If you & your son prefer an LAC , then consider applying ED I or ED II if the particular school’s online financial aid calculators indicate that his top choice is affordable.
Otherwise, it seems reasonable to have a couple of public honors colleges at state flagship universities as financial safeties.
We are a 5th generation Pacific Northwest family with extended family who have attended most of the schools in this region. I’ve also visited pretty much all of them with D21. This would be my summary of school options in the Pacific Northwest.
Flagship Public Universities: UW-Seattle is a level above the others in selectivity, facilities, etc. UO, OSU, and WSU are all roughly equivalent but very different settings.
Regional Public Universities: WWU is a step above the others and probably the only one worth coming to from out of state. Beautiful campus and location. Seems to be getting increasingly competitive due to population growth and spillover from kids who don’t get into UW. The others are of regional interest only.
National Liberal Arts Colleges: Reed and Whitman are the two premier LACs in the Northwest that would compete with the top east coast schools. But they are very different. Reed is intensely academic and somewhat eclectic with no varsity sports or Greek life and located in urban Portland. Whitman is more the archetypcal LAC with sports, Greek life and so forth. And located in small town eastern WA. I’m a Reed grad and the first to say it isn’t for everyone. Whitman is less known but has a stellar reputation here in the Northwest and seems to have an intensely loyal following. Students who go there tend to really love it.
Regional Liberal Arts Colleges: University of Puget Sound, Lewis & Clark and Willamette are the next three LACs that would draw from more of a regional west coast student pool and are a step behind Whitman and Reed in terms of selectivity and endowment wealth. UPS is in a nice older part of Tacoma and a very pretty traditional campus with strengths in music, science and international studies. L&C is in an upscale hilly residential part of Portland with strengths in international studies and traditional liberal arts. It’s kind of “old money” Portland. The campus is more modern and kind of sprawls along a wooded hillside tucked in the trees rather than a traditional quad. It kind of evolved from an old hillside estate rather than a planned campus quad. Willamette is in downtown Salem next to the state capital and strongest in public affairs and public policy type programs and weakest in sciences. A lot of Oregon politicians and judges have come from Willamette.
Catholic Schools: Gonzaga, University of Portland and University of Seattle are three roughly equivalent medium-size Catholic universities with similar endowments and selectivity. They are all different in setting. Seattle is in the center of the city next to downtown. UP is in an isolated part of far suburban Portland. Gonzaga is a traditional quad style campus across the river from downtown Spokane.
There are a bunch of other struggling religious LACs scattered about the Northwest that are not worth mentioning for a top student coming from out of state.
My own daughter currently has UW and UPS as her top two schools. She is probably competitive to get into Reed and Whitman but Isn’t sure she really wants the ultra-intense academic environment of Reed or the small town isolation of Whitman. UPS is also known to be generous with merit aid so it’s kind of risen to the top of her list along with UW which is our in-state flagship. Gonzaga is sort of a wildcard as she has several friends who have it as their top choice. But of course we’ll probably apply to all of them and see what shakes out. We are also going to check out some CA schools before making a final decision.
The rest of the Northwest and mountain west is kind of a dead zone for top selective colleges. ID, WY, MT, NV have ordinary smallish public universities that aren’t competitive with the top national schools Utah has BYU and UU which are rising schools. Colorado has Colorado College and University of Denver. Arizona and New Mexico have flagship publics that are pretty average and no private schools of note.
For a completely wild-card pick there is University of British Columbia in Vancouver, which is a top tier Canadian university with a growing international Pacific Rim audience. International student tution at UBC is well below private school tuition in the US, especially with the exchange rate. So it is an increasingly attractive option for students from the Pacific Northwest. But Canadian universities are more European in style with really large classes and lack of residential campus life so it would be a different experience.
@Publisher Huh, interesting. I guess that they are better choices for the OP than I thought.
@MWolf: I was surprised by the number of fullride & full tuition scholarships at Wash & Lee and at UNC.
Ole Miss has foreign language scholarships that include trips to Jordan (Arabic) and trips to Taiwan and/or China for Mandarin. Many of the scholarships seem tied to federal government training & recruiting.
With the economic uncertainties facing many combined with the expectation of graduate school / graduate degrees, folks should examine all options.
@Camasite. This was super helpful. I’m definitely going to take another look at UPS. Any particular type of science they are known to be strong in?
And UBC has been on my son’s list. Mostly because it’s so gorgeous up there. But it is big. And relying on a favorable exchange rate makes me a little nervous. But I do have a good friend in Vancouver who would feed him a hot meal every once in a while.
@Publusher, I think applying ED anywhere is not in our cards. We will need to compare offers.
