@lexluthor5 We will be following closely as we are looking at many of the same schools. We are headed to JMU this coming Saturday (3/17). We are also scheduled for Delaware (4/2), Towson (5/4) and UMBC (4/7). We also plan to do our tour of West Chester, Temple and Drexel while visiting family over Easter. We may try to squeeze in a trip to see TCNJ.
So far we have been to Salisbury, UMD-College Park, Shippensburg and Dickinson.
Wow, that is a good amount of overlap. Interested in hearing about your JMU visit. We’ll have to compare notes on some of these. We looked at Dickinson for our older daughter. Definitely liked it and it got a second visit and an application. Much smaller than most on your list.
UMBC said they could get us on the 4/2 am tour, but couldn’t promise the info session. Timing for that works well as we’ll head right over to Towson for our 2pm appointment after the UMBC tour.
I was also able to get UDel to move us to the early tour on 4/3 so that opens up the possibility of TCNJ after, which is almost right on the way home, though it would just have to be a self-guided tour.
@lexluthor5 Agree that Dickinson is much smaller but it was only 20 minutes away from Shippensburg so we figured since we were so close we would look at it.
Other schools not within driving distance are: Kansas, Tennessee, Ohio U, Vermont, South Carolina and Florida State. Most of these will be wait and see situation on visits until we see if accepted and merit aid.
She took the SAT this past Saturday so hoping we get a good result in a couple of weeks.
@dcnatfan Sounds like you are very much in the same boat as us. Ohio U and Miami (OH) might both get applications and not visits. Still would like to get to at least UNH and maybe U of Maine. U of VT starting price and stats too high, I don’t think there’s much chance that could work out. Maybe a day trip to UCON and SUNY New Paltz. Some of the other SUNY schools may wind up getting late visits depending on how things are working out.
We are very excited to see URI on 3/24. That seems like it ticks off pretty much everything and is towards the top of the list initially.
For D1, we only visited Grinnell after acceptance and merit and that wound up being the winner, so we are prepared for this to possibly drag out.
Hopefully your daughter gets a great SAT score.
I think she can do much better than IUP. A SUNY would be preferrable if you’re a NY resident.
I’d recommend a top-tier SUNY (Bing, Geneseo) or even New Paltz would be better than IUP.
@citymama I agree 100%.
We are in full agreement with the last 3 posts. I do appreciate the suggestion of IUP though. It all adds to the discussion.
Though we haven’t talked much about the SUNYs, it’s very possible that she does wind up at a SUNY. Think Binghamton is probably slightly less than 50/50 to get in. Geneseo and New Paltz, which might be better fits for are are probably closer to 75%. Cortland, Oneonta are probably much lower stats for her, but those should be easy to get in. Not sure what to think about Buffalo yet (how good? it’s cold and far).
If we do get up that way to see some SUNYs, we’ll want to look into Ithica as well, which might be a good fit. I don’t know if that’s come up in here yet.
JMU admissions just called me back and I discussed merit with the rep. OOS and In-state seem to be treated the same. She said less than 10% of incoming freshmen get merit aid. Her stats won’t qualify her for the Dingledine award. That just leaves the Madison award which is offered by the schools depending on the major anticipated. I think it’s relatively unlikely that she’d get merit there, but it doesn’t take too much to get it in budget.
We could cut out JMU and just do Mon/Tue to all of the other school. It does add a lot of driving and 2 hotel nights to the trip. If there’s a real chance of merit, we’d definitely go though. There’s not much we could do with that open Sunday either since it’s Easter Sunday. Will have to discuss further.
I’m going to put in a plug for University at Buffalo. As someone with kids in a school district that has students attracted to Bing, Geneseo and U Buffalo, I think you would find very little to no appreciable difference in coldness between them. And while Buffalo is further from Long Island that the others, it’s not really that much further than Geneseo. Additionally, Buffalo has better access to trains and planes, just in case that helps with some trips.
I haven’t been to the others since my d19 is interested in Chemical Engineering and the others don’t have it. But we toured U Buffalo and she really liked it. I was impressed by the offerings. It has many more majors available than the other SUNYs, which could be a very good option for a student still considering other majors. I thought it would feel overwhelmingly humongous, but it didn’t. The academic buildings (on the north campus at least, which is where most of the undergrad majors are) are all connected in some way. Either through covered walkways-bridges or on the ground floor levels. That wasn’t readily apparent on the map I had seen. The residence halls aren’t always walking distance but there are continuous buses and students are not charged for parking at UB.
Another bonus for your d, if I remember right from earlier in the thread, she didn’t want a rural school? I think the city Buffalo is much more accessible to UB students than any cities are to most of the other SUNY campuses (I don’t think Geneseo or Bing in particular are considered very near any real cities).
I grew up not too far from Ithaca. I like the area but from what I’ve researched, Ithaca College doesn’t tend to be super generous with merit. It might end up an academic safety/financial reach for you. Which reminds me of another UB advantage, pretty sure I’ve read that UB had more money available for Merit than most of the other SUNYs.
If you do decide to look at UB, I would strongly suggest looking into a tour of the department your daughter is interested in. Mine found it immensely more helpful than if she had only done the general campus tour.
@mom2twogirls good insight on Buffalo. I looked again and it’s closer than I thought at less than 7 hours (and saw RT flights at sub $200 on a random week). Buffalo does check off a lof of boxes and she’d almost surely get in. It’s definitely at least a solid safety option.
