Long day in Rhode Island today! Had a very nice trip to URI. We had a good tour and enjoyed the campus. Tour guide was a freshman who told us at the end that it was her first tour, but she did a good job. The campus is nice. We don’t have too much to compare to since we looked at all smaller private schools with our older daughter. Quad area is a nice part of campus. The buildings we saw were all in good shape. Dorms are dorms. Common area in the dorms were large and looked nice. Liked the main dining hall, didn’t try the food though. There’s definitely some general maintenance that needs to be done here and there. The little area of off campus shops was good to have, but didn’t seem like there was any off campus “town” to take advantage of. Sounds like maybe need to drive to Narragansett for that? Definitely good school spirit with lots of kids wearing URI gear. The kids all seemed friendly and seem to be enjoying URI. The tour guide was in a triple, which is far from ideal. Any idea what percentage of freshmen are in forced triples?
After the tour, we drove to Newport and had a nice afternoon/evening there. My wife and I have been there a couple of times, but neither of our kids had. We love Newport.
The trip up took 2:40 without any traffic whatsoever. Looks like the train station right there would be a relatively easy way home. Location is almost perfect for us in that it’s both an easy trip for us, there’s plenty of stuff in between and nearby to take advantage of and it’s an easy trip for her.
She definitely felt like she could see herself there. Now we just have to hope that she can get $10K+ in merit. If she does, it probably does eliminate at lot of other schools (like Alabama, Ohio U, West Chester, all SUNYs except Buffalo, etc.)
Next Monday/Tuesday we have tours at Towson and Delaware. We may also tour UMBC, though it doesn’t look like they have a communicative disorders/speech pathology major, so that probably eliminates them. We’ll probably also do a self guided tour of tcnj on the way back.
At some point we are going to need to visit SUNY University at Buffalo. Would be nice to first see what comes in from URI, but that would mean we’d have to go in the winter, which isn’t ideal. Buffalo may need a visit either way (it could wind up ahead of URI, even with his merit) so maybe we’ll do a visit late summer at the beginning of their year, before HS starts, if possible. It’s a long trip up there though for a visit.
The Ohio schools, Alabama, WVU, JMU and some others will probably not got visits unless she gets less than expected at some of the safer schools or doesn’t get into Buffalo (or dislikes it upon visit) or if she gets more merit than expected at one of them (ie JMU).
I would say that the way we are looking at things today, URI at the $13.5k merit that @gearmom originally guessed could be tough to beat, but long way to go yet. You weren’t sure about her gpa, it’s around 3.57 weighted. Guidance counselor said that re-weighting is usually good for our district we aren’t overly generous on the weighting. Her ACT is a 31 for URI as they do superscore.
Good progress!