@Zinnia203, Williams seems to offer most of the items on your son’s wishlist: A “small little college town” surrounded by bucolic mountains and forests, 2 hours from Boston. Plenty of outdoorsy, nature oriented activities. The Outing Club is over 100 years old and has 750 members. Plenty of intramural and club sports, including, oddly enough, a sailing club, considering thatWilliams is 2 hours to the ocean.
“Earnest, intellectual” student body, “Liberal leaning, but likes to hear variety of views”. Plenty of scholar-artist-athletes. Plenty of Eagle Scouts. An underlying libertarian streak.
Superb math, science offerings, including “higher level math” and solid computer science (for an LAC). 40% have double majors. Not a language destination per se, but the usual suspects are offered. About 50% of the junior class studies “away” which includes locations both abroad and in the US, such as Williams own Maritime program in Mystic.
Generally Williams offers excellent need based aid and their net price calculators are usually accurate even for ED admissions.My son’s shortlist included (along with Williams which he attended) Hamilton and Kenyon. I would put Amherst, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Pomona and Carleton in the same culture-category, though I’m not familiar with their math offerings. Among somewhat less selectives: Skidmore, Conn College, Colby, Grinnell.
Thanks @momrath. One of his favorite math teachers went to Williams, so it should have been on our list. Interesting that they have a sailing team. The other colleges you mention are ones we keep coming back around to, so I must be picking up on that culture vibe a little bit at least.
UPS has good biology program as well as molecular biology and biochemistry. They are also strong in environmental sciences and have marine biology facilities because they are sitting right there on Puget Sound. One of the coolest scuba diving sites in Puget Sound is right under the Tacoma Narrows bridge minutes away from UPS. I used to drive down there to dive when I was a grad student at UW. Like many small colleges, their bio program is also probably tilted somewhat towards pre-med.
When we visited, UPS struck us as a very outdoorsy school with lots of student clubs and activities oriented towards getting out hiking, skiing, kayaking, boating, etc. They have a sailing team, a climbing team, and that sort of thing. So it looks like an ideal sort of place for an active outdoorsy sort of student. They also have a year-long study abroad program that visits 5 different Asian countries that looks extremely cool. My daughter is interested in having a bit more of an actual life in college and exploring diverse interests which is why she is gravitating towards UPS compared to Reed which is so intensely academic that students don’t seem to have quite the freedom to do other things.
His interests in math, CS and languages suggest linguitsics might be a potential major of interest.
Given your son wants a well-balanced school, maybe take a look at Denison in Ohio. My son is a rising sophomore at Denison, and he is thrilled with the school, as are we. Your son’s stats would probably make this close to a safety. Denison has an old reputation as a preppy school, but it is actually very diverse. They provide substantial merit aid and use it towards this end, so it’s not divided just between full-pay and financial need kids, it’s all kinds of kids. We live outside the US and my son was unfamiliar with, and very put off by, some of the SJW stuff we encountered at various schools we visited, but he is very comfortable at Denison. (I didn’t mention Denison in my earlier posts because it is very sporty, but now I understand your son is actually an athlete.) The academics at Denison are very strong, the president of the university is incredible, and the town in which the college is located is idyllic. The way the school, the faculty and the alumni have pulled together to ensure the kids have a great experience notwithstanding the pandemic has been very impressive. Of course, the green is primarily corn fields . . .
These articles should provide a sense as to the emphasis Hamilton places on its math and computer science programs:
https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/mathletics-team-second-snow-bowl-win
https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/comp-sci-department-hosts-college-computing-conference
Note that in the first case results were based on the notoriously challenging Putnam Exam.
This article describes Hamilton’s environment in general: https://www.hamilton.edu/news/story/faculty-jason-cieply-russian-studies.
With respect to general resources, here are two with which you may want to become familiar.
MyinTuition can be especially convenient for estimating financial aid awards: https://myintuition.org/.
IPEDS offers a wide range of information. The data on choice of major can be especially interesting. This is the example for Williams: https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=Williams&s=all&id=168342#programs. Note that figures represent “first majors.”
@Conformist1688 Yes, he has mentioned it as an interest. This would pare down the list considerably, perhaps, but I don’t know how big an interest it is.
@tkoparent Corn fields would eliminate all sorts of lovely schools, many of them Safeties, perhaps. I’ll take another look at Denison. How schools handle this pandemic is yet one more data point to track, I suppose. Happy to hear you are pleased with Denison’s response. Bodes well for fall.
@Camasite UPS sounds absolutely perfect for me. Wish I were still a teenager. I haven’t heard my kid voice much interest in biology unfortunately.
@merc81 I’ve used the my intuition site, but had not seen ipeds. That’s a really good resource I’ll have to play around with. And thank you for the Hamilton links.
Though linguistics appears fairly commonly as a minor at liberal arts colleges.
