@RandyErika congrats! Our older daughter applied to Ursinus, but we never did visit.
My D has a good friend at Moravian and she loves it there, I had never heard of it until she was admitted and then looked at it. I think its one of those hidden gems.
Moravian is just a mile or two from Lehigh and obviously much less well known. The five oldest colleges in America are in order: Harvard, William & Mary, Yale, Penn, and Moravian. Who knew?
She’s been working hard this year and has really improved her grades and is now up to about a 91.83 weighted average overall which seems to be calculated as a 3.6 GPA (with a 3.7 for this year so far).
EDIT: This brings up something I’ve wanted to ask. I’ve been using the Grade/20-1 to convert from a 100 scale to a 4.0 scale, but other calculators I’ve seen result in higher numbers on the 4.0 scale. How do most colleges convert?
We have tours at Binghamton and University at Buffalo this weekend that we are looking forward to. We may do a walk through of Geneseo if we pass through there before it’s dark. Binghamton might not be a great fit for a few reasons, one being no Speech Pathology major. She’s probably 50/50 to get in to Binghamton anyhow. Same probably with Geneseo. UB is a good fit that checks off a lot of boxes, but has some potential pitfalls, so we are looking forward to seeing it firsthand.
We also went to a college fair at the Javits Center on Sunday. Perhaps the previous experience with Daughter 1 with small schools and playing the “showing interest” game has us doing a little overkill with this set of schools, but I suppose it can’t hurt either. The Delaware rep, who is very nice and extremely helpful, remembered meeting our daughter at our HS college fair and also remembered specifics from the follow-up email. Delaware will probably be on the higher net cost end, so anything we can do there to improve the chances of additional merit will help quite a bit. We also spoke with reps from Maine, Ohio U, West Chester, Alabama, Rhode Island (different rep than at the HS college fair) and Buffalo.
Maine said they waive the application fee if you apply early, so they may very well get an app yet as it’s a school that we know what it’ll cost and that’s well inside the budget. Alabama rep didn’t help with the stereotype my daughter has of U of Alabama and it’s probably off the list at this point. Ohio U and West Chester both very much still on the list. And still a bunch others who weren’t there very much on the list still.
Finishing up our trip today.
We really loved Binghamton yesterday. What a nice campus and a great school. The problem is that they don’t have a speech pathology major and she’s probably less than 50/50 to even get in. Otherwise, I see why it’s so popular.
We then dropped by Geneseo and just walked around for a few. Campus looked small, but we were tired and didn’t really know where we were going. We never found the student union or a dining hall. Friends took a tour today and said it was nice. Cute town reminds me of Grinnell, where our and daughter is. They also don’t have speech pathology and the school has too few people.
Today we did a tour of Buffalo. Good quality school, good speech pathology program so it could be a very nice fit, but the school is just so blah. We didn’t find too much niceto say about the facilities. The buildings are just dated on the outside and in. The classrooms we saw were not so great either. We did see some nice buildings on the south campus, but there was a lot not to like there too. We did go into the building where her speech pathology classes would be and it was very unimpressive. The campus look, plus the annoyance of having to bus back and forth since she’d have classes in the south is probably going to relegate Buffalo to a back up at this point. Priories can change though.
Long way to go still to figure this all out.
If there’s anything we haven’t come up with, please share. If there’s anything from earlier on that we are more likely to compromise on, it could be the distance.
The OH schools are still in play, though I don’t think she’ll get enough at Miami (OH), but you never know. A little more than expected from Miami, Delaware or James Madison would make things interesting. Towson and Rhode Island still very much in the mix.
Any chance of merit at Purdue with a 3.7 weighted/30 ACT (31 superscore)? Starts at $39K, so wouldn’t need much there.
Any chance of merit at Purdue with a 3.7 weighted/30 ACT (31 superscore)? Starts at $39K, so wouldn’t need much there.
I don’t think so. She may get something as an incentive for girls in STEM but I wouldn’t expect it.
@lexluthor5 you may have already seen this before, but just in case a SUNY search for which schools have different majors might be helpful.
https://www.suny.edu/attend/find-a-suny-program/undergraduate/currfd_oas_main.cfm
There are, IIRC, 3 different types of speech programs listed. I don’t know the differences or if they are significant. I did notice that other SUNYs with programs in one or the other of them are
Cortland
Buffalo State (which is very different in campus feel than UB, from my understanding)
Potsdam
It might be worth investigating those programs just to see if they might be more what your d is looking for. None of them have the split campus aspect to worry about. I think they are all easier to get accepted to than Bing (which as you noted doesn’t have the major anyway), maybe there would be a shot at merit?
Highly doubtful for Purdue merit aid. Five students from my daughters high school applied, including the valedictorian with perfect stats and no one got any merit aid.
@momofsenior1 yes, think Purdue is out after further research
@mom2twogirls Ultimately, I think if the choice came down to it, I think she’d take University at Buffalo over any of those 3 schools. I think the odds of URI, Towson getting into budget are good. If so, right now, those would probably be ahead of any of the above mentioned. Delaware might be the budget stretch, depending on how close they get and how everything else falls out.
Quiet summer here so far.
