Hi! I’m a rising senior from a fairly low-ranked public high school interested in political science and philosophy. My favorite college right now is Emory University, but I’m looking for other good schools with small-ish classes but not a tiny student body overall. Less preppy/wealthy schools are my preference. Thanks for any guidance you might have to offer!
Welcome to College Confidential. You will find that there are quite a few people active here who are quite knowledgeable about various colleges and universities.
However, we can give more accurate advice if we know more about what you are looking for, as well as what you can afford and what your stats are like.
Can you tell us your home state, and your geographic preference regarding where you would like to attend university? What is your unweighted GPA (on an A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1 basis)? One issue with weighted GPA is that different high schools in the US compute it in very different ways, which makes weighted GPA difficult to compare.
Also, finances are a major issue for many students who are deciding which universities to apply to. It can be helpful to know what your budget is, and whether you are likely to qualify for need based financial aid.
And can you tell us what you like about Emory? Others here on CC might be able to suggest other schools that are similar. Given that Emory has something like a 15% acceptance rate, some others here might also be able to suggest schools where acceptance is more likely.
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Less preppy and wealthy - so eliminate these - they are supposedly the schools with the wealthiest populations. I’d imagine but don’t know that Emory is near.
Colorado College
Washington University in St. Louis
Colgate University
Washington and Lee
Trinity College
Middlebury College
Colby College
Georgetown University
Bates College
Tufts University
Another list shows Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, USC, UCLA, Duke and Penn.
OK - but you want targets. But - I know nothing about you except you’re a good test taker - do you have a GPA and home state?
So I’d say this - the best “target” would be the best schools for you - meaning, perhaps a smaller school like Emory is best. On the flip side, maybe a mid/large like Pitt is good with smaller classes in its Honors program. Or an even larger school like U of SC with its top Honors College.
Staying on line with you good schools and I’ll assume smallish classes - you can research some of the following - but not sure if you have any cost concerns - because that would impact where you can go - and there’s many more than this.
American
Binghamton
Brandeis
Butler
Case Western
Christopher Newport
College of Charleston
Dayton
Elon
Miami (Florida)
Richmond
Rochester
SMU
SUNY New Paltz
William & Mary
As an aside, some schools have a Politics and Philosophy major. More popular, is the PPE - adding economics.
These aren’t schools for you but just a little snippet of what the major is like.
Really - you can go any direction school wise with your interests - and budget / demonstrated need would likely play a part.
Politics and Philosophy major (pitt.edu)
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics | Virginia Tech (vt.edu)
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Based on your academic areas of interest, these sites may offer you ideas for colleges to research further:
You also may want to consider colleges with an available major in public policy, which relies on the fields of political science, economics and philosophy for its foundation:
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You can also look at % of Pell Grant recipients and whether they have a policy of free tuition or full ride for a certain amount of family income (often 65K, 75K, 125K).
Do you qualify for Questbridge? (A sort of super ED system that guarantees a full ide for all 4 years at one of the top colleges in the nation.)
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Welcome, @Asa1M!
It would be great if we could get some additional information about you, including your GPA, home state, and budget. But just yesterday a student was asking about philosophy programs, and I put together this list of more accessible schools (all admit rates are higher than 20%, with many accepting the majority of their students).
Based on what you’ve shared so far, these are some of the schools on that list that might interest you the most:
- Brandeis (MA), with about 3700 undergrads
- William & Mary (VA): with about 6800 undergrads
- Christopher Newport (VA): with about 4400 undergrads
- SUNY New Paltz with about 6100 undergrads
- SUNY Geneseo with about 4100 undergrads
- Duquesne (PA ) with about 100 undergrads
- Marquette (WI) with about 7500 undergrads
- U. of Rochester (NY) with about 6800 undergrads
- American (D.C.) with about 7900 undergrads
- The College of New Jersey with about 7k undergrads
- Case Western (OH) with about 6k undergrads
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Thank you all! I am from Illinois, with a GPA of 4.30 (3.97 unweighted) and a 1520 SAT. I have solid extracurriculars (state qualifier in cross country but not running in college, sole high schooler on my district’s school board, on a search committee), but nothing amazing. I am willing to travel away for college. My family has assets that we can’t use to pay for college but are still calculated in our financial aid package (we’ll get close to nothing), so colleges with lower cost before aid would be best.
I know that Case Western is a great school for hard sciences. Is it strong in the humanities as well? Will W&M be less expensive out of state than near-full tuition at selective private schools?
This is one example of a situation where universities that say that they meet “full need” might not actually be affordable. There are a few others.
Do you know what your budget is? Do you know what your parents can afford to pay without taking on any debt?
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No - you need a school like Alabama. $20k all in with those #s. Or Ole Miss or Ms State. U of Kansas and others. AnnArizona would be $30k off so $25k a year with a great Honors dorm.
That’s a cost list - join the Honors College and you’re fine.
If you want the smaller school, maybe a Truman State or FAU Wilkes (really small) or a lower tier LAC with huge merit - an Allegheny or Kalamazoo etc.
A W&M is wonderful but it’s in the mid $60s. To me, Miami of Ohio is the same feel but much larger, cheaper, but more party-ish too but still might be a good choice.
You might look at a SUNY school -larger would be Binghamton. Or for smaller - a Geneseo or New Paltz or others.
There are lots of great Honors Colleges out there and some like a College of Charleston and their Fellows program get aggressive. SMU has the Presidential.
