Also check out Beloit if you decide a flight is OK.
D15 ended up looking outside the northeast because of costs Like @Dadof1, my daughter checked out southern LAC’s as will as dune in the Pacific Northwest and one school in the midwest. Net cost clustered around $25,000 for D (3.1 unweighted GPA, 3.7 weighed GPA, 31 ACT). I would expect your daughter receive higher merit aid awards.
We found the NPC to be accurate but we are your basic two wage earners, some assets, no business, no second home family. Several schools included merit aid awards in figuring net cost to us. I strongly recommend running the NPC even if you don’t think you qualify for need based aid. We never qualified for any need based aid.
D received generous merit aid from New College of Florida (small local airport across the street), Hendrix, Cornell College in Iowa, and Eckerd. She also received good merit aid from Willamette, but I assume Oregon would be too far.
Sometimes a plane ride is as “far” away as a long drive. If you are willing to consider further options, take a look at Agnes Scott. It’s a women’s college but has some joint degree offerings with Emory and Georgia Tech, so I would not think that it would be isolated from co-ed campuses. Atlanta is a major airport, so flights would hopefully not be that difficult to get at a decent price.
I would second Elon. I think there are many students from the NE there.
@lexluthor5 St. Lawrence in Canton, NY. It is not religious, easy highway drive from Long Island, lovely campus, great alumni. My son was offered an 80% merit award.
Washington & Lee offers the 100% Johnson Scholarship to 10% of every class plus an annual stipend. W&L is in Lexington VA. We visited, it is a lovely and highly regarded school. Dont let the Greek bother you because it is a nonresidential Greek system more akin to academic clubs.
If you don’t consider St. Lawrence you will be making in my opinion a big mistake if you are looking for merit.
The other suggestion is TCNJ which is NJ’s most selective state school. It is about 6,000 students. Probably around 25k a year all in for your daughter. It has the same appearance and vibe as any small New England college. My younger son is looking at it and we have visited twice. Sadly even many NJ residents dont even know it exists.
Some LACs are affiliated historically with a church denomination but are not “religious” schools. Just like Duke is not a religious school, yet has a prominent chapel on campus and a seminary program.
You will find that paying for a private LAC that is not at the tippy top of the charts is a lot like purchasing a car. Very few people pay the sticker price. Discounts are used to attract bright students like your daughter.
Yes, I see St. Lawrence University isn’t religious. That should certainly get added to our list. Washington & Lee greek thing definitely looks like a problem to me on the surface at least. D is almost surely not going to go greek, but need to read into it more, I guess.
Interesting on Macalester as far as Merit. I even emailed the aid office and they referred me to that page and mentioned nothing else.
Without talking about any specific schools, I think if we added schools that require flights, we’d probably want one of the higher ranked LACs.
Seems like from the comparables, my D has a shot at some very good merit aid if we find the right set of schools to apply to, which is exactly why I’m here.
$24K Net Price for St. Lawrence U according to their tool. So that’s just based on the GPA I entered and the SAT? ECs, Essay, Interview are all lessor factors, but could affect the number up or down, but this is a number I could realistically expect?
You should definitely check out Ursinus in Collegeville, PA (not too far outside Philly). If she liked Dickinson, she should like Ursinus. Bucknell and Gettysburg are worth looks too. I know at least one kid who liked Dickinson best but got more merit from Gettysburg and is happy enough to be going there instead.
A long shot for a full tuition scholarship is much further south at Wake Forest University.
Your daughter is very fortunate because she’s got high stats and you can pay a decent amount. We were in the same boat and our D ended up having many more options than we anticipated. And 3 of them were such good fits for her that I truly believe she could be very happy at any of them.
Ursinus is actually the list, but haven’t looked into it much yet.
Once we get over the fact that we have to rule out much of what she initially looked at and start adding schools we can ultimately pay for, things don’t look too bad at all. So many schools are not even an option. But, people in different situations look at at different schools.
I would think so but if you express interest via a visit and interview and ED, it could be better.
ED is a good tool in this case, if the number doesn’t hit the mark you simply walk away if they won’t budge.
Its a nice school well worth a visit and interview. The trip up from Long Island, I live in NJ, is virtually all highway.
St. Lawrence is on the edge of being a top LAC which makes it different insofar as merit goes. Gettysburg is a great place but it is very preppy and Greek. St. Lawrence is not like that at all.
Check out plane fare for school locations your D might be interested in. My niece lives in an area that has a large Southwest hub and she can fly from her school to home for $59 each way. It’s not worth it for her parents to come and get her and I know she flys home often because it’s so affordable.
I don’t live in an area which is easy to get to. D has to connect and we can’t ever find flights under $400. So she came home much less than my niece. You might be able to up the price you can pay if it’s easy to get to. This was not something we thought of that I wish we had.
My niece got great merit aid from Tulane. I think she received some from Villanova also but not enough for her, but your budget might be more than hers.
