Help the world's pickiest girl correct her misconceptions and build a college list!

College Search & Selection
41

I’m also in the ASU Barrett camp and also second South Carolina.

Thought I would share some context as my kids applied to them.

D19: 4.0 UW, 4.4W, 33 ACT; Business major; UofSC Honors College, in-state tuition + $2,000 per year scholarship (didn’t apply to ASU, wasn’t on our radar then); came down to top 2 of 5 acceptances, UofSC and UNC (UNC in-state, always her dream, picked UNC)

D21: 4.0 UW, 4.5W, 32 ACT; BME major; UofSC Capstone Scholars (not Honors), in-state tuition + $500 per year scholarship; ASU Barrett, $15,500 per year scholarship; currently deciding between ASU and UNC (top 2 of 8 acceptances), eliminated UofSC because ASU better option for her major + Barrett > Capstone

Top 2 reference is based on overall fit per my kids (not rankings)

D21 is also super picky :wink:.

Both schools have a mix across political spectrum, so I don’t think they are extreme/activist either direction and are somewhere where almost everyone can find their people.

Good luck!

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42

Yes, the Claremont consortium is different, which is why I suggested it. But Amherst offers a lot to make it worth considering because even though the campuses aren’t contiguous, the town is literally crawling with college students (30,000 of them in town) and the campus is right in the center of the town. Econ & Poli Sci departments are excellent and there are no frats.

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43

Yes, I think Villanova in particular is worth putting on the it’s. Nice suburban campus, rail transit makes inner city easily accessible, strong business school and Econ Dept, and OP should be a likely admit.

44

Divorced parents complicate financial aid matters. Please read FAQ: Divorced parents, financial aid, and net price calculators . However, if your non-custodial parent will not be cooperative with financial aid forms, then colleges which require non-custodial parent finances will not give need-based financial aid (i.e. you need to be able to pay list price, or aim for merit scholarships which tend to be much harder than admission).

Complex assets complicate financial aid matters even more.

Like most students, you need to be picky about affordability, and can only be picky on other aspects within the set of colleges that are affordable.

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45

Villanova
Trinity U in TX
Denison
Furman
Bucknell
Chapman
U San Diego
Santa Clara

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46

@Spineappletwists read what @ucbalumnus has written … “you need to be picky about affordability, and can only be picky on other aspects within the set of colleges that are affordable”

Have those adults who are paying for your college confirmed what they can contribute?

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47

Michigan, Michigan State are givens. Like the Rice and Emory and ASU angle… But also check out Babson…https://www.babson.edu/

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48

U of San Diego, Villanova and Santa Clara are all Catholic. I agree, they are all great schools. However, one item on her wish list was non-religious school.

49

That’s right; I won’t charge for those :wink:

50

Your priorities need to be cost and compromise. So many students start out wanting pretty much all you’ve described. Understand that unless you’re Greta Thunberg or David Hogg, you will have to let go of some of your idealized notions. Decide what is non-negotiable, within reason.

Have you told us yet what your exact grades are? How many AP/IB/Honors classes do you have? Do you have my test scores? What are your main ECs (be non specific if you like.) People have suggested a bunch of reaches along with others.

I see you posted another thread about Penn Wharton, which is about as high a reach as anyone can get. You said you have preconceived ideas, so I will suggest to you that if business is your goal, there are plenty of excellent colleges that will help you get into business, IB, consulting, accounting, etc…

For many business type jobs, experience is more important than an undergrad degree from business school. Critical thinking skills are highly valued in the business world. Don’t assume you need to attend Ross or Wharton to succeed in business. There are plenty of good colleges that will help get you where you want to go, but most of it will depend on you and how proactive you are in finding opportunities. It’s a good idea to think about colleges that will offer a lot of student interaction and professor engagement, where you will be able to more easily develop your critical thinking skills. For those reasons, look at the smaller colleges mentioned here, such as Rice.

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51

I hope she reconsiders. None of those schools are really “religious” IMHO.

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52

I agree! I would add Boston College to the list too.

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53

How about UNC?