We did clean up the list a bit tonight removing some (that mostly were never even brought up here) and added a new one. We added University of Pittsburgh. That looks like it could be a decent fit. Not sure what the merit situation is, but their CDS shows an average of $12K merit for non-need based grants and it starts at around $42K, so the financials look ok at first glance.
Also spent a little time on the Naviance portal looking at scattergrams for applications from our HS. The odds are much better than I expected at some schools. For example, even at U of VT, which I think the odds of merit are still small, every single person with an 86 weighted GPA and 25 ACT or higher (or 88 and 1700/2400 SAT) has gotten in within the last few years. That makes our daughter a virtual lock to get in at 91/30. Perhaps a 91 weighted from our HS carries a little more weight that I would have thought or perhaps they know kids from our district don’t go, so they accept lots. Our district is known as a very good district on LI, but there are a bunch better still.
For this student’s stats and family budget, my cost-management strategy probably would focus on sticker price (with competitive merit money in the background, but not primary). Her stats may not deliver enough merit money to drive the net cost down to $35K from a much higher sticker (unless, perhaps, it’s a less selective school than a SUNY, possibly one in a less attractive location). That budget is high enough to make some OOS public universities feasible at full sticker, especially after accounting for $5K-$10K/year in “self help”; however, many of them are outside the NE. So that brings us back to the SUNYs. IMO, those are the schools to beat in this situation.
If you were willing to compromise on size and location, I’d suggest New College of Florida or St. Mary’s College of MD. These schools seem to offer better academic quality and more attractive, waterfront locations than many other affordable OOS options. One of the other CTCL member schools also might work (if you can find one with an affordable net cost). But again, these are LACs. If you want someplace a little bigger but also out of state (yet still in the East), check out UMBC (or Towson, which is in the same area). Farther South, but also with OOS costs under $40K (or so): NC State, University of Mary Washington, James Madison.
@tk21769 thanks for the insight. Yes, we really need to keep the sticker price at below $45K to even consider the school. I still think there’s a likely chance she’ll get $5K-$7K merit at a couple/few of the schools that start in that price range that would bring the cost into budget. Between Towson, RI, Del, Maine, NH, etc, some of those schools will probably offer some merit. I know the GPA is low, but the high ACT may be attractive to some school.
Of your list, we are visiting Towson and UMBC in a couple of weeks. No catholic schools and no small LAs.
Might be too far south for you, but University of Tampa might be a good option. COA is about $43k. We looked at it for my 2016 D and even with lower stats than your D she received merit which brought our cost to just about $30k. She opted to go somewhere else, but really liked Tampa.
We’re from Atlanta, but lots of kids from the NE attend UT due in part to the lowish sticker price.
^ St Mary’s is the name of the town the college is in, so it’s not Catholic - it is a small college though, and nowhere near urban. It’s a bit like a summer camp, waterfront campus.
I was thinking that maybe Allegheny and Susquehanna might be nice choices where she could get enough merit to bring the cost down. In my research, those two schools seem very appealing for many reasons. You might want to see their websites and see what you think. Both are in PA.
There was talk in the house last night of doing a long weekend driving tour in April to hit several schools on the list. We are located in MD just outside of DC. ON a Friday we would hit Frostburg (in-state school, unlikely but might as well take a look) and West Virginia. On Saturday we would hit Ohio U and Ohio State. Sunday would be Pitt.
Several of these would have to be self-guided tours (Frostburg, OSU and Pitt).
Other schools on the list are just not easy to get to: Vermont, Kansas, Tennessee, etc.
Don’t forget that she will most likely need grad school for speech pathology.
Our GC said not to rule out Bing with scores like that if you don’t want to study the very competitive majors.
My kid was similar, his unweighted is about 88. His SAT was 1330. The results under $35k:
Ohio U (Athens): $25k after merit
Ursinus: $31k after merit
Seton Hall: 33k after merit
Juniata: $30k after merit
Fairleigh Dickenson: $35k after merit
SUNY New Paltz is great too and she has a very good chance there.
Following this thread as I have a D19 with similar stats and potentially similar academic interests (maybe speech pathology, maybe pre-OT). She’s got a couple of high reach schools that are probably not good fits for where she wants to end up and probably not affordable as well, but given that they are high reaches anyway I am not worrying about that for now. At this point, I am having her follow the money and look at schools where she is likely to receive automatic merit money and where she get good prep for whatever grad school is to come. Specifically, we will be looking at Miami of OH, Ohio University, College of Wooster, Ohio Wesleyan, Wittenberg and Butler. Our budget means that she can only attend private school if it is equal to or less $ than our state flagship, and I’m pretty confident that at least some of these schools will fit the bill. We may add Allegheny to the list.
@citymama9 will take a peak at Allegheny and Susquehanna. Haven’t looked yet at these yet, but an OOS school where 95% of the kids are all from the same state isn’t ideal either. EDIT: Allegheny and Susquehanna both start around $60K. Very hard to bank on $25K in aid. I think there’s little point in looking at schools that have a starting price above $45K. Both are way too small as well.
@mommdc yes, she’ll need grad school. All the more reason to stick to the budget here.
@hrsmom good info. Ursinus now the right school here, but older daughter did apply there (free application) and got $35K merit with much higher stats and my younger daughter has. Surprised your kid got so much there with the 88 GPA. You just never know who will give what. It may take a lot of applications to get this right.
@bubblewrap666 Agree. Hopefully the plan works again for us this time around. There should always be a set of schools that your child can get merit from. Find the right ones that fit your child’s likes and you can get into budget and you have some state schools as good backups.