<p>He’s interested in government and Bowdoin has one of the top undergrad programs in that area. Not everyone at Bowdoin is in to sports and it’s certainly worth a look.</p>
<p>Well, I guess. It just doesn’t seem like one of the schools for “Dr. Who” kids. </p>
<p>@mom24boys - I don’t know if you’ve seen this link <a href=“Kalamazoo College - Hillel International”>http://www.hillel.org/college-guide/list/record/kalamazoo-college</a>
You can search any college for the percentage of Jewish students attending. Looks like Kalamazoo is lacking in that regard.</p>
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Merit aid is important and budget is fluid due to family issues so a wide net will be cast. Son is aware of all of this.
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<p>for a safety to be a safety, you need to be certain of final costs, merit, etc. the schools that will likely admit him, but affordability is unknown cannot be safeties. those schools are more like low-matches.</p>
<p>Which schools do you know FOR SURE that you have all costs covered with assured merit, assured grants, and/or family funds. </p>
<p>also…at some schools, merit consideration is not based on super-scores.</p>
<p>Clark offered good merit to our kid a few years ago, has a noticeable Jewish presence and is great for psychology. </p>
<p>@mom2colllegekids - The truest safeties are the two in-state options UMCP and St. Mary’s. Right now we are 95% sure we can afford them. If that is not 100% by fall he will apply to one or more schools which will give him guaranteed scholarships for the 1400 plus CR/M (Superscoring not needed) or UMBC which he can commute to and we can 100% afford. That bridge will be crossed in late July/August.</p>
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<p>What the heck is a “Doctor Who” kid anyway? I love Doctor Who and I also love me some football. It is, in fact, possible for a student to be sporty and into science fiction. I also find it odd that one of the top 10 liberal arts colleges in the country - with division III sports, btw - is considered too sporty for a top student. I mean, they may be more athletic compared to other small elite colleges, but I don’t think a sports-neutral student would feel out of place there at all. They’re not packing am 80,000 stadium on the weekends if you know what I mean.</p>
<p>With that aside, OP, is your son more into rural or suburban or urban areas? 7300-student American, in the heart of DC, is going to be a very different experience from 1100-student Cornell in rural Iowa. Clark, Willamette, Muhlenberg and Wheaton are all more suburban. St. Lawrence, Cornell, and Knox are more rural or rural-ish.</p>
<p>I know you don’t need any more suggestions, but what about Lawrence University in Appleton, WI? It’s a small school (1500 students) with a high acceptance rate (73%) but the students are pretty self-selecting, as SAT score ranges are in the 560-710 range and most students were in the top quarter of their high school class. They also have a Hillel. Another thought, given his focus on a strong study abroad program, was Goucher College in Baltimore. They require all of their students to study abroad. Here’s the website to their college’s Hillel (<a href=“Goucher Hillel - Jewish Life at Goucher College”>Goucher Hillel - Jewish Life at Goucher College).</p>
<p>@Mom24boys, I don’t know your budget but SMCM is pretty expensive for an instate public LAC. I think tuition and fees is close to $14,000 compared to less than $9,000 UMBC and $9,000 UM-CP. If you have the prepaid trust, then that covers all Maryland schools regardless of current tuition rates and fees.</p>
<p>I think Truman State and/or Minnesota-Morris is actually less expensive than SMCM in terms of tuition and fees (but there is the travel costs to consider). </p>
<p>@Julliet My “Doctor Who” kid is a kid who spends summers and weekends studying Kant, following current events, hanging out on the computer and tends to friends with a more counter-culture edge then he has which is why I thought he would love Oberlin, but he wants more of a mix of opinions. He is not sports-neutral he is sports-negative.</p>
<p>He would prefer suburban or rural, He was fine with the areas around Haverford, Wooster and Kenyon. AU is on the list because it is a self contained campus in a very residential area of DC. He would hate BU or Pitt, even NEU where his brother attends.</p>
<p>He didn’t like Lawrence on his first review of schools (I had also suggested it to him). Goucher is already a must apply safety. We were both surprised at how much we could see him on campus when we visited. </p>
<p>@SlackerMomMD No pre-paid trust for DS, we fixed that mistake with DS 3 & 4. I will take a look at Minnesota-Morris. I worry a bit about a Jewish student at Truman State. I am sure he would be fine on campus, but would the surrounding area be less then welcoming. Rural Missouri does have some recent history with antisemitism and worrisome quotes from small town mayors. And I can’t image travel would be cheap or easy.</p>
<p>My daughter, who seems to know every Jewish kid on the planet, and we don’t live all that far from Truman State, knows of no Jewish kids going to Truman. They do a have a Hillel, but it’s very small, and according to their brochure, High Holy Days involve a carpool ride to Columbia or St. Louis.</p>
<p>I have a cousin whose daughter only wanted to attend small LAC’s and only applied to after traveling throughout the Midwest and Northeast to tour a zillion schools. She was from suburban Boston and planned to be a French major. She had many acceptances and chose Kalamazoo with generous merit money and was impressed with their huge commitment to study abroad. I did ask my cousin about presence of Jewish campus life and other Jewish students and he did not seem particularly concerned about the lack.
