<p>I recently met a very lovely young lady who was studying music ed. at Montclair. She was the sort of person I would love to have teaching my children. She had a high opinion of the music program there.</p>
<p>Many of the good musicians from my town’s HS go to MSU. The musical theater program is highly touted also. A young man I know well just entered it; it’s extremely competitive to get into.</p>
<p>Our community college offers a lot of online versions of core classes, and the price is right.</p>
<p>I live near Monmouth University, and it is a really beautiful campus. I have many family members who attended and have gone on to become successful adults. (Lots of accountants?!) I’ve never really considered it as an option, because it’s not a very competitive school, and when I was growing up it was seen as a bit of a last choice, but now that DD is getting of an age where we have started to think about colleges I am trying to be more objective. Much as I want her to fly it would also be nice to have her closer to home. It would be nice to get some merit aid. But it’s also an expensive place if it is only going to deliver a mediocre education.</p>
<p>When we looked at Monmouth, housing was an issue. If you live close to the school, then housing may or may not be an issue. For us, knowing that at some point btn. soph and junior year our kids would need to live off campus and need a car really offset a lot of scholarship incentive to attend. Our kids never applied. I did like the campus and the size of the classes. I only know of a couple of people who attended and two transferred out (into higher ranked schools) and one transferred in from a similar ranked school.</p>
<p>We are an educationally NJ-centric family.
I graduated from Monmouth college 30+ yrs ago and loved my time there. The campus was/is gorgeous, my classes were small and so I got to be a big fish in the small pond.
Was given an extremely generous full tuition scholarship that made it possible…otherwise I’d have been at Rutgers instate.</p>
<p>Fast forward 30 yrs, DS (music education/music performance) started at TCNJ and transferred to Mason Gross at Rutgers for last two years. He loved the small campus at TCNJ and the profs were amazing. But he needed/wanted a bigger pond. He also loved the small city of NB…often took train into NYC, the NB restaurants (including the awful food trucks) etc. His undergrad degree at Rutgers got him into a competitive masters program.</p>
<p>Instate costs for Rutgers and TCNJ are way high for publics but then everything in NJ is too expensive.</p>
<p>Musicmom, did you look at Monmouth for your son at all, or no? I am just curious how you think it stacks up today vs the other schools. I mentioned that I have family members who have attended, and I think they are all still big supporters of the school. Did you stay in Monmouth County after graduation or did you go farther afield There seem to be a lot of grads who stay in this area. (Which is not a bad place to be, for sure!)</p>
<p>Lennon, I also grew up in that area (though it’s still very dear to my heart, I now divide my time between the two ends of the state). Monmouth certainly is a beautiful campus, in a great area. My feeling though, is that it’s really expensive for an education that’s not going to be as good as at the state schools, or at least certainly no better. I’d go to Rowan, MSU, or Stockton in preference to Monmouth. There will be a greater diversity of students at the states, and unless you get a huge merit from Monmouth, it will cost a heck of a lot more. If you want to stay on the shore, I’ve known a lot of really strong students who liked Stockton a lot, and went on to good grad programs from it.</p>
<p>Question just because I’m curious & no longer in the area: back in the day, you applied to one of the colleges within Rutgers (Mason Gross, Douglass, etc.) Do you still do that or just apply to a particular campus?</p>
<p>I’m don’t know about Rutgers but I believe you have to apply for a specific academic track at TCNJ.</p>
<p>Lennon- we did not consider Monmouth for our son. His passion was/is music and he wanted either a stand alone conservatory or music dept within a University. You’ll know if you read any music threads on CC that the whole college thing is very different for music kids; acceptance based mostly or solely on audition rather than GPA/class rank/SAT.
So, I have no knowledge of Monmouth today except driving past the campus once in a blue moon, it still looks lovely.
And I didn’t actually ‘choose’ Monmouth way long ago…I was headed to Rutgers with (relatively) low instate tuition and was detoured to Monmouth by their scholarship offer brought to me by my HS counselor! The college app thing was so less complicated back then, at least at my noncompetitive HS.</p>
<p>I second Garland’s comments. Without significant merit aid, many students would be financially better off and have the same or better academic opportunities at NJ publics over Monmouth. TCNJ,Rutgers, Ramapo,Rowan…</p>
<p>RobD- they recently revamped the colleges within Rutgers…don’t sure that Douglass even exists anymore??? Our son knew he only wanted Mason Gross and applied and auditioned there only.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and I ventured but not far after Monmouth graduation. Have lived/worked/raised family for last 30 years in Northern NJ. Also a nice place to be but no sand!</p>
<p>Douglass and Cook exist only as residential campuses. Now you apply to the school, not the campus, for example, Pharmacy, Arts and Sciences, Mason Gross, Environmental and Biological Sciences, etc. So you would take a political science class in the College of Arts and Sciences, for example, on the Cook, or Douglass, campus. And you can live on any of the NB campuses regardless of which school you are enrolled in. Thus the proliferation of buses.</p>
<p>I find this thread very interesting. MSU is on my list for my daughter who is a junior, but I see so many negative postings. For us, the school is very close and my daughter could easily commute, but I wouldn’t want her to. Yet I have heard that the campus empties out on weekends, which kind of defeats the purpose of living on campus. She is interested in music therapy, and MSU is the only school in NJ that offers that program.</p>
<p>I’m sure a lot of students leave, but OTOH, quite a few of the students in my class, I’d say at least 25%, live in far S.Jersey, two or more hours away. So I’d be surprised if that cohort was going home every weekend. I know when my D went to school 2.5 hours away, she didn’t. But I don’t know for sure; I;m just guessing.</p>
<p>eastcoast101, Montclair is a very cool hip town to be in so even if only a handful of students are around, there are fun places to go.</p>
<p>When we toured Ramapo, we were given our tour by one of the admission counselors because the student who was scheduled to give our tour suddenly became ill. The counselor explained that even though lots of students leave their campus, this is true of all college campuses within the state in approximately similar percentages. He said this happens in NJ because it is such a small state so within a few hours one can drive from one end of NJ to the other. He explained that one just notices this less at Rutgers because Rutgers is a much larger school. I don’t know how accurate this is (football in my opinion would be a reason to stay at Rutgers on a fall weekend), but this is what was said.</p>
<p>South Jersey here! Locally, Rowan is quite popular for above average, but not the very top students. Education and music majors like it.