54

Nothing wrong with just applying to UMich and MSU if they are affordable. Throw in some free-tuition/ride schools like the NMS scholarship schools if you want to get away from the snow. Your fin aid may well be a mess given your situation, so some of the suggestions are likely to be unworkable/unrealistic in any case. Maybe apply to some competitive merit scholarships like at Richmond. And I don’t think that you’re limiting yourself. How far you get will be mostly up to you (as well as what skills you pick up) in any case, regardless of the school you go to.

55

Really, they are religious to those who either don’t want to ignore it or are looking for the religion. USD has a huge cathedral as the centerpiece of its campus. Several activities, including graduation, have masses as part of them. My niece went there and all the students on the student government board were catholic and they were the ones who planned the very religious graduation. It’s welcoming to those who aren’t catholic, but the religious courses are required (broad range of subjects to pick from), many communications from the school will have religious symbols on them (crosses, “Yours in Christ” notations, religious quotes). Some students can just ignore them or think “Oh, that’s nice” but others get annoyed.

I think that people who say they don’t want a religious school know that they won’t be comfortable ignoring all the religious parts of the school. With so many other choices out there, why pick a school that you know you don’t want to follow the mission statement? Just go with another school.

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56

I think you are eliminating some schools based on inappropriate stereotypes. For example, Tulane is very highly ranked, and offers some full tuition merit scholarships. You’re really so afraid that everyone there would be from NYC? Or is NYC just a code word for something else? In that case, there are a whole lot of other schools you probably should strike from your list, like Brandeis, Barnard, NYU (oh, that’s right, NYC is out), most of the Ivies, your in-state U Mich, Wash U (oh, I forgot, Wash U is too “rich”), and in fact, many of the best schools in the US and Canada.

Regarding the parents with the acrimonious divorce. Some schools will insist that both parents file FAFSA and CSS, so they’ll take into account both parents’ income and assets, unless you can prove that you are completely estranged from the non-custodial parent, meaning you haven’t seen them in many years, and they don’t pay child support.

Wouldn’t it be really nice to be able to get a full tuition merit scholarship, or even a full ride, and not have to deal with trying to get a reluctant parent to help you with tuition? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to not have to worry about a parent pulling the financial rug out from under you at any point in your education, with no notice? That’s why, aside from U Mich and MSU, I really think your FIRST consideration here is what schools are likely to give you full tuition, or even a free ride. Toward that end, I would suggest that you set aside the stereotypes, and approach this process realistically. Unless there’s something you haven’t told us, you could be in the position of the parent with high income and assets messing up your financial aid, and all you’d qualify for is what you can get with the FAFSA, which might be as little as a total of 27K unsubsidized federal loan for the full four years.

Sure, go ahead and apply to as many dream schools as you like. But make sure you apply to schools that are likely to give a NMF free tuition or a full ride, plus apply to some schools that have great merit scholarships. Let go of the stereotypes - think realistically about affordability.

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57

oh my goodness – please don’t accuse me of being anti-Semitic. I’m TRULY sorry if my list came off as harboring any sort of anti-Jewish sentiment in any way. I can assure you that I don’t feel that way in the slightest!!

My list was primarily to give readers a sense of what I value in a school. From what I’ve heard, Tulane has a more of a party school environment, and I personally don’t feel like I would want to be in New Orleans for college.

My WashU joke was a stab at the need aware admissions policy. They have the highest average student income of any us college… again, not a good fit for me, as I grew up with my single, lower-middle class parent.

Again, I sincerely apologize for any insensitivity!!

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58

I think your internet research has given you the worst stereotypes about each school you listed. It’s maybe the basis for a school coffee house comedy monologue, but not for a serious college search. Are you aware, for instance, that Tulane has an incredible program for business and international relations, called the Altman program? Or that it awards half and full tuition merit scholarships? Or that Wash U, even though it is not need-blind, awards significant merit scholarships, too?

The unfortunate fact is that all the Ivies/tippy-top schools offer financial aid only, no merit aid, and from what you describe, your non-custodial parent’s finances will disqualify you from receiving financial aid. So unless that parent is willing to cough up 300K, or unless you can convince the school that you’ve had no relationship with that parent for many years, and that that parent pays no child support, there’s really no way for you to finance an Ivy. You need to be chasing schools that offer tremendous merit aid. Fortunately, you’re in the running for merit aid at those T50 schools that offer it, and there are good-enough schools with honors colleges where you’re pretty sure to get offered big merit aid. Be careful about writing off those highly ranked schools that offer merit aid just because of stereotypes gleaned from internet research.