With his grades, scores and interests he sounds like a good fit for Rice University. It isn’t an LAC, but only has 4000 undergrads. It checks many of his boxes and isn’t too far from the Gulf of Mexico. Galveston is an easy drive. Rice doesn’t have Greek life but has the residential college system instead. Although it is a Division 1 school, sports are not a big deal at Rice. Rice is in the center of Houston, so it isn’t in a small college town. The Rice Village shopping district right off campus seems like a small town within the city. Houston is green year round. The campus is it’s own world surrounded by hedges or walls. The largest city park is right across the street. Research opportunities abound, and the STEM programs are strong. Rice has good financial aid. Rice gets high marks for happiest students and race/class interaction. The students are liberal even though Rice is in Texas. Take a virtual tour and see what you think. https://admission.rice.edu/schedule-my-visit
For one craving lush greenery, certain states come to mind: Washington, Virginia, North Carolina & Vermont as well as the provence of British Columbia, Canada.
As we learn more about your son, certain schools appear a bit inappropriate while others seem more well-suited to his tastes.
Based on his stellar academic qualifications, he probably should not look any deeper than the top 20 LACs–strictly my opinion, of course.
National Universities will offer a much wider variety of courses and offer more depth within one’s major area of interest due in large part to the presence of graduate degree programs. additionally, many public National Universities offer huge COA discounts through merit scholarships & honors colleges.
However, for those who value the concept, note that Vermont does not appear to contain any old-growth forests. Nonetheless, Vermont does offer an extensive Grandma Moses type of pastoral atmosphere, as well as proximity to the old-growth forests of the Adirondacks.
For lush greenery top 20 ranked LACs in a less than far left setting consider:
Davidson College in North Carolina (moderate)
Washington & Lee University in Virginia (leans conservative)
Middlebury College in Vermont (leans liberal)
Williams College in Massachusetts (moderate)
Amherst College (leans liberal)
Bowdoin College in Maine (moderate)
Colgate University in New York (moderate)
Lots of green/natural beauty and/or water National Universities:
University of Virginia
University of North Carolina
Vanderbilt University in Tennessee
Dartmouth College in New Hampshire
Duke University in North Carolina
Northwestern University on the shores of Lake Michigan
University of Washington in Seattle
University of Vermont Honors College on shores of Lake Champlain
Merit Scholarship Schools could be another category which would include public flagship honors college schools (Southern flagships & Univ. of Vermont Honors College are examples) as well as others such as Emory University in Atlanta.
Possibly, Bates College & Colby College in Maine & much discussed Hamilton College in New York.
I was reluctant to throw Wesleyan’s hat in the ring because of the “body of water as far as the eye can see” thing. But, if you’re willing to settle for the Connecticut River, the largest and longest river in New England, it’s in walking distance of campus and clearly visible from several vantage points. The crew team practices there all the time and there is a pubic picnic area from which to view races.
The other box I would check is Wesleyan’s Math Dept. It is one of the few LACs to offer course work through the doctoral level, thus mitigating against the possibility that DS will burn through the undergraduate course catalogue (a common concern among parents of Math majors.)
Wesleyan is larger than Williams or Amherst (by about 1000 students), so the percentage of NESCAC varsity players is lower. There are a lot more Theater, Dance and especially, Film Studies majors, and this may account for Wesleyan’s reputation for being more 'Left-of-Center" than the other two. But, a self-described nerd would not feel out of place. Quite the contrary.
Based on your HHI, I thought you might find Colby’s new Fair Shot Fund of interest.
“The Fair Shot Fund will ensure that talented students from families in the middle-income brackets will have access to Colby’s extraordinary educational opportunities by capping the parent/guardian contribution at $15,000 for families making up to $150,000 (with assets typical of that income level).”
With your son’s stats, he has a great chance to be named as a Presidential Scholar, which doesn’t come with merit money, but some other great perks.
https://www.colby.edu/admission/presidential/
I would not describe Waterville as quaint college town, but it getting better every year, in big part due to investments by Colby. Also, the campus is set apart from the downtown area, which can be a deal breaker for some. The campus, however is beautiful, and very green (both physically and environmentally). When the weather turns cold, you can see kids skiing around campus or skating on Johnson pond.
S18 is a rising jr, CS/Econ major (who is thinking about adding a math minor as he has already taken a bunch of math classes.). Colby was the last school that we looked at, and we did only because we were in ME looking at Bates. He ended up applying to Colby and not Bates. S18 is introverted, not a partier at all, but has been able to find a group of really great friends who are incredibly bright and motivated. He has been especially impressed with the head of the CS dept. S18 entered Colby as an Econ major, but added CS quickly and he really has enjoyed it.
With your son’s stats, he will have lots of great choices! Good luck!!