the potential of college, and what to look forward to at college.
So, I too, suggest that the outlook may very well change - as may the areas of interest. My daughter excelled in English, was strong in languages in general, developed a love for the arts - so it seemed pretty obvious, including to herself, what she would pursue in college.
Her talents and interests haven’t changed, of course, but at the end it were courses and electives she took at High School that opened up her eyes to completely different pursuits.
It’s not just about being a “good” school or if your child is a “good” student. It really is all about the right fit. There are thousands of colleges and an infinite number of personalities and wishes of students. Every college has students who are thrilled to attend. A better use of time in middle school is to encourage independence and confidence.
Developing the college list is a big enough challenge between trying to please everyone else, pick schools “everyone” has heard of, and find something affordable with the right mix of academics, location, social scene, etc. Some of the brightest students would never be happy at any Ivy because they are too big, or too cold…
It sounds like you are just trying to get a sense of things. One helpful reference might be the Colleges that Change Lives book. It is not limited to the Northeast, but it’s readable and is focused on the kind of schools you are interested in.
It sounds like you are doing all the right things-there are so many great colleges with great outcomes. I suggest making sure she learns to write well, and preferably quickly, as it seems many high school kids don’t pick up that useful skill. Take the 5 core subjects all the way through for a solid foundation. My kid who wanted to drop math ended up in finance; the one who begged me to drop AP French is working in, yes, France. They had short term pain from the courses but in both cases it preserved a lot of options. It is ok to be uncomfortable in courses sometimes, and it is ok to struggle. Builds resilience.
It seemed obvious what my kids would major in until it wasn’t. The psychology major decided to study business; the PPE major switched to physics. I wouldn’t have ever predicted either. Enjoy the journey.
The most important qualification for college is… finances. It doesn’t matter how perfect the match for your kid, if the finances don’t work. So if you demonstrate tremendous financial need, and she has excellent grades, you may get the best deal at a private college. If you won’t qualify for fin aid, then all the flagship state U’s are great, and mostly run around 30K/yr, in-state. Many upper middle class students are choosing their flagship state U, because it’s about 200K cheaper, overall, for a 4 yr degree. So first, you have to figure whether you can expect financial aid. If you cannot, do you have an extra 360K to spend, as opposed to 120K? Will she be in a position to chase substantial merit money? If not, then you really should be looking very closely at your in-state public options.
I hear you about the financial side, but I’d rather work backwards: ie find the perfect option or options, and then use them as a template if nothing else. We have a good amount of money in a college fund already, so the cost isn’t at the top of my list of concerns, especially since we have several more years of earnings to add to the pot and my daughter is an only child.
I know it’s premature to be thinking about all of this anyway, but I’m a worrier, and I’m curious, and I don’t have a good sense of the schools that are out there. But, yes, finding a school that is a good fit is probably the most important thing.
Thanks for weighing in with all your thoughts! It’s helpful!
Read the Fiske Guide and Colleges that Change Lives. Get them from your library as things can change fairly rapidly with admissions stats and such, but it will give you a better understanding of the college landscape and put your mind at ease.
This is probably a subject for another post, but what I really want for my daughter is for her to find her niche in the world, find something that she loves and find contentment. I worry a lot about the high school culture of achievement and stress, and I don’t want that to define her experience. She is already sort of a high strung child with intense (but fairly fleeting) highs and lows, and I worry about her. I just want her to be happy and healthy!
Focusing on healthy and happy are definitely the keys!
FWIW, my D had a very tough middle school experience but really found her people and herself in high school. She dropped some activities she wasn’t loving and picked up new things that she still does today (she’s 21 years old now). By junior year in HS, she was a totally different kid and confident and happy.
If you continue to send the message that she can be successful doing what she enjoys, you are well ahead of the game! Talk about finding balance. Talk about failures being the best learning tools. Keep communication open with her.
When I think about what my kids were like in middle school, I know that if I were thinking about colleges then I would gave been way off. Kids change a lot. My kid that was struggling academically through elementary and middle school blossomed in high school and ended up applying much higher than I would have guessed. My other child was more advanced in middle school but ended up becoming popular and emphasizing the social aspects of high school over academics and ended up targeting lower schools than the first kid. Sure it’s fun to look now, but understand that this is just for fun at this point. Don’t try to find the perfect fit school yet.
Establish the kind of family life you want-- and your D will follow suit.
What does that mean? If attending grandma’s 80th birthday party is more important to you than attending a travel soccer game- and the coach threatens to cut anyone who misses a game- then there’s your answer- drop travel soccer. If religious observances, volunteering, helping an elderly neighbor rake leaves, baking a cake for a friend who is stuck home with flu are the things you value instead of competitive activities- then do those things, encourage your D to do them with you. There are still kids who do things like babysitting, helping out at a field day for an organization which works with the developmentally disabled, read books for pleasure, visit museums just because it’s “free Sunday” and it’s raining out and they incidentally discover they love contemporary art “just because”.
There is nothing wrong with taking your eye off the college ball for now. I had neighbors and friends (the busy-body types) who were convinced that my kids would never leave home. They weren’t interested in camp, competitive sports, never even took music lessons (with two working parents who could barely get it together to get them to school and back, how we were going to figure out after school activities was just beyond me). We did activities as a family on weekends- nobody tracks you to see if you’re having a “winning season” at a museum, or on a hike, or doing the family tree at the local historical society event. No winners, no losers, no stress, no competition. They played in the backyard after school, went to the library, did ugly crafts projects once they were old enough to use glue and scissors by themselves.
It all turned out fine. My kids left for college, all found careers they love and are thriving at, pay their taxes, vote, volunteer for organizations they care about, have spouses and kids… it’s all good and your D will be fine even without pages of awards to pad her application!!!
With a few more years to go, now is the time to do the financial planning to check how much money you are likely to have for her college.
There are stories around these forums of students who had to throw away their carefully curated college lists when their parents revealed the financial limits at a late stage. Or worse, when the big let-down occurs in April, when all of the students’ admission offers are revealed to be too expensive because the parents only revealed the financial limits then.
Also, if the “perfect fit” found after extensive research is too expensive, it can be difficult for the student to let go of it, since the unattainability can make it seem more desirable, resulting in disappointment with anything else.
