<p>^^ And at my D’s LAC, 23 people showed up the first day for a 20-person class. D had an impassioned plea ready to go, but it wasn’t needed. The prof took roll, and said “23 it is.”</p>
<p>More good comments, thanks again. The issue of flexibility in adding course sections brings up another concern with the UC budget effects. Like most large universities, UC relies on graduate student teaching assistants for a portion of the teaching load. Since most of the budget is consumed by salaries, these teaching positions will be some of the first to go. The result will be either more mega-sized lectures or the increased use of online courses (already mentioned in a previous post).</p>
<p>The LAC concept is alien to me and my husband. We come from science/engineering backgrounds, where large campuses with extensive research/graduate programs are the norm. We’re feeling a bit helpless in advising our literary child.</p>
<p>He will probably end his Junior year with a 3.8 weighted/3.3 unweighted gpa, 2200 SAT & some awards for writing. Not quite enough for the elite LACs but promising enough that I’d like to see him someplace with opportunities for growth.</p>
<p>You might want to look at some of the midwestern LACs. There are a number of really strong schools that would suit a literary kid with very strong but not killer stats, particularly Kenyon and Earlham. Of course, there’s also the reachier Carleton, Oberlin, and Grinnell, and the slightly less reachy–possibly matches?–Macalester and St. Olaf. Also in Ohio are Dennison and College of Wooster. (My sense is that these might be safeties for him.)</p>
<p>I’m not sure exactly where each of these would fall for him, but there should be a reasonable array of reaches, matches, and safeties. Class rank would probably be a big factor, as well as recommendations.</p>
<p>I agree that you shouldn’t be fooled by Reed’s stats: there’s a high degree of self-selection going on there.</p>
<p>You really need to go visit. Willamette and Reed have vastly different vibes and only you and your s can know which will appeal to him. Willamette and U of Puget Sound are similar in terms of selectivity (I attended both, back in the day) but differ in that Puget Sound is larger and offers a much broader range of majors. All of these schools, plus Lewis & Clark, are in close enough proximity to one another that you could fly into Portland or Seattle, rent a car and check them out fairly well within a 3 day time span.</p>
<p>Don’t be afraid to apply to selective schools with Bs on your transcript. I got into a top 15 LAC with a 3.4 GPA. If the kid fits with the schools, chances are the school will take the kid.</p>
<p>I agree with Consolation that rank will be a factor to consider but I think some of his schools are misbucketed. Kenyon does look at literary kids but it has pretty high selectivity. Only 22% have below a 3.5 GPA. Denison is less selective but it would not be a safety.</p>
<p>[FAQ</a>, Applying to CMC, Admission, Claremont McKenna College](<a href=“http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/admission/apply/faq.php]FAQ”>http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/admission/apply/faq.php)</p>
<p>What about Claremont McKenna?</p>
<p>Erin’sDad, is that Kenyon stat for weighted or unweighted GPA? The OP’s son does have a 3.8 weighted…</p>
<p>Since that is from the Common Data Set it should be UW, and GPA and class rank are weighted more than SATs.</p>
<p>*With regard to admissions, according to the US News & WR web site USC accepts 24% of applicants and Reed accepts 40%.
*</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that getting into Reed is easy. Reed has kind of a self-selecting group that applies. The public-at-large is not applying to Reed. </p>
<p>Reed is not easy to get into with a B average. </p>
<p>What exactly is your son’s GPA? What is his weighted GPA?</p>
<p>What are his test scores?</p>
<p>Is money no issue? Many schools don’t give great aid, so if you need FA, either look for schools that give great aid (usually the hardest schools to get accepted to) and to schools where his stats are high enough for big merit scholarships.</p>
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<p>Well, that definitely makes it reachier for the OP’s son, since SATs are his strength. Unless he has a very high class rank, which sounds unlikely. I still think he’s a legitimate candidate, though, and it sounds like a possible good fit.</p>
<p>Mom2, look at post #22. The stats, insofar as they are known at this point, are there.</p>
<p>Sounds like you have plenty of suggestions with which to plan some fun summer road trips (or fly/drive). I would suggest, however, that you not lump all UC’s into the same boat, and that if a LAC is indeed the best option, not to disregard a couple of those in CA.