I have researched and visited quite a few of these school. DD’s interest is musical theater and Montclair is high on her list. Did the open house and loved everything about it. No, academically it isn’t as competitive as TCNJ or Rutgers, but the theater department is highly regarded.
Bloomfield…visited. Ummm…don’t know what to say other than the internet sure can make a college seem a lot better than it is. UGH! I highly recommend visiting campuses before applying, if possible. And trust me, I’m no snob (born and raised in Philly), but that campus, if you can call it that, was so unimpressive (is that a word?)</p>
<p>Drew was pleasant, but wouldn’t be a good fit for DD. It was a little quiet and reserved for my theater girl, even though it’s supposed to have the #1 theater dept. in the country. That ranking is based on surveys of the graduates, and I suppose that they were extremely satisfied with their theater experience because many, if not most of the actual productions were developed, cast and directed by students. It must be very satisfying to mold your experience. The campus was beautiful and serene.</p>
<p>Stockton is similar to Rowan in it’s competitiveness. It has more of a campus feel than Rowan and the merit aid is better.</p>
<p>Visited Rutgers-NB on a Friday afternoon around 2, and it was deserted. Need to revisit.
William Patterson was a nice campus. Seems like a good option for an average student.</p>
<p>Seton Hall - had heard about it for many years (work with two grads). visited and liked the make-up of the students, but thought that the campus itself seemed compact (although I liked the fact that it was an actual campus).</p>
<p>Dd is a good, but not stellar student, so all of these schools could be viable options for her. But, we have also looked at PA and NY schools.</p>
<p>Ramapo next!</p>
<p>I think one reason so many NJ students head to schools in other states is there are so many NJ students. This state has a pop. of 7.5 million and it fills its colleges every year, and also helps to fill a lot of other non-NJ schools’ classes. If they all tried to go to NJ schools, we wd have to build 30 more state colleges. </p>
<p>I liked Rutgers when we visited it on accepted student day. I got the feeling that it will very much be what the student makes of it. That said, you have to able to tolerate a bureaucracy.</p>
<p>And, NB is a city. Not NYC, but not a burb either.</p>
<p>JRZmom–that’s a very good point. When people imply that there’s some big secret to why Jersey students go out of state, I always wonder where they thought they’d go if they stayed here? I don’t think there are any under-used schools in the state; actually, they tend to be bursting at the seams.</p>
<p>musicmom: thanks for the explanation of the Rutgers revamping!</p>
<p>eastcoast101: I could practically see Montclair from my house & DH and I were both commuters. But I will say that I was extremely involved on campus outside of class and was hardly ever home; my major required 150 hours of production work outside of class per semester and I was on the executive board of the student club that produced the concerts on campus. It’s a beautiful campus & the professors in my major were fantastic. Could your D live on campus the first year and then decide whether to commute from home after that?</p>
<p>Actually, our search started only in NJ and we were certain that our D would choose to attend Drew. She didn’t want to be too far from home, she was very familiar with the campus as H had worked there for many years and she was a frequent visitor. But when we did 2 visits as a prospective student (an open house and a regular visit), we were all disappointed. Now this is about 10 years ago, but during the open house we felt an elitist type attitude from some of the administrative presentations. The tour they took us on was not very comprehensive - D was interested in a science major, but we didn’t even enter the science building. It was pointed out to us. I think we were in the library (with which we were already intimately familiar), the student center and a dorm.</p>
<p>When we did the regular visit, we were all turned off by the tour guide and the people we ran into on campus that day. Again, an attitude with which we were not comfortable. Even my then 12 yo son picked up on it, but we all held our opinions until D expressed hers. So that took a pretty good NJ school off her list. We also looked at Rider and considered Montclair since she was offered an excellent scholarship there. We used to live about 10 minutes from Montclair and she had spent time on that campus also, but it wasn’t where she wanted to be for college. And as I mentioned previously, she had spent a lot of time on the Rutgers campus and wasn’t interested in going there for college. We probably should have looked at TCNJ, but we didn’t.</p>
<p>So we started looking in NY and PA. With scholarships she was offered, we found some pretty good deals in environments where she felt she belonged that were different from the NJ colleges. And even though she was awarded a Bloustein scholarship (can only be used at a NJ college), when she mentioned it to the out of state college of her choice, they increased her scholarship award to match it.</p>