Good small colleges?

College Search & Selection
21

Some religious schools are very religious and that’s an important part of their identity and how they teach. Others have a “religious affiliation” but are pretty secular in their approach.

Earlham, for example, has a Quaker affiliation but atheists and not-very-religious people would feel at home there.
St. Olaf – Luthern affiliation, but also very open to people of all beliefs and they would feel comfortable there.

I would also consider –

Simmons – has an agreement with a music conservatory in Boston. Also a great school in many ways
Agnes Scott
Juniata
Mills – also has good music
Hendrix
Washington College in Maryland

22

Some questions:

What is your budget?

Have you run the NPC on any small schools that you are considering and do the results look okay?

What state are you from, and where would you want to go to school?

23

^^ Asked those questions way back in post #3. Assume OP is not comfortable discussing/disclosing.

24

I think you might enjoy any of these three colleges in Massachusetts:

Clark University in Worcester, MA
Hampshire College in Amherst, MA
Wheaton College in Norton, MA (not to be confused with another college of the same name in Illinois with a very different character that would not suit you at all)

And these in other states:
Muhlenberg in PA
Goucher in MD
Bennington in VT
Sarah Lawrence in NY
Eckerd in FL
New College of Florida in FL

25

You might want to take a look at Bard. They are test optional and have a couple of alternate admissions pathway. There is an early decision day – you spend a day at Bard, attend a seminar, meet with professors and at the end, you are given an immidiate decision based on your performance. There is also an online essay exam. Students who score B+ or better are offered admission.

I don’t know much about their financial or merit aid.

26

Another one that you might love, UNC-Asheville. It’s a public LAC, like St. Mary’s in MD, not a large non-flagship state university, like UCF and USF. Asheville is an incredibly beautiful and funky, artsy town right in the Great Smoky Mountains. Asheville is a center for folk art. Last year, I think it cost mid 30s k all-in (tuition, room, and board) for OOS students. So not much more than in-state for some VA in-states, like W&M. That might be too much. If you’d be willing, and got the job, RAs often receive free housing, and sometimes additional payment (I don’t know how they arrange that at UNC-A). If that’s something you’d do, and think you’d be a reasonable candidate to get the job, together with a summer job, maybe you could effective contribute more than $10k. I don’t know if this would make it affordable. I’ll tell you, though, my top three coolest towns for a college student/young professional/outdoorsy/funky type, which I am at heart, are Asheville; Flagstaff, AZ; and Burlington, VT. Northern Arizona University is in Flagstaff, and University of Vermont is in Burlington (and St. Michael’s is just up the street from Burlington).

If you can run down to Asheville do that. One of mine is an expert on China–fluent and has lived there several years. They loved Red Ginger DimSum and Tapas, right off the Asheville town square.

Good luck!

27

Check out Hartwick College in Oneonta NY. They give great financial aid, a beautiful campus and when we visited their open house on our college search I thought their students were the happiest we met anywhere. Everyone was very kind and positive.

28

@DadTwoGirls
At the very very most, I would like to stay under $20,000 per year of total costs. However if a school’s above $17,000/yr for me, I would have to be really in love with it for me to decide to go there instead of saving the money and going to a state school, even if it doesn’t fit me as well.

I haven’t been able to start accurately looking at NPC yet due to the unusual situation I’m in where my parents are separated, but not officially divorced, and where I only live with one parent. I would have to get the financial info from my other parent which could take a while since we don’t live together. I’m also confused as to what to file my parents marital status under since that could also play a big role into things. In short, I probably won’t have this information for at least another month or so.

I’m from Ohio and I’m pretty indifferent as to whether I stay in state or go out of state. If I went out of state, I’d like to stay on this half of the United States or be able to drive home within a day. I’m not completely opposed to a school being on the west coast, but it would have to be a real seller and on the cheaper side for me to travel that far.

I’ve only toured Antioch so far which is the only school I can find in Ohio that’s kind of what I’m looking for other than Oberlin and Kenyon, however both of those are way too high of a reach for me and are too expensive.
Antioch was OK, but it was extremely small and therefore I felt like clubs, activities, and academic opportunities would be very limited.

