Hi, I have recently been accepted to these colleges for an International Relations major: (I will add the tuition costs in after I find them all out.)
Penn State Altoona
University of Iowa
Iowa State
Saint Louis University Madrid
University College Dublin
Fitchburg State
Westfield State
UMass Lowell
University of Kansas
Kansas State
Creighton University
Keene State
Plymouth State
Merrimack College
Arizona State University
For a little background on me, I am a Latino male with a 2.7 GPA who shotgunned to a lot of schools with fee waivers in order to see what I could scrounge up. To my surprise, I was accepted to a lot of them but now I am left with a debacle to resolve of which I am going to accept. I’m thinking of narrowing down the schools first and then choosing between the ones left. I live in Massachusetts so the UMass & state schools would be the cheapest option for me, but my parents have told me cost is not an issue for them as they will be covering my college tuition, but of course it would be preferable to pay less than more. To most of these schools I was accepted into a guided academic program for people with lower academics.
For my preferences, I really don’t mind anything except extremely rural; I would like a college with a lot of school spirit and people that enjoy going to that school. A school with friendly people and a nice campus would be a plus too. I would rather something farther as I like getting out of my comfort zone & exploring.
Unless you are a full pay student, your first task is to compare costs across them all and only consider ones that are in your budget. What is your budget?
Make a spreadsheet with these items:
-Tuition/Fees
-Room
-Board
-These items added together equal total direct cost of attendance (COA)
Then subtract scholarships and loans to get to a net cost:
-Institutional scholarship/Grant Aid
-Pell Grant (if you receive that)
-$5.5K direct student loan (if you are taking that)
-Work-study (if offered by a given school)
You can add in other indirect costs later, such as books, travel, etc.
Another thing to consider is travel. How many of these schools have airports nearby? How many legs will you have to fly to get there? Then will there be a shuttle or Uber to get you to campus? Flights have gotten expensive and sometimes unreliable. Especially around holidays.
Penn State Altoona is a branch campus. It’s about an hour from Penn State main campus.
I second this. For example:
Iowa City: you probably have to fly to Cedar Rapids (18 miles but it’s a small airport - google where the flights are from/to this airport). They have municipal airport but I think you probably have to fly to Minneapolis first. Not sure about how expensive/cheap the airfare is.
Ames, Iowa: similar to Iowa City - closest major airport is Des Moines.
Would you be open to visit the schools (time and cost permitting) and see how things go? You mentioned “nice campus” but it’s so subjective. Same with friendly people: there will be nice and not-so-nice people.
How different you want your experience to be? Lawrence, Iowa City, Manhattan, Omaha, Ames will be really different from Tempe, and Madrid and Dublin definitely will be totally different.
UCD is €30k/pa and you will only get FAFSA loans for aid. I only recommend UCD for you if you are a very self-motivated & self-disciplined student. The academic system is rigid and does not provide much support.
Congratulations on all the acceptances! While it’s great that your parents have offered to pay right up to full pay out of state, there is the question of value for money. Let’s say that UMass or Westfield would cost you about 30K/yr, and the annual cost of attendance at U of Iowa would be 50K/yr. Is it worth an extra 80K over the four years to go to U of Iowa? What else could be bought with that 80K?
Certainly, another consideration is what you want to get out of the college education, and do the institutions offer what you need to help you to achieve your goals?
After you have the actual cost of attendance at each of these schools, you can make a better assessment of the value to you.
Penn State Altoona ($39,354) (2+2 Program)
University of Iowa ($43,792)
Iowa State ($39,956)
Saint Louis University Madrid ($25,000)
University College Dublin ($23,100)
Fitchburg State ($20,000)
Westfield State ($26,978)
UMass Lowell ($30,112)
University of Kansas ($37,900)
Kansas State ($38,045)
Creighton University ($59,790)
Keene State ($39,071)
Plymouth State ($25,000)
Merrimack College ($53,170)
Arizona State University ($50,101)
Added a few more I forgot to mention:
Vermont State University (Castleton Campus) ($32,898)
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts ($24,000)
If you do not like extremely rural then Vermont State University doesn’t fit the bill. Mass College of Liberal Arts is in a small city but in a very rural part of the state if you haven’t visited.
If you were my kid, I’d say no to anything over $50k first. They’re just not worth that much more than the others. Then, it really depends on your parents finances and what they are willing to pay for. It looks like you have several out of state options in the 40k range. The only difference between those and your instate options is the experience. Are your parents willing to pay 10k to 20k more so you can have an out of state experience? Only they can answer that. We faced that question and did send our kids out of state but we had fully funded 529 accounts. I don’t think the education is going to be that different at any of those schools. I definitely wouldn’t take out loans to finance any of the more expensive ones. Looking at this list, I think UMass Lowell is probably your best option.
How do you feel about class sizes? Do you think you would do best in smaller classes, where there’s no hiding and the professor is likely to know if you’re there or not? Or do you do better with the anonymity of larger lectures (think 100-500 or more people)? Depending on that answer, there would be some significant differences.
For instance, you can search usnews “name of college” and academics and it will show you the class sizes. These are the ones for Fitchburg, which has a lot more small classes than some other schools.
Forgot you mentioned about you don’t want to go to extremely rural area. Only you can decide what constitutes "extremely rural’ for you.
So let’s use these examples:
Iowa City and Ames are college towns. Iowa City is about 76k population and the closest bigger city is Cedar Rapids (126k, about 27 miles away) while Ames is about 66k (closest big city is Des Moines 122k , 38 miles away).
Manhattan (pop 54k) to Kansas City (pop 500k) is 120 miles while Lawrence (pop 95k) is only 40 miles from Kansas City.
But, Ames to Kansas City is 230 miles, Ames to Minneapolis is 220 miles. While if you try to find another major city within 220 miles from Lawrence, other than KC, it would be Omaha.
While D23 is getting a great education at Fitchburg State, it is definitely a “suitcase” school. There is no school spirit and no one is around on weekends.
If you are committed to being an international relations major, you might want to check out the international opportunities in each school and also look at the international population of the school.
If you were accepted into the guided academic program at these schools, I’m assuming that you may not graduate in 4 years. Make sure your budget supports that.
Thanks, @thumper1. I had pulled those two as examples as I knew that of the schools on OP’s list, that Fitchburg had a number of small classes. It’s regrettable that I mistook U. Mass - Amherst, but the concept of thinking about one’s class size preferences and then seeing how the university’s offerings match up would still hold water, I believe.
I would definitely prefer something in between those class sizes, such as the size of UMass Lowell. What I don’t like about UMass Lowell is that it’s more of a “suitcase school” as a poster mentioned above and it doesn’t seem to have much school spirit. I would be willing to sacrifice the size for something larger or even smaller, maybe such as Kansas State’s or Westfield State’s sizes. I am going to Merrimack’s Accepted Students Day tomorrow, so I will keep you all updated. Thank you so much for your help everyone!
I would personally do not spend 20K more to go to Merrimack over Umass Lowell. Umass Lowell has amazing academics and although does have some commuting students it is in a city and has the commuter rail that goes to Boston really easy. So lots to do during weekends. Umass Lowell offers a good amount of merit to instate high stats students (Umass Amherst does not) and thus attracts a fair amount of top instate students. I think from your list, Umass Lowell is the best value school.