When you did the Laf, Muhlenberg rounds did you check out Lehigh? They have some merit aid and look to even out their male/female ratio so it might be worth a shot if she likes it.
We walked Lehigh, yes. Most beautiful campus of all the ones we saw. Must have seen 5 different wedding groups taking pictures. D doesn’t really love the profile and would prefer a smaller school and less engineering focused. Perhaps a bit too much of a party rep too.
Small-ish greek life/someplace where partying can be easily avoided if so desired, lot of clubs/eclectic things to do, good mix of people, not huge prep factor and some semblance of a real Jewish population are other factors that are being looked at. The last one may rule out some of those southern schools (like Davidson, perhaps).
Lots of merit aid sure does pay for a lot of plane tickets. I agree. Living in an area with 3 airports within 25 miles does make it easier.
@BatesParent2019 - you bring up another question. You say St. Lawrence is on the edge of being a top LAC. What are you basing that on? USNews has it as 56 is LACs. Without trying to slight St. Lawrence or other schools in that range, is 56 really close to a “top LAC”? Dickinson is 37 on the same list. How do they really compare? I realize there may be other ranking systems more valued, so please anyone share if you know. The question is more general than with just St. Lawrence. Haven’t look at much about it yet, so not even sure it will wind up passing the sniff test.
Also, not sure if anyone noticed the question I had about Denison merit aid being used for a study aboard semester and if they allow that. Is that something I’ll run into at some schools?
Run the NPC for Carelton College.
Also, have your DS read about Tulane…I know you think party and Greek life, but Tulane is a big enough school to have a lot of different people and opportunities. There is also a large Jewish contingent and students from all over the country. Your daughter would probably recieve a large merit award. What is her intended major?
Read the links in the above thread. It is from the financial aid and scholarships section of this forum.
You are looking for merit aid because you don’t qualify for need based? Is that correct?
How much WILL you be able to contribute annually for college costs? Some colleges give nice merit awards, but even their top merit awards could leave you with a net cost exceeding $30,000 a year.
I sure hope your daughter is looking at at least a couple of SUNY campuses.
Did you look at this discussion http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/931514-colleges-for-the-jewish-b-student.html#latest. There have been many discussions on Jewish life here, might want to do a search on that if you haven’t already.
One caveat since you mentioned walking through the Lehigh campus. There are schools where you must visit and show interest if she is interested in, Lehigh, Lafayette and Bucknell being the ones I personally know of. It’s something to think about.
Oberlin offers very few merit scholarships but it’s really hard to get into and I suspect merit is even harder. What about Rice, even though it is in Houston, it is a Southwest hub? I think they have merit scholarships but don’t quote me on that. I would not discount Davidson yet, it might have a bigger Jewish presence than you think. Even though it’s in the south, I don’t think of it as a southern school.
There used to be a big thread on Hillel’s on campus, I thought? I tried to search for it but couldn’t find it. Maybe if I asked nice, someone better at these things could find it 
Lots of great suggestions. With her scores she’ll be a serious contender for top merit $$$ at virtually all of them. Still scores alone are not enough. What’s her passion?? What does she want to major in and which schools are best for that? It sounds like with scores and grades she’ll be in top 25% for most of these LACs. You run the risk of the schools thinking they are safties …and that she’s really shooting for amherst, williams, harvard etc. So make sure you demonstrate clear interest. EA for those that offer is one way. So is applying early for scholarships like jefferson at W&L. Good luck. I think she will have lots of options.
Oh…if this poster is looking for colleges with a good Jewish presence, how about College of Charleston? The kiddo might get a merit award, and the price is not outrageous for OOS. It’s a little outside of the driving range, but travel home would be less than 8 hours by air.
re St. Lawrence - yes, it’s very possible your COA would only be $24K. As I said my S got $30K a year merit. SLU was his second choice and he would have gone there if he didn’t get into his first choice. Re being #56. Honestly, my son just graduated from a top 20 LAC and I seriously doubt the education at SLU would have been any less or the students not engaged. I will also add, knowing some alums personally - their alum network for help getting jobs after graduating is extremely strong.
@5boys has a son at SLU. I’m sure she can tell you a lot more about the academics & campus life. I do know her S is extremely happy there.
As for the men/women at HWS - it is a totally integrated campus. It is one campus. Same dorms, same classes. The only thing that is separate are athletic teams. There are frats/sororities and kids at HWS are on the preppy side.
Something came in the mail for my child (a rising high school senior) about the “Ohio 5 College Tour” (or “Ohio 6 Colleges”) on August 6-7, 2015. Here is the web link: http://www.ohiosixcollegetours.com/highschoolstudents. This is something that the Ohio LACs do every year, as many of them are a stone’s throw from one another, and it’s a good way to compare and contrast these schools.
Also look at Juniata - great merit aid and scholarships. Excellent school.