I’m just starting my college search and trying to get a wider perspective on more schools. So far, I really like Fordham, BC, and Upenn.
What I’m looking for in a school:
close to a city, but still has a traditional campus
high school spirit with preferably D1 football and/or hockey
preferably not so far from CT that I would need to take a plane there
over 3,000 undergrad (no such thing as too many students for me)
has a strong reputation
I go to a very good boarding school and have a GPA of 3.6 (junior year) but didn’t take the hardest classes possible and it has been steadily increasing. My SATs are around 1450 but I’ve only taken it once so far and it should go up. I’m thinking of (maybe) majoring in psychology, but just a strong liberal arts program will do.
What are some other realistic schools that I should look at?
–Harvard has football and hockey but would be a real long-shot.
–I believe Providence College is strong in both hockey and basketball.
–Pitt might work if it is not too far to travel.
–If basketball alone would work as your sport, you could add schools like Villanova, Gtown, St. Joe’s.
–Syracuse could be an option if you think it is in a big enough city.
–University of Buffalo as a safety perhaps.
Your options are a good start. Your boarding school should have a strong guidance staff to help you in the process. You can also get ideas by going through some college guide books (ex. Fiske, Princeton Review, Insiders Guide) which can probably be found in your guidance office or library.
BU and Northeastern have the the urban location and the D1 hockey. But no football, and they might be considered lacking in the "school spirit" department. BU might also not meet hopes for a "traditional campus".
Agree that the options would be better with basketball.
If you abandon the “no plane ride” restriction, there are more possibilities for good large schools in or near major cities.
UC Berkeley, UCLA and Northwestern might not be possible because of your grades. But USC, UWashington, UTexas, UMinnesota, Ohio State, Tulane, UArizona, UKentucky, UMaryland, UNC, Utah, Wake Forest - are all in or near large cities and are pretty rah-rah.
Some schools are in college towns but the town actually are pretty substantial - places like like UMichigan, Wisconsin, and Oregon.
@Incan17 Penn is a bit of a long shot given your GPA. You SATs are good but again below the Penn average.since Penn fits very well your description of what you are looking for and you seem to rly like the school, then by all means apply, you are still within the feasible range for admission, especially if you manage to raise your SATs a bit. That said, make sure your list has plenty of other less competitive schools.
@incan17 Penn has club hockey and “D1” football, but it’s not like “real” “Big college” D1 football (still fun, but just to be clear.) As mentioned Pitt? Long drive from Conn. (7 hrs to New Haven, IIRC) fits your stats. Syracuse is also good option if not too “rural.” Rutgers? Penn State (not a city, but a BIG college down at main campus.) U Maryland College Park? (5 hrs.) plenty of other options too.
If you are looking for college football excitement, the Ivy League probably isn’t a good place to start. The players & coaches are competent & talented, but the stadia are often about 25% full, giving many of their games a high schoolish feel.
Note that there are actually two subdivisions in Division I college football: FBS and FCS.
FBS is “major league” college football – the kind that you watch on ESPN. The northeastern US is not noted as a “hot spot” for FBS football, and it has relatively limited FBS options. They are:
Private schools: BC, Syracuse
State schools: UMass, UConn, SUNY-Buffalo, Rutgers, Penn State, Pitt, Temple, Maryland
Service Academies: Army, Navy
FCS is technically still Division I, but the level of interest is much, much lower – you probably won’t see FCS games on ESPN. Basically nobody follows FCS football, except for students and alumni of FCS schools.
There are lots of FCS schools in the northeast, including Penn and Fordham. FCS football is good quality, exciting, and fun, but it may not meet your expectations for “Division I” football. Fordham’s home field, for example, only has bleachers on one side, and seats fewer than 10,000. Penn has a real stadium that seats 50,000, but it was built long ago, in the days when Ivy League football was nationally relevant, and is vastly oversized today. Penn’s home game attendance in 2016 ranged from 3,000 to 8,000.
^This is generally true, but if the goal is really school spirit and participation and not really seeing your sports teams on TV, then there are lots of options - and division alone doesn’t make school spirit (nor does sports, really, although it helps). Villanova is in FCS but they have pretty high school spirit, as well as other sports that students like to watch. Florida A&M is another example of an FCS school that has really high school spirit for a variety of reasons that aren’t all the football team.
Georgetown is another suggestion - popular athletics despite having FCS football, and located in a large city (DC, of course). Also, Temple is a good safety school. St. John’s is another - also very much a safety, though.
If the city is negotiable, you can check out Lehigh - it’s an hour and a half from Philadelphia and is in the Allentown metro area (which is medium-sized, not a major city). Marist College is right outside of Poughkeepsie and about 1.5 hours from New York, and has Division 1 sports.
Also, it’s really not anywhere near a city - but given that you’re a CT resident, UConn satisfies all of your other criteria. So I hope you’re checking that out, too.
The previous post suggests Villanova, Georgetown, Temple, St. John’s, and UConn as northeastern schools with school spirit and athletics. And this is true, but there’s a catch: the “signature sport” at all of these schools is basketball. The OP stated a preference for football and hockey.
There’s no doubt that Georgetown, for example, has a great basketball tradition and spirited fans. But their football team, while technically Division I, doesn’t offer athletic scholarships and draws fewer than 2,500 people per game. And their hockey team plays at the club level (not NCAA).
In general, basketball tends to be the “biggest” college sport in the northeastern US (with some exceptions like Penn State football, Boston University hockey, or Johns Hopkins lacrosse). So the OP’s options would definitely expand if he/she became a hoops fan (as previously noted in Replies #1 and #2 above).