Washington & Lee? 10% of the class gets a free ride plus stipend. Furman??
@lexluthor5 Yes, we might check out Denison too, but may end up being a bit preppy for her. She leans towards arty/theater/writing types socially. Haven’t yet done our Ohio tour (DD is a junior). For some reason, she isn’t that interested in Grinnell, but that might change.
Not really looking at the southern schools, she’s just not interested in any of them. W&L has a large greek population, I think.
@mamaedefamilia My Daughter is definitely on the other side of preppy as well, but think Denison is diverse enough that she’d be happy there. Denison, Kenyon and Lafayette are the nicest campuses we’ve seen. I was very impressed with Denison myself. Hope you get to do that Ohio tour, it was a great trip for us. Grinnell came up on the radar because my Daughter’s junior year history teacher, who she really loved, went there. He actually wrote one of her recs, so perhaps that helps some too.
For Arty/Theater/Writing types are you considering SUNY New Paltz?
@lexluthor5 My son applied to a lot of these schools last yr, was not National Merit Commended, slightly lower SATs, strong GPA (top 5% and 11 APs). He is a very happy freshman at Grinnell, but I will say both of us were very impressed with College of Wooster and I think it would make another great safety. Also, Grinnell has revised its merit aid this year. I think your daughter has a strong chance of getting the needed merit aid at one of her top choices, but I understand the need to cast a wide net when looking for LACs with merit aid.
His merit results for the schools that might interest you:
St. Lawrence $32K per yr
College of Wooster $27K per yr
Muhlenberg $22K per yr
Macalester $18K per yr
Grinnell $16K per yr
Dickinson $15K per yr
I do not know how much this was impacted by being a male applicant.
Good info, thanks…
What did Grinnell change with their merit aid this year? Better or worse?
How does your son like it? Where are you from? How’s the travel?
FWIW, I think your D will get big$$ from Denison - unless things have changed from 2013, I would expect at least $20K per year if not one of the $40K per year named scholarships. Sounds like your D has academic and EC profile for one of those. She will almost certainly not get rejected. Denison offered my D one of the big scholarships and it ended up being school #2. It was incredibly hard to turn down but D wanted slightly bigger and wanted to leave Ohio. And despite Denison’s somewhat preppy reputation, I think that may be somewhat a vestige of the past. The campus seemed plenty diverse compared to many LACs we saw in terms of types of kids. We know at least one artsy / theatre / psychology major kid who is extremely happy there.
@lexluthor5 I think the new merit aid is better.
https://www.grinnell.edu/financial-aid/merit-scholarships
My son loves it, he was just home for a week for fall break. He has grown a lot in just the 6 weeks he was gone. He has made more friends in 6 weeks then in 4 yrs of high school, he has found his people. Everyone is friendly and accepting. His classes are interesting and challenging. He was able to see Bernie Sanders. He even made new friends at the Chicago airport on the way back to Grinnell waiting for his next flight.
Travel: Well its a good thing he loves it, because he is not coming home for Thanksgiving, 4 days is not enough time to make the airfare and travel time worth it. However, with a week in October and a six week Winter Break, I think he’ll be fine and I think a lot of other kids stay on campus. We are in Maryland. I drove him to Iowa in August, it was a 14 hr drive each way and for family reasons we had to do it in 3 days. I had not seen the campus (he flew out by himself for accepted students day) and really wanted to see where he was spending the next 4 years. In some ways the drive was easier then the 7 hr drove to Boston for my other son, less traffic, higher speed limits and nicer drivers (except Chicago). Flying is okay, but direct flights from Des Moines are rare so you have to plan ahead and Southwest is not always the best option. Luckily we have 3 airports to choose from on this end. The school also has several shuttles to the airport for breaks since Des Moines is just under an hour away. If you are on the East Coast, flying can take the better part of a day each way, but with all of that said, he is a very happy Grinnellian and would tell you he would travel twice as far without complaint.
@lexluthor5 - Bard is a place you have to really experience and see if it is a match or a definite no.
