My D is a senior and a B+ student. She’s changed her mind several times about majors but always STEM related. Junior year she wanted to be pre-med. Earlier this Fall she wanted to major in Computer Science. Now she’s interested in Physics and has some interest in engineering. But she’s not a student who has been doing robotics or coding for years and has a firm idea of her desired major. She’s only taken her first CS and physics classes this year as a senior. She’s always preferred science and math to her humanities classes. I want her to go somewhere that she can explore various options and be able to change directions.
She’s been admitted to her two instate choices: ASU Barrett and NAU with merit aid, both for CS. Barrett seems like an excellent option but she’s been consistently saying it’s not a top choice (too close to home) and she’d prefer NAU Honors over Barrett. When we toured ASU and NAU she seemed interested in the options for engineering.
She’s also applied and been accepted to 3 CTCL colleges: Hope, Ursinus and Wooster, all with good merit aid. The net cost at the 3 LAC’s is more than NAU and ASU but still affordable. D has not yet visited any of those LAC’s. We have a lot of family alumni from Hope. Hope has been showering D with positive feedback and invitations, including by phone call, to apply for their competitive merit scholarships which would significantly increase the total merit package over and above what they’ve already offered. I was surprised to realize that Hope actually has ABET accredited engineering majors. D is definitely flattered and intrigued about Hope as an option.
Any feedback on these options? We plan to visit Hope at the end of February. It’s hard to find info on Hope on this forum though. The Hope College subforum is rarely active, and I haven’t had any successful searches using the CC search engine because the name Hope brings up too many unrelated hits.
PS - She’s also applied to Colorado School of Mines but hasn’t heard back yet. It would be the most expensive of these options even with merit aid due to the OOS tuition.