By beginning of second semester she knew she was not in the right school. The school was very homogeneous, there was a racial incident in her dorm, Kalamazoo was pretty remote for going anywhere and travelling to Boston for Thanksgiving and winter break not all that easy. She applied to transfer and while I cannot remember all the schools she applied to transfer to, she transferred to Wesleyan and made a very good decision. She loved her experience at Wesleyan, studied abroad and it was the right size and the right atmosphere for her.</p>
<p>Agree with others about Muhlenberg as a good safety option. Schools similar to Goucher in that they are former women’s colleges that went co-ed are Skidmore, Connecticut College – these schools typically don’t have big-time sports programs and are looking for guys.</p>
<p>Why not consider universities? They all offer the same liberal arts majors as LACs, but are generally larger and easier to find “your people”.</p>
<p>I was thinking along the same lines as Chardo. If cost is an issue, the cost of attendance may be lower at an OOS public that offers merit money rather than at a LAC where the starting COA will be higher. I would consider visiting University of Delaware, which is smaller than UMDCP. He will probably qualify for the honors program and merit money there.</p>
<p>I would have him do some SAT prep for the writing section and retake the test one more time. A higher superscore may lead to more merit $$.</p>
<p>Of the current safeties on your list, I like American and Muhlenberg. </p>
<p>Thanks U of Delaware is on the list. He has done writing prep but obviously needs to do more. He has just started to warm up to the idea of universities as long as its not too hot or urban.</p>
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<p>Muhlenberg does consider “level of applicant’s interest”:</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=623”>https://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=623</a></p>
<p>So the student would have to play the “interest game” there:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1626043-ways-to-show-a-high-level-of-applicant-s-interest.html”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1626043-ways-to-show-a-high-level-of-applicant-s-interest.html</a></p>
<p>Others to consider, not urban or hot, with reasonable cost or merit potential, and some Jewish presence: Binghamton, Geneseo, Miami (OH), Elon, James Madison, Towson, UMass.</p>
<p>@Mom24boys My D had similar stats and looked at many of the same schools. Most affordable private LACs were Muhlenberg and Denison (she starts at Denison in the fall, but can’t speak to the Jewish life there). She was accepted with lesser amounts of merit to Dickinson and Oberlin. Miami gave 1/2 tuition, which put it cost-wise between the in-state schools (College Park and SMCM) and the private LACs. One more thing, SMCM gave her $5k merit, so the COA would have been very close to UMD-CP. Good luck.</p>
<p>Given that the kid likes to read Kant on the weekends, I’d say that he’ll want a school that does have at least some intellectual environment. Lots of small liberal arts colleges like Muhlenberg or Cornell College won’t really provide that, so you’d have a better shot at applying to bigger universities that will probably have a sub-sect of intellectually focused students. That’s why I’m going to second @Chardo’s suggestions.</p>
<p>All of your reaches (Macalester, Grinnell, etc) definitely have a reputation for more intellectual student bodies, with the exception of Brandeis perhaps (Though I’m sure your S will be able to find plenty of very academics-focused, intellectual kids there). There definitely are a few LACs that are a bit easier to gain entry in than that provide comparable levels of intellectual engagement - the problem is, they’re often very expensive. So you might want to run net price calculators on these schools, if you do decide any of them are worthwhile. </p>
<p>-Vassar (Not really easier to get into, actually)
-Bard
-Sarah Lawrence
-Hendrix
- St. John’s College (Real niche school, but you might want to look in on it).</p>