There was a comment on this thread that Muhlenberg is religious. Not true. While it has an affiliation with the Lutheran church, it actually has a large % of Jewish students, one of the largest in the country. The chapel supports many denominations including Catholic services and Hillel is active
@momofzag there’s definitely a chance we’ll be in the exact same spot. Lot of money at Denison vs. just enough money at somewhere higher on her list would be a very tough family decision. It’ll be a nice to be in that position, if that’s how it works out, but I don’t even want to think of that now. I really liked everything I saw about Denison, but it’s up to her. I really loved their campus. There might be a perception of it being less diverse/liberal and maybe more greek compared to some of the others, but I’m not really sure how true that is. Plus, right now, she’s very interested in Poly Sci/International Relations and the Lugar program there looks very interesting.
@Mom24boys great information. Glad your son loves it there. My daughter really seems to like what she’s seen/heard about Grinnell. I think she’d be very happy there. I figure if the merit aid is good, it pays for a lot of plane tickets/extra time traveling, so not that worried. I went to college in the midwest from NY and never had a problem with it.
Just a point, Binghampton is BY FAR the the top SUNY school not Genseo.
I went to SUNY New Paltz for a while and can vouch that the town was awesome. IIRC about 90m on train from NYC.
Binghamton is probably still the top SUNY. Geneseo is very highly ranked now and is kind of a SUNY LAC though so that’s more in line with what my Daughter is looking at. She has no interest in going to Binghamton and she didn’t even apply. I can’t imagine that she wouldn’t get into Geneseo (they don’t really look at interest like the private LACs, right?), so that should work as a satisfactory last resort. I doubt very much that will come into play though.
“Just a point, Binghampton is BY FAR the the top SUNY school not Geneseo.”
There is no P
No it isn’t. It once was strong in the humanities while Stony Brook was stronger in science
Geneseo is stronger in terms of the experience it gives students because of the small size and focus on college students.
Binghamton isn’t stronger in science but Stony Brook has strengthened its humanities. Stony Brook is a stronger university compared to Binghamton.
Binghamton used to be smaller with a better faculty to student ratio so college students got more attention. Now, pick a number, that is what your son or daughter will be to the BU administration. Binghamton has increased the number of students it admits without increasing faculty, staff or resources. I believe It now has a 21:1 student to faculty ratio. It is over crowded, waiting lists for classes. It still provides an efficient degree for those students seeking that-bare bones but efficient. I don’t think it offers a great experience for college students but it is in expensive and gets students in and out. It is now a large generic public school-not more.
Bing Student Faculty Ratio is 20-1
Stony Brook is 16-1
Geneseo is 19.5-1 (about the same as Bing).
Just for fun New Paltz is 15-1 (added because my SIL attended).
Erin’s Dad, I’ve seen more recent stats that put the figure at 21:1. Maybe it excludes non-teaching faculty. Once you are at that point, 20 or 21 isn’t a big difference. But this is a big difference. Geneseo at 19.5 vs Binghamton at 20 or 21 since faculty at Binghamton often teach little (some as little as one graduate seminar a year) and tend to focus on research whereas faculty at Geneseo teach more and focus on undergrads. So that ratio that seems very similar isn’t really similar at all in terms of student access to faculty. Good luck on that one at Binghamton! I’ll add that New Paltz is much more similar to Geneseo.
I don’t know how much more recent your stats can be since those are from the most recent CDS data (14/15).
Erins Dad, Turns out we were both wrong. The following are the most recent ratios I could find. The World University Rankings-Biology just out: The situation is as I suspected. Too much money going into PR at Binghamton University and not enough into the truth. Elite schools have lower numbers. Flagships have lower numbers. Poorer universities have higher numbers. Binghamton’s is the highest I could find.
The world university rankings times higher education. Staff ratios:
Binghamton 23.3
Albany 18.5
Buffalo 19
sb 10.9
Boston U 8.6
University of Michigan 9
Michigan state is 15.7
Wisconsin 10.8
Wisconsin-mil 18.4
Hofstra 13.9
Penn state 12.4
Cornell 10.2
U Mass 13
Stanford 7.8
Harvard 8.9
UVa 10.2
University of Southern Mississippi 18.5
VT 18.6
Penn 6.5
MIT 9
Urbana/c 18.7
University of Ill at Chicago 9.2
Rice 9
Can you please provide the link? I can’t find the ratio in the QS Rankings. And even the Wikipedia page has the 20-1 ratio from US News for Bing.
Found it. It apparently doesn’t use the data as reported to the US Gov’t so I wonder where they get it? I’ll have to do some more digging. I can’t help but feel there are some errors in there. Does that 10.9 for Stony Brook even make sense?