Help Find a College - Daughter #2

First official acceptance to Towson the other day! Very excited to have one in. No merit package yet.

Congratulations!+

Buffalo, honors college admission! That’s a good sign for the others. May hear from Delaware soon (but not merit from them for a while). Should have the full picture for both Vermont, Miami U and maybe UMass before the end of the year.

It’s looking like you and your daughter may have a happy holiday season!

Acceptances to Binghamton and West Chester tonight! Binghamton bodes very well. Thought that might be one of the toughest for her.

Miami U and Vermont both should come next week. Miami merit we should know based on the chart and Vermont should come with or within a day of notification.

@lexluthor5 Congrats - that is great news.

Whoops, sorry, did not realize this was follow up on an old thread. Good luck to your daughter.!

Note on Ursinus which was mentioned in regards to merit aid. I have heard some stories and it seems they give out giant merit aid (30-35K) like candy even to less than stellar students with test scores on the lower side. Maybe to soften the blow of tuition which is very, very high?

I don’t know if anyone mentioned La Salle but it’s midsize and has an honors program she is qualified for. Tuition has been cut so it’s more affordable, student numbers are up and merit awards are available. https://www.lasalle.edu/honors-program/scholarships/ It’s religiously affiliated (Catholic) but not in an obvious way and its Catholic flavor is very liberal - there is an active LGBT presence on campus, for example, with longstanding support from the school administration and faculty.

Accepted to UMass Amherst today with a $12K scholarship. That gets UMass just about into range so we’ll probably go to an accepted students day. UMass was a fairly late addition, but glad she applied.

Looking back over the earlier part of this thread, I can see that her high ACT score plus her great junior year grades really changed the landscape around for her quite a bit.

I just read this thread from the beginning. My dd is a junior interested in speech pathology, so this thread is so helpful. Sounds like you already have some great options!

@jagrren, glad the thread has been helpful.

Vermont w/$18K came in tonight! Their net price calculator was spot on.

Miami coming tomorrow at midnight and merit was mailed out today, but Miami should be $20K based on their merit chart assuming she gets in.

It looks like it might wind up between UMass, Vermont, UConn and Delaware (but no speech pathology program) all right around the same number and Miami a lot less. JMU if they give anything could still be in the running and maybe Rhode Island if they wind up with a larger than expected package (their 5 year speech pathology masters program keeps them in the running still).

Looks like we’ll have a lot of traveling this winter. We’ve yet to see UMass, Vermont or Miami. Hopefully we’ll get to accepted students day for each.

it’s all worked out very well, mostly because our daughter had a great junior year and did amazing on the ACT.

The options are very exciting! She’s trilled.

So cool! I gotta say both Burlington and Amherst are great college towns…

Accepted to Miami U. Merit is hopefully in the mail, but they have a “merit guarantee” chart on their website that should get her $20K/year. Will be making plans to visit as soon as we confirm.

Vermont has an accepted students day on a Friday and UMass on a Sunday. That trip would require 3 nights away from home and a lot of driving. There’s definitely some discussion about weather she wants to visit Vermont or not. Just comparing Vermont and UMass straight up, I’m not sure that Vermont could win that comparison. We signed up for Vermont accepted students day so we we still have 2 months to decide.

@porcupine98 Oxford, OH sounds like a perfect college town as well. Think all 3 of those school will be about even in that regard all well ahead of UConn and Rhode Island and maybe slightly ahead of Delaware and JMU.

Accepted to Delaware! Merit hopefully comes in a few weeks.

We are booked for accepted students days in late Feb to UMass and Miami at this point. Vermont is still a maybe.

Miami also sent an email today about an event they are having in NY in late January so we signed up for that as well.

JMU up next and then URI and finally UConn in late Feb.

Also got West Chester’s merit offer of $3K today. That won’t make that option enticing.

Miami did come in at $20K/year as expected. Looking forward to both their local event and our campus visit. I have a feeling she’s going to have a problem with the student “fit” there though. At the price difference vs the others and the fact that it checks off all of the other boxes (other than distance), it’s certainly worth her taking a look much closer.

Still waiting on Delaware merit, but their lack of a speech pathology/communicative disorders major may be a problem. They have cognitive science and linguistics majors, but that may not be as interesting of a path to an SLP masters for her.

Delaware came in with $14k, which is $2k more than I expected based on their npc. She’s not that excited about Delaware for some reason though. It is a bit less than umass though so it may make a good comparable if we ask UMass to review. Or maybe she’ll like Delaware more after we see UMass and Miami.

Also got accepted to JMU the other day, but any possible merit won’t come until mid March I think. I’m not really sure what to do with JMU. Sticker price is kind of out of the budget and she’s got other solid options that she seems to like, but if they even gave a very modest amount, they could be a contender. By the time she hears about merit, she may already be mentally committed elsewhere. They have one accepted students day on a Saturday in February that would work well, but I don’t think we’d drive a 13 hour round trip when I think the chances of getting enough merit there are probably something like 10%. The 2 dates they have in April would be tough to make it to. I guess we could just do a regular tour in March if it came down to the. I’m wondering if she could email her admission rep and ask if she’s in the running for merit or something like that. It’s likely she wouldn’t have anything to tell us though. Not really sure it could hurt though either.

URI coming up next on 1/21 and then UConn in late February.

I would really advise looking at both UVM and UMA, they are different in so many ways. Burlington is a great college town, UMA is rather isolated IMHO. UVM is a good size school with cohesiveness between the student body, UMA is much bigger and less so. Airport is very close to UVM, closest to UMA is either Bradley in Hartford, CT (at least an hour away) or Logan in Boston (nearly two hours away). Just things to consider.

@nepatsgirl UVM you make a point. UVM might not be getting a fair look. I think our daughter has found the people in the accepted students forum a bit outdoorsy/green for her liking. Would you not consider Amherst a good college town? We haven’t visited yet, but we were expecting that to be the case. Airport isn’t a concern since we are close by to UMA. If she doesn’t love either visit to UMass or Miami (OH), perhaps we’ll get up to Vermont yet.

Amherst is a great college town. It’s not a city.

@myos1634 @NEPatsGirl Burlington is pretty equivalent to Amherst as far as what a “college town” would offer? I don’t think she’s got any schools that are too close to a city, but that’s ok. We are assuming that Amherst, Oxford and Burlington will all be prototypical “college towns”. Anyone able to offer a comparison of the 3? I think that’s a big plus at all of those schools vs UConn. How would Newark, DE compare with Amherst, Oxford and Burlington? We’ve seen Newark, so we have a point of reference there. I think we are expecting these 3 to all be a little nicer than Newark, but no idea really.

We are very anxious for our UMass and Miami visits.

Burlington is more than a town. It’s a city – a small city, but still a city. It’s a lovely place on the water (the lake), pretty, buildings with history. Significantly there’s a sort of outdoor “mall” or shopping area that runs through the center of town, with cute cafes and shops, including clothing, bookstores, tea houses. etc. There’s also an excellent food co-op nearby the mall with a variety of food. Winter sports are huge there. It’s more than a “college town” as it’s the central seat of that part of the country, with a proper airport and everything.