You really need a budget. What’s the target price?
But there’s a reason 1500+ Illinoisans have discovered Alabama. Check out the Randall Reasearch and Blount Scholars to enhance the academic experience.
Are you NMF ?
What is the actual amount your parents can contribute (without any loans)?
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So my S24 with a combined sciences and humanities interest ended up not so interested in Case because he perceived the balance as not quite what he is looking for. It does all exist there, he just perceived that, say, Rochester was more balanced.
Yes, within limits.
W&M has an out of state full estimated cost of $67,653. Using Wake Forest as an example, full estimated cost of attendance is $87,622.
For some “full pay” families I know, this is not a trivial distinction. Not to oversimplify, but some will say things like that is sort of like everyone gets a $20K/year merit scholarship at W&M. The point being they see it as basically equivalent to a private university that would typically cost about $20K/year more.
However, that is still a lot of money. It is still going to be way more than even a fairly pricey in-state cost of attendance, and more than various other colleges that would likely provide a lower cost of attendance to someone with the numbers to get admitted to W&M OOS.
Which doesn’t stop a lot of people from choosing W&M. Just understand that at full pay OOS, it is less than full pay for a comparable private, but more than other options.
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Thank you all. Ideally, my family would be paying closer to 40k. That’s more than we thought we’d be paying before we did cost calculators, but it looks like a number to shoot for now.
That’s a choice.
You can spend less - if you’re willing to take the very solid options that will cost less.
This is a very common experience–even relatively generous colleges tend to expect a degree of family financial sacrifice that can be a rather unpleasant surprise for some families.
A high numbers applicant like you typically has three options.
You can simply adjust to paying that.
Alternatively, you can do what is sometimes called chasing merit, and with good numbers that will often work–you just have to be fine with attending one of the colleges willing to give someone with your numbers a merit offer that gets you to a materially lower cost of attendance. Usually, implicitly your numbers would allow you to get admitted to a “better” college, because that is why they need to offer you merit in the first place–to woo you away from those “better” colleges they assume will also be admitting you. But some colleges like that can be really good colleges for the right kid, as good or indeed possibly better for that kid than the nominally “better” colleges in question.
As a total aside, when I think about the different ways of “winning” the college admissions game, I always think these are the biggest winners of all–the people who manage to get significant merit from a college they wanted to attend anyway! I really can’t imagine a much better award for having done well in high school.
Finally, you can take a serious look at your in-state options. Again, sometimes these are actually great options anyway, for the right kid. Many will have some sort of honors program, often at least their advanced classes are really good, you can develop great relationships with top professors in a field, and so on. And some might well ALSO offer you merit, bringing COA down further.
I’m just pointing all this out because I think all of these can be viable options for someone in your position. And personally, I would strongly consider applying to some mix of these options and then evaluating with offers in hand. It is not uncommon for someone with good numbers to be surprised about some of their offers, or for that matter to be surprised about which colleges they actually prefer once the reality of being admitted sinks in. So just keeping all of these paths open at this stage seems pretty prudent to me.
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Run the NPC on every single college you’re interested since each calculates differently.
Can you afford the 40K the NPCs show? Is 40K for UIUC or for private universities?
Your choices:
- Illinois public universities: if affordable, between UIUC and UIC +Honors at both, you have solid options.
- decide if you want more safeties or Midwestern colleges with solid offerings+merit aid
- ?? Northwestern, UChicago: 2 very different instate options; see which “vibe” is better for you and if the NPC shows them within budget
- matches/targets within budget, with financial aid or merit aid = it seems the “budget” aspect will be crucial.
once you’ve established these, you can add any reach you want.
For clarity, when your family ran the Net Price Calculators (NPC) at expensive schools like Emory, did it indicate an Expected Family Contribution (EFC) of $40k? Basically, will your family qualify for need-based aid or you need to find a school where you can get the costs to below $40k without need-based aid?
From the list I shared in post #6, Christopher Newport, the SUNY schools, Duquesne, and Marquette are likely to be within budget after merit aid, and depending on how the merit aid works, maybe The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). Brandeis, William & Mary, U. of Rochester, American, and Case Western are unlikely to get to $40k via merit aid.
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Consider:
Rhodes college
Dickinson
Gettysburg
All 3 are great for political science. Rhodes gives great merit. Dd got good merit at all 3.
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Have you run the NPC for Emory? Given what you said above about your family’s assets, I would expect it would probably cost a great deal more than $40k for you (possibly closer to twice this much).
Given your excellent stats, I would expect you to be able to find very good universities or colleges that will cost $40k per year or maybe less. The most obvious first place to look would be in-state public universities. UIUC is a very good university. It is of course a great deal larger than Emory. I do not know other public universities in Illinois at all, but others should be able to make suggestions. My understanding is that the University of Chicago does give merit aid and it is much closer to Emory in size. Whether you would get enough aid to get the price down to $40k I do not know (and I would be a bit surprised).
How far would you be willing to travel?
Yes, when my family filled out the NPC, we were disappointed to see an estimated cost of 78k.
I’m willing to travel almost anywhere in the country for a school of the right fit. I’ve avoided looking at southwestern schhols so far due to the distance from home, but am not dead set against any region.
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How do you feel about schools like Loyola Chicago? I wonder what your NPC numbers would show there?
I can think of liberal arts colleges that might fit your budget, but thought they would be too small. A lot of less preppy mid-size schools that are affordable are Catholic institutions like Loyola. Does that appeal?
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