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59

Your in-state public U’s set a very high bar in terms of quality and value. There are many, many students at UMich who are full-paying the OOS cost of attendance, which is only about 10K/year less than an Ivy. UMich is basically semi-private; and MSU compares favorably with the flagship universities in many other states. So your point is well taken that paying a premium to attend an OOS public makes no sense. Given your complicated financial profile, there may not be a ton of private U’s that will compare favorably on value to your public U’s, either. But it’s definitely worth exploring the possibilities!

For something different to consider, there are a couple of highly-competitive business/econ-related honors cohort programs at U of Nebraska Lincoln that could be worth a look. Lincoln gets high marks as a college town. The Business Honors Academy offers a high-powered cohort and a great student experience with excellent opportunities Nebraska Business Honors Academy | Academics | Business | Nebraska … and if you aren’t as averse to computer science as you are to physics, the Raikes School combines Business, CS, and Design in a very cool interdisciplinary honors curriculum (some major in engineering and take all of the dreaded STEM classes, while others choose majors from the business school or major in econ through arts & sciences… but they all participate in the interdisciplinary program together). https://raikes.unl.edu/ UNL would be very affordable given the low sticker price and the merit you could expect (not dependent on need calculations), and it seems to tick your boxes for the most part (not too small or too rural or too rich, overly-fratty, activist, religious, or gratuitously stressful).

As a 5C’s parent, I can definitely see you liking Claremont McKenna and the consortium in general (although “performative” activism is not absent, and its detractors can get strident and offensive in their own way, so that can get icky sometimes). Unclear how your net cost would end up looking, however, and the NPC may not be reliable given the complexity of your profile. The problem here is that if you truly loved CMC, the acceptance rate is much, much higher if you apply ED… but that’s hard to do if you can’t reliable gauge affordability. Of course, if your aid ultimately doesn’t measure up to what the NPC indicated, you’re not obligated to enroll, but nobody needs that emotional rollercoaster. If you consider applying ED to any full-need-met school, it may be worth inquiring about a financial aid pre-read instead of just relying on the NPC. This applies also to Rice, which I agree might hit the sweet spot in terms of the social vibe and political climate that you’re looking for. Rice is about as generous as it gets, aid-wise, so if they’d be willing to give you a pre-read, that might give you a good best-case-scenario baseline for elite private U’s.

What about smaller universities that may technically be considered liberal arts colleges, but have strong pre-professional programs? I’m thinking of Denison University as an example. They have some really good offerings in poli sci, policy analysis, econ, data analytics… and a top notch DC program Lugar Program | Denison University . Granville is a nice college town, and it’s just outside the city of Columbus. They’re pretty generous with both merit and need-based aid. Probably a little smaller than you prefer, with about 2300 undergrads, but not tiny.

University of Richmond could be worth a look too. And ASU Barrett as already mentioned. UGA Honors might appeal if you can land one of the big merit awards. The U of Utah Honors College is pretty cool too, and there are both strong merit possibilities and the unusual option of a path to residency after the first year, to make it particularly affordable.

It seems like the safeties you already have are pretty great, so as you say, you might as well be picky in terms of what would tempt you away from your in-state and/or big-merit options. You show good self-awareness and a great sense of humor; if you can use those to paint a picture of yourself and your goals, in your applications, I think admissions will go well for you. It’s good that you understand the possible financial pitfalls up-front and are getting out in front of that. You’re asking all the right questions and balancing aspirational thinking with pragmatism, which is to say, you’re well ahead of the game already, which is going to pay off with good, realistic options.

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60

FYI, U of Utah would surely give you a full tuition scholarship. SLC is a cool place to live if you like skiing and hiking. It’s about 50% Mormon, but it also has the beginnings of a Portlandesque kind of liberal grunge scene going on, too. The business school is good, and they’ve got a good honors program with lots of business connections with the SLC business community. But in terms of academic rigor, it cannot hold a candle to U Michigan.

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