D16 is moving quickly away from her long-held and firm desire to attend an LAC. Her focus now is more on an honors college within a larger research university. While I think that’s a reasonable shift to make, I don’t want her to make it for the wrong reasons. It seems that perhaps the major reason for backtracking on LACs is that she fears she wouldn’t fit in, and in fact wouldn’t necessarily want to fit in at the ones we’ve visited. She has pronounced every one we’ve visited as either too “crunchy” (Bard, Bennington, Goucher, Guilford, Oberlin) or too preppy/Greek-dominated (Bucknell, Gettysburg, Richmond, Roanoke). Goucher and Gettysburg were the only ones we went out of our way to visit; the others were all a matter of convenience because we were in or on the way through the area. Have we given her a skewed sample that may be leading her to wrong conclusions?
D16:
SAT: 2140
GPA: 3.89 unweighted, 4.49 weighted
5 AP classes so far, 4 more next year
Very good extracurriculars
Likely very good teacher recommendations; GC has barely met her, so who knows?
Equally at home with the very serious students in her HS honors program and her elite travel team soccer teammates (none of whom go to her school, so she travels in these two very different circles)
Wants challenging but non-competitive academic environment
Plans to major in (environmental) science
Needs merit aid, we’ll need so bring these qualifications down a peg or two to find a school where she would be a particularly attractive applicant. Are there good-but-not-elite LACs out there filled with girl/boy-next-door kinds of kids? Thanks.
Yes you picked the two tail ends of the curve.
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St. Lawrence is the goldilocks LAC that offers substantial merit and its a step up not down from some you mentioned.
I highly recommend she fills out the recruiting questionnaire on the St. Lawrence athletic website.
Having had significant discussions with SL they are aggressive recruiters for athletic talent and your daughter has excellent stats.
The student body is not too preppy or crunchy and the campus is awesome. The kids are neat and well dressed but the Vineyard Vines and Lily Pulitzer ratio is very low.
About 70% of the students play sports but it is not very jocky in overall impression.
My pro tip is that it is often very hard to get kids to express their preferences clearly - they are unsure of what they are looking at, their natural instinct is to try to please their parents, etc…
If your daughter is clearly expressing a preference for an Honors college in a larger school despite being paraded through a variety of LACs, don’t be dismissive of that preference!
@NickFlynn Until she figures out the honors college is mostly just semantics. The Schreyer College at PSU is one the few legitimate ones. My sister in law went there and the admissions process is entirely separate.
Look at Lewis and Clark in Portland OR. The town is very crunchy but the school is a good mix and has good environmental science. It was also rated the top “green school” recently.
Possibilities:
St. Mary’s College of MD (Maryland state honors college)
Muhlenberg ¶
Juniata ¶
Ursinus ¶
Centre College (KY)
College of Wooster (OH)
Kenyon (OH)
Mt. Holyoke (women only, MA)
Davidson (NC)
Lawrence University (WI)
Colorado College (CO)
Whitman (WA)
Before throwing in the towel, I also think St. Lawrence might strike the right balance for your daughter. The description of SLU as a “step-up” school captures its quality in relation to how it might be perceived by its USNWR rank alone. Environmental Studies is one of its key departments. And your daughter would be decently positioned there for a good merit scholarship.
I’m not saying I disagree with NickFlynn, especially since your daughter seems responsibly discerning; a state honors college may be where she would be most comfortable. But one more LAC wouldn’t hurt.
Take a look at Grinnell. Merit Aid (Trustee Scholarships), amazing athletic facilities, less crunchy than Oberlin, definitely not preppy, no Greek life at all, outstanding sciences including a Prairie wildlife research facility and an observatory (yes, it’s in a very small town about 45 min from Des Moines and Iowa City - but very low light pollution means great stars…), and no intro class larger than 25. Also, no distribution requirements (other than a limit on the number of credits she can take in any one field, defined as sciences, humanities and social sciences.) See http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/grinnell-college/438138-why-grinnell.html
If, after a further look at LACs, she’s still uncomfortable, then I’d take them off the table. At a small school, fit matters much more than at a large place where you can always find ‘your people.’