Our daughter had a great junior year! 4th quarter was even better than 3rd and she also got 4s on the Human Geography and Psychology AP exams, plus high 90s on some of the NYS Regent’s exams. We aren’t exactly sure what, but something really clicked for her this year.
Wondering if/how we can note on the application the big jump junior year, even with a tougher schedule?
We decided that, given the improvement in the junior year grades, our in the our daughter would give the ACT another shot. I don’t think we’ll use any additional tutoring hours. Any suggestions on some on your own study aids? I can’t imagine she’ll jump from a 30 to a 32 or better, but it can’t hurt.
Time to start working on the essay and applications soon!
Wow, great news! Nothing like options opening up. No clue on study aids though. Our kid was all “there’s an app for that” but I don’t know what app.
My daughter really liked the ACT box of flash cards to study. Very portable, she could do as many or as few as she wanted to, did them in the car on trips, etc.
Congratulations to your daughter, @lexluthor! To help her prep for one final ACT test, check out this blog post by a very good test prep website: “Best ACT Prep Websites You Should Be Using,” on the PrepScholar website. Just Google it. They share so much great information on their website, for no charge, and write posts about applying to college, and other important issues. Personally, I subscribe to their emails, as
Is there one section that is causing problems? Is she having difficulty with the way questions are asked? Flashcards sound like a fun way to work on that. However, the one piece of advice I see over and over again is to take fully timed practice tests, using the red ACT Test book, or printing up practice tests available online for free. Many students’ scores are affected because they aren’t able to get through all the questions. In addition to test-taking strategies and getting very familiar with the way the questions are asked, having a high degree of comfort with the test, such that the student gets through ALL the questions and maybe has time to go back over a few questions that he or she was unsure about, can make a big difference.
Good luck to all!
The summer is just about over and the application process is in full swing now. ACT is next weekend, but she’s not putting too much effort into it, so next expecting an improvement. Common App is mostly done as is the primary essay. Still a lot of supplemental/honors essays to write.
Right now, the application list is looking like James Madison, Miami (OH), Ohio U, SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Buffalo, Towson, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, West Chester and West Virginia. Think Purdue is off. New Hampshire and Vermont may not get apps after I look a bit closer about the possibility of merit aid. JMU, Miami and Delaware probably won’t get to budget either, but could get close enough so I think worth a shot. Good chance she won’t get into Binghamton and they also don’t currently have a Speech Pathology major, but if she got in, we’d have to investigate further.
So far we’ve visited URI (ok), Towson (liked), Delaware (liked), Binghamton (liked) and Buffalo (disliked). I think we’ll get to West Chester yet prior to decisions and then we’ll line up other potential visits as she gets acceptances/financial info.
Still very open to any additional schools. Most of the schools that will get into budget should be relatively easy for her to get into. We certainly wouldn’t mind getting some higher ranked schools on the list if we thought there was a chance of getting them in budget, but we haven’t uncovered anything else yet.
To recap, through junior year she’s got a 92.01/100 weighted or appox 3.7 weighted GPA with a 30 ACT (31 superscore). Junior year GPA and standardized tests went way up, even with a more challenging schedule. Budget is roughly $35K. Looking for a mid-sized school (roughly 8K-25K undergrads). Ohio and east is preferred, though for a great fit something further might be considered (D1 is at Grinnell in Iowa, so we already deal with distance). The southern schools (i.e. Alabama) are probably not a good fit for her.
Looks like I was a bit mistaken on Vermont. Their NPC offers $18K merit for her stats. That puts it into range. I called and they said that it depends on the applicant pool that year, but her stats could certainly give her a chance for that. Vermont will almost surely get an application.
I also see that Miami (OH) upped their merit aid range for a 3.5 GPA/31 ACT (they superscore) from $8-$18K to $11-$20K. Stats fall into the middle of the range for that category, so maybe she could get $15K there, which definitely gets them in range.
Did you look at SUNY New Paltz? If she didn’t like Buffalo and Binghamton is a long-shot New Paltz might be another good SUNY alternative.
@happy1 I think New Paltz is a little small and sounds like it might have a little much of an “artsy” rep, which wouldn’t be a great fit.
It’s really too bad that she didn’t like Buffalo at all. It’s a good school, she’d almost surely get in, financially, it would be great and it’s got a great speed pathology program.
Bingamton is be interesting. Maybe 45/55 that she’d get in. It’s a great school and we really liked the campus a lot, but there are a ton of Long Island kids (more a negative than a positive for her), it may be a bit competitive (will she thrive there?) and they do not have a speech pathology program at all (though there may be a path to that for grad school yet, I’m not sure).
@lexluthor5 Makes sense and yes – too bad about Buffalo (people who go there seem to like it FWIW).
And I don’t want to throw your thread off-topic but my D is now getting her MS in Speech Pathology after getting her BS in a different field. My D did not decide on speech therapy as a career until her junior year of college. If you D knows she wants speech therapy now, then getting a bachelors in the field is the most straightforward, most time (and probably cost) effective way to go – but if you want a bit of information about getting into a MS in speech pathology program without a background in the field, let me know (you can PM me or tag me and I can put information here).