My son is a bio major at University of Redlands and very happy. They give very nice merit aid. His classes are rigorous and he has gotten every class he wanted- once or twice as noted by being small, it’s easy to keep in contact with a teacher who often has the option to just expand the class. We rejected the UC’s for all their big, bad classes, ego-driven professors, fears of extra years to finish basic degree. Oh, yeah- and the thought of my darling being just a number. In helping my D select a college this past year we revisited the UC’s because she didn’t want a small school. Now my D is going to head to UC Santa Cruz in the fall. She also got accepted to Irvine and Santa Barbara. To make us happy she also applied to U of Puget Sound (Beautiful campus, great school, great merit aid, but too small for her). Choices came down to Cal Poly and Santa Cruz. The atmosphere at Santa Cruz is unlike other UC’s- ie. it’s cooperative, not competitive. Breaking the students down into 10 different “colleges” provides a LAC community, but with the benefits of a much larger university. As to big classes and disinterested professors…the big classes have smaller discussion classes, and if you randomly check out some of the teachers online they are often leaders in their field. You can feel the passion.<br>
Second that you read Colleges That Change Lives by Lauren Pope. Good luck.</p>
<p>Both D and I were really impressed with Willamette, especially outstanding faculty, despite Salem being kind of a boring location. And campus across st. from train station for trips to Portland/Seattle. She planned to got there until acceptance off waitlist at Macalester stirred things up–but still may attend Willamette–great merit/aid package, west coast vibe. Reed IS a more intellectually intense school, and great for some students, but also kind of narrow. Few students study abroad and there is little talk about “service” in any of the schools materials (or on our visit there). But the students are very bright and there’s a fair amount of competition for who studies the hardest!</p>
<p>Willamette has gotten much more popular recently (8K + apps this year, much lower acceptance rate, and higher stats). They had a great President last 13 years and have a new one from UC Santa Cruz actually coming in the Fall.</p>
<p>UC Santa Cruz IS a great UC choice–I went there on visiting quarters from UC Berkeley and then did teaching credential there. Very lovely place to study and cool students. It’s not quite as counterculture as when I was there in the 1980s anymore, but it’s quite different from the other scary-big and impersonal UCs. Much more cozy and political and interdisciplinary.</p>
<p>Macalester is a great choice for writing and Lit (president is English PhD!), more relaxed sounding than Reed, more selective than Willamette, but GPA might be a problem there–they also have gotten very selective–my D has lower SAT (2070) but 3.9 GPA and 5/232 class rank, with full IB program and international interests and she got waitlisted there.</p>
<p>Finally, I have students like yours in classes I teach at Pacific Lutheran University, mid size LAC/MA school–who didn’t get in to top choices or whose parents went to PLU or who just wanted to stay local–and they seem to love it–sure, they are in top 25% of students in terms of preparation or “brightness”, but they get a lot of opportunities for being at the top, and they seem to have plenty of friends and find challenge in our classes-which are mostly smaller. So, it matters less than one thinks, in the end, unless a students has very specific needs. </p>
<p>But—we are going through it all with D right now–prestige of Macalester vs. price and equally good faculty at Willamette (if not better in some cases because they have hired a lot even as others have frozen hires during the past 3 years–and got the top folks). </p>
<p>Finally–what does your son want OP?</p>
<p>We did tour Santa Cruz, and he liked the way Freshmen are sorted into individual themed dorms, with a LAC feel. He also likes Davis, mostly because we had an outstanding tour guide who emphasized the liberal arts. </p>
<p>We live too close to U Redlands, Claremont and UCR for my son. He wants to be at least a few hours away from us. Can you imagine?</p>
<p>Grades are looking up for his last semester as a Junior, and he wants to take the SAT again June 4. We will fly to Seattle this summer and tour Reed, Willamette, U Oregon and Oregon State. He doesn’t want to tour Reed because he worries he will really like it and just set himself up for disappointment. We may walk around a bit to get a feel for it without hearing all the wonderful details.</p>
