Or interview on short notice at in-state public medical schools while at college.
I live in a suburb of Milwaukee and go to a school where it seems like nearly everyone at least considers Madison (I applied this year). I would try talking to your daughter about it again. The city of Madison is actually liberal! It’s a wonderful school with incredible academics, athletics, etc. and the reciprocity is a HUGE advantage. Plus it is surrounded by gorgeous lakes and state street has a bunch of awesome shops/restaurants.
At our house, “getting a kid to visit” was never an option. We FORCED our kid to visit her most likely in-state options.
Once there she either did or did not like them but at least her opinion wasn’t based on other’s opinions or from an odd picture on a website or what she might’ve thought about some former high school friend who tweeted about it. Preconceived notions were NOT allowed. She was required to go and visit and form her OWN opinions. Shockingly, she learned that a lot of campuses look alike and are “not as bad as I thought.”
At our house,you are allowed to have big dreams and want to go off to school. What you aren’t allowed to do is not put any effort into doing so and you have to actively drop the attitude and start doing the dirty work which involves a bit of compromise, a huge reality check about money and digging in to put in extra effort.
For D, it was the realization that her ACT score, while solid, was not going to be enough to balance the merit quest and so she worked her tail off daily to raise it up a few notches to make her competitive. Her hard work has paid off.
I made our kids look at our State U as well. Both of ours didn’t like it because it has 5 campuses and you have to take a bus to get between them (and you take the tour on a bus as well).
Here are some comments based on my experience. My children are finishing college. I did it pretty close to your financial criteria. The only loans we did were the subsidized ones. YMMV.
- Do not rule out private schools. For my daughters, the check twice a year was pretty much what we paid. There were not a lot of extra fees etc that you can find at public schools. Foreign study required paying for a flight, otherwise it was the same cost as a normal semester.
- Your assets and income do matter. It is not her fault that you have an income. Look for schools that are FAFSA only schools so your assets don’t get in the way (value of your home etc). The college profile where you enter your home and retirement accounts is probably not your friend.
- Consider lower cost areas. This is where you have the biggest issue convincing your daughter. Schools in more rural areas can be an excellent value, and a good experience if she is willing to accept it. My children grew up in Northeast affluence, going to school in the midwest/rustbelt was a very good experience for them. Talk to folks on campus. These days there are cars/vans/airplanes and the students can travel pretty easily. Some of the smaller liberal arts schools in more rural areas provide an excellent education but are looking for students and are willing to help financially.
- Look very carefully at the culture of the school. It can have a big effect on how successful your daughter is. Strong fraternity school? Lots of drinking? Competitive? What do people do for fun? Are students looking to make lots of money, or save the world? These kinds of things can be as important as the criteria you are looking at now.
Good luck!
The idea that Madison is conservative is literally laughable. With UW Madison at instate prices as a realistic option, why would anyone spend $$ to go to lesser schools like Lake Forest or DePaul?
If she wants a more exotic location at a reasonable price, look to Canada. McGill is a great university in a fascinating, international-flavored city.
^ “why would anyone spend $$ to go to lesser schools like Lake Forest or DePaul?”
UW - M has 29,000 undergraduates. Some kids just will not thrive or be happy in that environment.
My daughter would not be happy at a large Big 10 sized state flagship. She mentioned to me recently that she wants a school with a strong residential housing culture, and having to move off campus sophomore year is a non-starter, so she only wants to apply to schools that guarantee housing all 4 years. Every kid is different and has different needs.
Since you are in the Chicago area… a small LAC in the SW Chicago suburbs is North Central College in Naperville, accessible to the city center on the train. (Disclaimer: my husband taught there for a couple of years, 18 years ago.) At the time, nice kids, small classes, get to know your profs, etc. I wouldn’t say Naperville is liberal, but a cute “town” (if anything in Chicagoland could be cute.) Don’t know if students would be liberal/hipsterish at this time…or anything about its merit aid…just a suggestion to check out. Anyone know about it now?
^Honestly, though, if she loves Loyola, I think she might find North Central College a bit dull and too small.
My daughter also liked Loyola, but ultimately was put off by the 35/65% male/female student ratio. (To me it seemed like sort of a non-issue, since she would’ve been living in a huge city with plenty of people to meet.)
Both our daughters applied to Lake Forest College. One was involved in a scholarship competition which proved to be stressful, but the younger one (who is a senior now) spent a half day there, took classes, and met with a coach. Absolutely loved it…including being outside of Chicago, but having access. She really enjoyed the student body and is applying. She did not get the “sullen vibe.”
@angstymom, what about a school in Texas? If she wants to get out of her comfort zone, tell her to look at Trinity University in San Antonio. It is a smallish LAC of around 2,300 that offers excellent merit scholarships. With her stats she would get the Murchison scholarship which is $24,000 per year. There is also the Tower scholarship which is competitive. Then there are the Semmes scholarships for science majors and those can be full tuition. Their admissions to medical school is high. There is lots of professor to students interaction and support.
Deadlines are approaching soon so if interested then have her look at their website.
San Antonio is a large urban area and has lots of fun things for the college crowd. Plus, Austin is only about 11/2 hrs away and that’s the best place in Texas hands down.
My friend’s D is there and as far as her mom can tell, loves it. And this was a girl that wanted to go to the east coast too. Have only heard great things about it. They really want their students to succeed.
We are currently visiting our D in Chicago and while it’s been fun, wish we were enjoying the San Antonio river walk in 70 degree weather about now.
Good luck!