I’m not opposed to bigger schools in my state, I just have to tour them and see if they would be better for me financially. I’m looking at touring OU, Miami, and maybe OSU only because it’s so close.

29

@aquapt
I’m not sure if I can update it to the original post since I should have included that information to begin with, but I did respond to the questions you asked in another comment above ^

30

@mrp1027 – I found this re: completing FAFSA when parents are separated but not divorced and thought it might be helpful.

https://www.fastweb.com/financial-aid/articles/what-income-is-listed-on-the-fafsa-when-separated-parents-file-a-joint-tax-return

31

Ah, okay - since you’re an OH, you’ll also want to look at the bargains that are available through the Midwest Student Exchange Program. https://msep.mhec.org/institutions?field_state_term_tid=19&field_program_type_term_tid=12&field_sector_term_tid=All

Most of the OOS schools that you can access at a discount through this program are larger, but there are two public LAC’s that are particularly worth a look. With your current stats, both are reaches for you - not high reaches, but somewhere near coin-toss odds, I’d say. Raising your test scores could help a lot. You mentioned the ACT moving fast - I would really encourage you to try sitting for the SAT. Students who have trouble with the pace of the ACT often do better on the SAT. Schedule the SAT, put the Khan Academy SAT-prep app on your phone, and give it 20 minutes a day between now and then. Tedious as this might be, it could really pay off in broadening your options, both by getting you accepted to more schools, and by qualifying you for merit to make them affordable.

Anyway, the two public LAC’s in the MSEP exchange:

The smaller of the two is U of Minnesota Morris, which has 1800 undergraduates. The total cost of attendance with the MSEP discount is around $23K/year. Your stats are slightly below median and the admit rate is 60%, so getting in could go either way.
https://www4.morris.umn.edu/about/history
https://academics.morris.umn.edu/ensembles/chamber-orchestra

Closer to home but a little larger, Truman State U in MO has 6000 undergraduates, but still has the educational approach of a liberal arts college. It has slightly higher median stats than Morris but also has a higher admit rate, so it’s also in the “could go either way” category. Cost of attendance with the MSEP discount is around $25K/year, and you are a hair away from being able to take another $2K of automatic merit off that price. (Threshold is at 26 ACT + 3.32 GPA… or your 3.30 would qualify with a 27 ACT or 1280 SAT.)
http://www.truman.edu/admission-cost/why-truman/
http://www.truman.edu/majors-programs/majors-minors/music-major/music-ensembles/#undefined

These are both terrific small schools. Assuming you can squeak out the auto-merit at Truman St., they are equal in baseline cost at $23K… which is above your $20K target, but… the in-state COA for Ohio State or Ohio U is 27K, and Miami OH is 32K… so it’s all a matter of how the financial aid situation shakes down. There may be state-level aid that you qualify for at the OH schools that you wouldn’t OOS… but then again there may be federal-level aid that would apply at Truman or Morris… so you’ll have to run the numbers and see whether in-state is truly cheaper for you.

There are also some good safety schools to look at on the MSEP list. The U of Wisconsin branch campuses, for example: Eau Claire, for example, has about 10K undergrads, has median stats close to yours, and accepts 80% of applicants, so definitely a safety for you but not one where you’d need to feel overqualified once you were there. More than 40% of students live on campus… and it has a particularly strong orchestra program https://www.uwec.edu/academics/college-arts-sciences/departments-programs/music-theatre-arts/academic-offerings/ensembles/orchestra/ COA at MSAP rate comes in about the same as the others, around $23K. That’s just one of the UW schools - you can compare the various options.

There are even some small schools that would be financial safeties on the list. Chadron State College in NE has about 3000 students, and has on-campus housing and an MSEP COA of under 15K.

Hope that helps. As I’m sure you realize, sorting out the financials and determining your eligibility for need-based aid will bring your options much more into focus. But I think it’s going to be hard to get a lot of the small, private colleges that are attractive down to your price point, so the MSEP schools could be really promising alternatives - there are some excellent schools on this list for a surprisingly good price.