I would:
- Apply to more colleges if she can get into a PT program directly instead of a pre-PT program
- If you think there are more scholarships to be had
@Zinhead Her intent is to become a physical therapist. Her second major will be Exercise Physiology. She was accepted to OU as an Exercise Physiology major and originally intended to minor in Dance Somatics. She discussed the opportunity for more scholarship money with another young lady from her HS and current dance studio (who is currently a junior double majoring in business and dance) and followed up with the both the dance dept and Health Sciences Dept. and it all works. She did have to declare Dance as her first major though to be eligible for the scholarships. OU also has what they call their SHAPe Clinic which she is hoping to be able to work part time in.
https://www.ohio.edu/chsp/ahsw/about/community/shape-clinic.cfm
@bopper She visited 2 schools with direct admit programs, University of Evansville and University of Findlay. Neither had opportunities for her to continue dancing and both were much smaller universities than she was interested in. Her best opportunity might have been the University of Pittsburgh, however, she just didn’t connect there. I loved the university.
@Consolation I am responding from a long time ago (See post 47). We did not make her apply to Wright State. With her current scholarships, our savings and what we contribute, her working and her taking Stafford loans she can afford all of her instate schools. It would be nice to get enough financial aid for her not to have to take the loans as a DPT program will not be cheap, but we’ll have to wait until the final financial aid packages come out to determine that.
Congratulations to you and your D, @lvvcsf. I’m glad your D has choices, and I hope she gets enough money to take some of the financial pressure off.
The SHAPE clinic sounds really interesting, especially for a dancer.
Regarding the DO direct admit, it does seem like something to strongly consider applying for. She doesn’t think she wants to be a doctor right now, but her interests are closely enough allied that keeping the option open would seem like a good idea. I’m a big believer in kids keeping their options open. 
I guess my big question would be whether the required medical school admissions classes would jibe with the classes she’d take to prepare for a DPT program, and to what degree. If the DO option would require her taking a lot of courses she isn’t really interested in taking, that would be a major negative.
Sounds like she has great options! I liked OU very much when I visited. I thought the town was charming and the residence life strong. Love the mountains and river, too.
With her stats she should get substantial merit money from OU. Have you gotten word of that yet?
She received $6000. I wish they still had the Gateway Scholarship. That would have been full tuition.
@lvvcsf - That IS a shame. The Gateway was so much better when my son went there. He got full in-state tuition as well as the Gateway Trustee scholarship for OOS students.
He loved OU, and the school has a reputation for happy, friendly students. That’s worth a lot.
Thanks. She would really like to attend there. Scholarship money is one of the reasons she is looking at the dance scholarship. They indicate a minimum of $1800.
https://www.ohio.edu/finearts/dance/admission/financial-aid-scholarships.cfm
She has danced since she was 4 and while not interested in being a professional she is a good dancer. We are in state so that helps. OU now has what is called the Ohio Promise which means the tuition room and board will not increase for 4 years. There are other scholarships that combine need with merit that I believe are stackable. We’ll have two kids in college for a couple of years so everything helps.
With her stats, did she apply for HTC? That does full tuition.
My daughter also applied to Ohio - from OOS - and has similar stats to OP’s D, though a little lower - 4.3 weighted, 3.4 uw/31 ACT - She wanted a state school that was not too big, like a flagship, but more than 10k students. And she does not like LACs (I took her to visit several…) She got a merit scholarship that essentially allows her to pay in-state tuition. That is cheaper than our state flagship, and at other IL state schools… so I’m happy about that. I also like that it will be the same price every year,.
She also applied to Ball State, in Indiana, and at the moment, she prefers Ball… But I like Ohio better, personally.
My daughter is concerned about the party reputation at Ohio, basically - she thinks it will be distracting and pervasive. She is not a partier (not yet, anyway), not a drinker.
So, how pervasive is the party atmosphere though?
My own opinion is that there is partying and drinking everywhere, and the rep should be taken with a grain of salt… However, Athens is a tiny town, and it’s a compact campus for a student body that size.
Are the partiers easy enough to avoid? And is the whole party rep overblown?
My D did not apply for the HTC, we didn’t think her gpa was high enough; and she is going in undecided (but leaning toward Anthropology, Linguistics or History…) She thought about applying to Honors, but wants to wait and see how freshman year is. I personally think she can handle it, but she’s nervous about it… although her test score is well above average, but I also don’t think test scores always indicate success, and she can be a “slacker” when she wants to be…
@lvvcsf and @digmedia , what are the things about Ohio your kids like(d)?
Thanks.
@digmedia I really wanted her to apply to the HTC. She visited with them and talked to one of the coordinating professors. She decided that she did not want to. The best answer I’ve gotten from her is that she didn’t want to be applying to DPT schools, finishing her senior year and doing a thesis all at once. I personally think there is more to it than that. This is a girl who is taking 5 AP courses and dances 10-15 hours a week all after school and on the weekends. I can’t imagine she wouldn’t be able to handle the work load. I also think the HTC would make sure she had the resources to succeed. I’ll give her credit. I’ve given her advice, she considers it and makes her own decision. Since it is her future and she has generally been successful at what she sets her mind to I will honor her decision.