<p>OP, has your son taken the SATIIs already? He will probably need them for some of these schools.</p>
<p>Is it safe to assume from your lack of response that you are not interested in schools that are not on the west coast?</p>
<p>He is researching colleges all over the country. My focus is on the west coast for entirely selfish reasons, I want him to be able to visit us without a setting up a separate fund just for travel. We won’t qualify for any form of financial aid, so it’s already going to be quite a financial drain if he gets accepted to a private LAC. </p>
<p>It seems to be in vogue now to do a sort of investment value assessment of college costs. In other words, don’t consider paying top dollar for four years of college if the “product”, your child, will not earn it all back with their first job. Lost is the fact that sometimes investments reap rewards that are not measured in dollars. If my son comes through college with a solid ability to make good decisions and do good things I will consider it a good investment.</p>
<p>He just took the SAT subject tests in Lit and Bio, awaiting results.</p>
<p>"It seems to be in vogue now to do a sort of investment value assessment of college costs. In other words, don’t consider paying top dollar for four years of college if the “product”, your child, will not earn it all back with their first job. "</p>
<p>Not on college confidential! You can get your head taken off for suggesting something like that!</p>
<p>Teenmom, I could not agree less with terms of the value assessment you cite and could not agree with you more! While I agree with those who feel that saddling a student with crushing debt is unwise, I also do not think of college as job training.</p>
<p>In part, I think that this arises because of our national insistence on labeling almost all post-secondary education “college,” and the resulting effort to stretch what could be an effective 2-year vocational program into a bogus BA. One unintended result is the vast number of students who leave school without ever getting a degree or a certificate or a qualification, but instead acquire a mountain of debt. I think that many more HS graduates would be better off with programs clearly intended as “trade school.”</p>
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I agree whole-heartedly. The question is can you develop that same ability at a school which is not crushingly expensive. </p>
<p>FWIW, DD1 looked at Reed and loved it. It was her #1 choice and she was waitlisted (3.92 UWGPA, NMF). DD2 looked at Reed and didn’t care for it. She is loving life at Lewis and Clark, though… There are many options out there.</p>
<p>FYI Teenmom–Willamette has outstanding merit awards (NOT based on need) to attract good students, probably the best in the NW for the caliber of school (PLU also has great merit, but students from a wider range of preparation for college). This combo has resulted in 8K + apps this year at Willamette and more deposits than they expected, so don’t know if great merit awards will still be as plentiful in two years but it’s worth looking at if you feel you won;t qualify for aid. Lewis and Clark has some merit (but much less than Willamette for us, despite being comparable student-stat-wise). </p>
<p>Reed is attractive–but the “intellectual” mindset is very intense (weekdays) with equally intense blowing off steam weekends (drugs not mandatory but certainly very prevalent–I know a number of Reed grads). Some students love it and do well–but definitely check it out with an overnight visit and talking to lots of students/faculty. I was a bit turned off by their Humanities 101 “Classics” focus for all students–lots of bonding around a very western male roster of philosophers–but I’m more into the global studies/multi-cultural side of education. Again–depends of your son’s interests! He should visit.</p>
<p>Whitman is also a great school–though a bit isolated (not unlike a typical midwest LAC).</p>
<p>And, come to think of it, while in NW, you should check out Evergreen State College and Western Washington U (Bellingham). Both really good undergrad education focus (though different from each other)–I taught at WWU and loved it–like a bigger size public LAC. Great faculty and students and super lovely location. Bigger classes for the intro level though. But very teaching oriented! Evergreen more alternative, students shape their own program–quite good school–attracts some of the same population as Reed.</p>