Has she actually seen the Honor’s colleges at any of the larger research uni’s?
What state are you in (sorry if I missed in the original post)? Does it have a true Honor’s program?
Is there Merit Aid associated with acceptance to the Honor’s programs she’s interested in?
As someone mentioned up thread, sometimes an honors designation is more fluff than substance, so be sure to check and see which benefits are conferred, and what the extra weighting or work might consist of.
Another option may be U Rochester, which combines many qualities from LAC’s and larger uni’s.
On the smaller side, American, Macalester and Skidmore may be worth looking at,
before she completely jettisons the LAC’s.
Does this factor in if she still wants soccer? If so, D1 or D3?
That may change the complexion of her search, particularly if she’s looking to be recruited and/or get aid consideration because of her sport.
Thanks everyone. Soccer not a consideration re college. Recent injury effectively ended her career as a high-level soccer player, and she actually seems to be glad to no longer have to balance the demands of high-level soccer and high-level academics.We are in Maryland. We consider UMd to be too crowded and don’t like the surrounding area. UMBC too little campus life. Heard great things about Schreyer, but D scandalized about PSU (and how she thinks the university reacted) since the Sandusky incident, so PSU a definite non-starter.
Note that we “paraded” her through LACs because that’s where we she asked us to parade her. My concern is that we didn’t give sufficient forethought that what we showed her may have been just the extremes, and my question is really the extent to which there is or isn’t a big middle ground. We’re trying to get her to articulate her thinking on what it is she really wants and why, and if she really wants a larger research university, then that’s fine.
I think @BatesParent2019 is very right to caution that not all honors programs are equal. In addition to Schreyer, the ones about which I’ve heard the most praise include South Carolina, Mississippi, and Arizona State, although I’ve only started looking into this, and it’s anyway probably best left to another thread.
Not sure this would meet her idea of a student body but a number of the less selective [url="<a href=“http://theaitu.org%22%5DAITU%5B/url”>http://theaitu.org"]AITU[/url] schools have a small school feel, D3 athletics, and good merit aid.
DS was also SURE that he wanted to go to a LAC [r away from Calif,] but in the end chose an instate mid sized private U with great research programs . Kids do often change their minds as they mature- often because they also find out where their friends/ classmates are applying.
I’d advise you encourage her to continue think about what her interests are- that will help her determine where she wants to apply, based on the strength of the programs.
Ruggs recommendations is a great source of information about colleges based on the programs they offer.
I’d get a copy for her. That and the Friske guide.
Any colleges that look interesting - run the FA calculators to see what it will cost your family.
“Crunchy,” I think, is a factor associated with schools and not types of schools. There are some LACs that are more “crunchy” (liberal/hippie-esque) and others that are not. I went to an LAC that was definitely not crunchy, nor was it preppy or Greek-dominated. On the flip side, there are definitely larger research universities that are crunchy/liberal (Berkeley comes to mind) or preppy and Greek-dominated (like Vanderbilt or Duke). Point this out to your daughter.
She might simply want to apply to a mix of research universities and LACs. That’s fine too - many students would thrive in either in environment.
@rrobb <<<
Needs merit aid, we’ll need so bring these qualifications down a peg or two to find a school where she would be a particularly attractive applicant.
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So how much do you want your NET COSTS to be?
That answer is very important.
Schreyers HC at PSU is LOUSY with merit…only about $4k per year.
What does she plan to do with Enviromental Science?
The University of Rochester is a nice mix of smaller, but not too small, with a lot of research opportunities. Also, I think Dickinson in PA isn’t at either end (preppy vs crunch), though I might be wrong on that. Also, Union College.
What about a school that is more technically focused, like RPI/Case Western/WPI? Case is very generous with merit aid, though I don’t know how much you are looking for.