@BeeDAre For our D it is everything she wanted in a school. Like your D, she wanted a university with over 10k students (she came from a HS with 2700). She wanted it to be within 4 hours of her home. She wanted a good health sciences program and an opportunity to continue dancing without needing to be a dance major (ironically because of the dance scholarship this will be the one school she will have dance as a first major). She wanted it to feel like a college campus and not a commuter college. Ohio U, fit the bill better than any other school she visited. They are a mid sized residential campus in a beautiful area that feels like the quintessential college campus. It has 2 dance majors both a BFA and a BA as well as 3 dance minors (the Dance Somatics minor really interested her), it is strong in the health sciences field and they have a DPT school on campus and also the SHAPe clinic. It’s also large enough that she can participate in a variety of ECs (she wants to learn to kick box) and is strong in the arts in general.
@BeeDAre - Ah… The party reputation… I would say that that reputation comes from two things: Fraternities/Sororities and Halloween. My kid is not averse to parties, but the fraternity thing never appealed to him. Here is the best answer I ever got about my question some time ago about the “party rep:”
I would say that that attitude above perfectly summed up my son as well.
@kathyg23 - bringing up an old post here!
@lvvcsf Your D would have been hard pressed to find a school that would offer direct entry DPT and a strong dance program. OU has a wondering dance program. wish they would have offered you more $. D16 was offered a bit over $8K. They are not offering much for merit IMO.
The HTC program at OU is super unique and absolutely one of the best Honors programs in the country. I love that it is modeled on Oxford/Cambridge. Two friends are HTC grads. One is a prof at Princeton now and the other is a movie producer.
Currently we are weighing the merits of D16 acceptances to Pitt (not direct entry DPT) vs.Duquesne BS/DPT. D16 wants to minor in music. Duquesne has a better music department but D16 likes Pitt and says it is how she “pictured” college to be. I think she would love to commit to Pitt but totally sees the value in not having to apply to graduate school and going with the direct entry options.
Funny thing was we visited Pitt and Duquesne in the same day and the Pitt visit was entirely reluctant on her part, In fact we almost missed the Pitt tour because she was talking with the admissions director for BS/DPT at Duquesne (a meeting that was arranged on the fly after the campus tour simply because she mentioned in passing that she was interested in BS/DPT). She was completely stoked about Duquesne and said she only thought Pitt was OK. Now that she is in at both she says…“I really liked Pitt when we visited. I was only negative about it because I thought I would never get in and I didn’t want to get my hopes up.” She still likes Duquesne and is going to have a hard time choosing. I worry about the smallness of Duquesne considering she will be there for 6 years.
@BeeDAre: You may recall that I am an OU grad. Yes, OU certainly has a “party school” reputation, but neither I nor most of my friends were party animals and we all loved our time at OU. As you said the party scene is what you make it and there is PLENTY to do on campus that is not party related. (OU has a reputation as a “granola/hippy” school too) Most of my OU friends now have a kid attending OU, they tell me that their kids say the atmosphere at OU is much the same as it was 20 years ago when we graduated. I’d tell your D to not worry about the party reputation, choosing the right dorm can mitigate the “party” atmosphere. Plus there is nothing more entertaining than heading uptown late on a weekend night and people watching, it is hilarious and would make a great anthropology/sociology research project!.
My history professors were top notch back in the day, I loved my 2 linguistics classes and the anthropology department was/is very good (my biological anthro class was by far the hardest class I took at OU). My roommate was an anthropology major.
I do not envy the decisions these kids have to make especially when there are so many good opportunities.
Thanks for your insights, @labegg , @lvvcsf , and @digmedia .
I’ve also suggested she choose a living-learning community dorm if she goes there (and wherever she goes, actually) - it’s been my own experience, as well as hearing others talk, that LLCs bring together students with a common interest and these students tend to be more focused on academics.
That was a great description, labeggl! I’ll relay it to my D! We are also visiting again in February, hopefully.
Fwiw, I think her other two schools would be good choices, too - I just want to make sure she’s not making her choice to not attend Ohio, just on the negative party rep. She loved the campus and town when we visited last summer…
The one disadvantage for us is it is more than 7 hour drive from home, but that’s doable. And I understand there’s a shuttle that will take the kids to the airport in Columbus.
@labegg We visited Pitt too. I’ve been there twice, the first time with my older D who was looking at Carnegie Mellon too. Both girls liked Pitt but neither chose to apply. I think D13 had trouble with their on line application and just decided it wasn’t worth doing another application. D16 really liked it but Pitt is quite different from other campuses and I think she just didn’t feel as comfortable there as the schools she chose. To me Pitt feels like a college city vs. a college campus. I liked it and she did too but when it came time to apply she chose not to. Congratulations to your D getting accepted to Duquesne. I’ve heard good things about their DPT program and of course Pitt’s is one of the nation’s top programs. Pittsburgh has a lot of great opportunities for doing clinicals.
As for OU’s merit scholarships D13 applied at my behest 3 years ago. She is a ChemE major and really had no interest in OU at all. We are in state and at the time she qualified for the full tuition Gateway scholarship. It was her super safety. The engineering school ended up giving her another scholarship and she could have gone to OU nearly for free. She is at Purdue where she really wanted to attend. D16 really wants to attend OU and alas no more Gateway scholarships. They now have the Signature scholarships which are supposed to give opportunity to more people. It sounds selfish but … rats.