Let me add that Trinity University is I think really trying to add geographical diversity. So coming from Minn is definitely in her favor with this school. Beautiful green campus and they just added a state of the art science building.
She would be there in the best time of the year- fall and spring.
Thanks again for the recommendations. I think San Antonio sounds great, actually. Very different from Minnesota. Now if I can get over her ‘Texas’ prejudices. I thought Austin seemed right up her ally, she disagreed…
I didn’t mean to disrespect Lake Forest College. It was lovely and the staff are very helpful and easy to work with. It just was not a good fit for her. Trust me I really wanted it to work since the merit aid was so generous.
I thought the issue of male to female ratio at Loyola was interesting as well. My daughter and I discussed that and honestly she doesn’t mind it…even though she ruled out colleges that only admitted women…go figure.
@angstymom, FWIW, I had a colleague whose daughter is at Loyola Chicago. She’s not in health sciences but pre law and loves it there. I was told that she was offered lots of merit monies.
Not sure what the prejudices for Texas are about but let me assure you that Austin is very very liberal. My kids grew up seeing a crossdressing homeless man (Leslie Cochran) wearing a thong and stiletto heels who ran for mayor walking around and they never blinked an eye. Keep Austin Weird. Unfortunately Austin is becoming more popular with the ACL and SXSW music festivals happenings. Come to think of it, maybe I should stop bragging about Austin as we are getting too crowded here.
San Antonio is definitely not as liberal or hip as Austin but it has a very friendly vibe and lots of cultural appeal.
Good luck! Just remember that always keep options open and wherever she lands, she will thrive.
Long time Chicago city and 'burb resident here. I can’t think of a broader range of schools than UIC, Lake Forest and Loyola - but you’ve experienced that now yourself! For what it is worth, I personally would not consider paying out of state tuition for UIC.
I did wonder if your D considered how Loyola’s large commuter population might impact her on campus experience? That may make no difference to her but might be something to explore. The students I’ve known through the years at Loyola were primarily local, often commuting from the family home.
Not a scientific sample, but I know a number of Chicago and north 'burb kids who have been gone to Madison. Definitely not a conservative bunch - it’s considered a very good admit in my strong high school district. I do hope she’ll agree to a visit - beautiful campus and with Minnesota reciprocity, a real bargain. (IMHO!)
I’m so glad that we were pretty naive when we started the whole process and gave my daughter a budget lower than what we now think may be reality based on her (and our) expectations. We also told her that she would be paying the first two years and we would pay the 2nd two years (that way if she dropped out, it was all on her). And then we said that we wanted to target about 18k per year (which now seems too low for a decent private LAC). We started a spreadsheet where we plugged in tuition, room/board, books/expenses, and travel expenses (calculated $1800 for close drives, $3800 for longer drives with hotels, and $4800 if air would be involved). Then totaled that and put in merit aid guesstimates to give us projected net. Then as offers have come in, we put in the amount and highlighted the cell in green to show it was a true offer and not a guess. Once we sorted that all, we then added a differential from the lowest price college to see how much all the other choices would cost her x her two years of contribution. This helped to create reality. I had also insisted she had 2-3 safe schools on her list. This really pushed her to look for high quality but lower cost choices. On her list has been Creighton, Mercer, Drake, Cornell, Butler, Texas A&M, Colorado College.Some of these have had disappointing first merit offers, others a little aggresive, but none getting us to the 18k original goal. More economical choices: Truman State, Montana State, UW-Lacrosse, and several others. As of now, we are waiting on add’l Merit from Mercer & Creighton but are seriously considering Truman State as it appears to be a great value. We still need to tour as we have been behind in visits. Anyways, for those who have a D or S in the class of 2018, I say be super conservative with the kids from the beginning. Now if we do want to help her go to Creighton or others and have to increase our contribution, at least it’s more like $5 - 10k more instead of a $25k differential. She dropped some very spendy options that had originally been on her list because of the spreadsheet and expectations we had. She is a 31 ACT and a UW GPA about 3.4 but should hit 3.5 after this semester. And she won’t qualify for aid, but we have to be careful as my husband is self employed and I have some health issues to consider and don’t want to dip too deep as we have another daughter as well. Anyways, we were kind of naive and dumb at first, but it’s working to be an unintentional strategy that helped us get her away from pricey LAC’s without significant merit. She had thumbed her nose originally at Truman State but is now pretty pumped to think she will graduate with minimal debt and may be able to have a car at school.
We had the same sorts of issues with our kids. The first (stubborn one) attended early college and decided not to study for the ACT, counting on his dual enrollment college grades (which were excellent, along with most outstanding undergraduate awards) for admission to lottery schools and our state flagship. He didn’t listen to us about standardized tests and was rejected from every one. He was so dejected he worked for a year, then applied again with a slightly better ACT score (27) and was rejected again. The second learned from his brother’s mistakes. He got a 36, had lots of scholarship offers and acceptances from highly selective colleges, and ended up at a top 10 school for his major.
So if there is any advice I can give your junior daughter, tell her to improve her ACT 3-4 (or more) points to make herself eligible for more merit awards, or colleges where your EFC is more in line with what you want to pay. She does have the advantage of being a rural applicant which is fairly unusual for the most selective colleges ; that will help her as a diversity candidate.
agree with @TooOld4School , with 45 mins per day of study and a full test on the weekend over the course of two months, our kids moved their test scores +100 to 200 resulting in 10s of thousands of merit. My D devoured the meltser act english book cover-to-cover to move her act writing score from 28 to 36. A side benefit is that she has a much better understanding of the mechanics of writing.