<p>When I am looking at colleges to suggest to my daughter, finances obviously play into it. And here's the thing- we will be a full pay family, I am pretty sure, when we complete the FAFSA. However, we won't be able to manage 50,000$ plus/year for her, especially not with the siblings following her that will need college educations too.</p>
<p>So, schools that will offer her merit aid are important. She's a great kid (we all say that, right? but she really is!), a solid student (A- with some honors/AP), and tested well but not incredibly well. (By CC standards, I guess I would say she just tested okay.) </p>
<p>My problem is finding schools where I feel like she can get merit aid but still be challenged intellectually. A lot of the schools that I <em>know</em> she can get merit aid, I worry that it will be too easy for her or she won't feel like she is among her peers. She really likes learning and likes working hard and being challenged. </p>
<p>How do I bridge the two? If you have suggestions for schools, please feel free to shout them out. We live in the Mid Atlantic region and would like to stay Midwest and East Coast (from to about SC or AL.) Finally, she doesn't want to go to a really really large school. She seems to think she will probably top out at around 10,000 students. </p>
<p>Has she taken the SAT or ACT yet? If so, how did she do? A lot (most) colleges with merit aid factor those scores in the decision. Knowing your D’s can help us make suggestions.</p>
<p>Many university offer an honors college of some kind or another. The concept of what an honors college is varies widely, so you have to do the research but they can be just what you are looking for.</p>
<p>I suspect that yopur daughter is like my son…3.7/30 ACT. Solid but not spectacular.</p>
<p>My thoughts…</p>
<p>I would not discount schools that are ‘beneath’ her academic level. If she chooses a school with a solid program in her intended major then I suspect that she would be challenged especially if it has an honors program/college. We have known multiple NMF from my S’s high school that chose to attend places like Iowa and Marquette. None have complained about it being easy.</p>
<p>Several midwest schools that are either cheap or are known to give decent merit aid to strong students…all of these are solid schools.</p>
<p>Truman State - average ACT score is 27. About 45% of grads go directly to grad school. We have visited and really liked it. Cheap…less that $20,000 OOS after merit aid.</p>
<p>Bradley
Drake
Evansville</p>
<p>FWIW, my S has decided that he wants to go out west. If that happens, good chance that he will go to either University of Wyoming or Montana. UW will come in at less than $20,000 for OOS and have fewer than 10,000 undergrads.</p>
<p>If she tests well, she can get merit at many of the local private schools and the state schools. Check Saint Marys out which is a public LAC at a $25,000 price tag and they give merit money. UMBC and Towson give much more money than UMCP for scholarships. The lower tier schools could be good safeties since UMCP has gotten hard to gain admission.</p>
<p>@DougBetsy- she has only taken the PSAT as a Sophomore- she will take it again as a Jr this month and then will move on to the SAT. Her Sophomore PSAT was a 174. She did well in the reading (and writing) and not very well on the math. Hopefully taking Geometry her sophomore year will help that a bit. She has been working on the math but ultimately math just isn’t her strong suit. I am <em>HOPING</em> she will increase a hundred points or so at least but have no idea if this is realistic or not. What kind of difference does one usually see from a sophomore PSAT to an SAT in Jr or Sr year?</p>
<p>Her schedule this year is Trig/PreCalc, Physics, APUSH, Honors English (no AP offered until Sr. Year), Humanities, Creative Writing II and Spanish III. She goes to a small parochial school so few APs are offered. She took 2 AP tests last spring and got 4’s on both. She has As in all subjects so far this year.</p>
<p>@Haystack- I’ll have to look into Truman. She has mentioned Ohio Wesleyan and I would like her to look at Wooster and Wittenberg. </p>
<p>@Erin’s Dad- She is leaning toward Secondary Ed and/or Social Work. I’ll have to look and see if UMBC offers those. </p>
<p>@momof3- We did look at Towson and initial impressions were good! She could get in, I think, as she is and would probably like to aim for their Honors program. St. Mary’s is on our list to go see. This weekend we are going on our first college visit weekend, just to dip her toes in the water. We are going to see JMU, UVa (just for the heck of it- I cannot imagine she would get in there), Lynchburg College and the Univ. of Mary Washington (my ILs like in F’burg.)</p>
<p>We will look at UMD-CP. She is resisting it because of the size of the school- she is completely intimidated at the idea of a large flagship college. However, I have told her that we will be looking at it and she will be applying there. That being said, she goes to a small school now and wanted to do so b/c she preferred a smaller, closer knit learning environment, so I am not surprised at her reluctance. I would love for her to like UMD-CP or UDel!</p>
<p>vandygrad, my B+ student got a 180 on the sophomore year PSAT, but did much better junior year, and even better on the SAT. Math was also his weak score. He got nice merit money at American and felt that if your interests align with their strengths you could have a great education there. He was also invited to their honors college. If you are chasing merit money you want to find places where her scores are on the high end for that institution. She might want to look at SUNY Geneseo in NY - relatively small and kind of the honors college in the NY system. Another school to at least look at is Bard, it wasn’t for my son, (too small, too rural), but I do like the way they approach education.</p>
<p>My son graduated from UMD-CP. He liked it there and found that it met his needs academically. And the bureaucracy worked a lot better than I thought it would – even on the occasion when he got sick in the middle of final exams and had to schedule make-up exams with almost no advance notice.</p>
<p>UMD-CP has a lot of special-interest programs for underclassmen that help make the huge campus seem smaller – not just the honors programs, but also things like College Park Scholars. The people in these programs live together, at least to start, and have some of their classes together. </p>
<p>Also, going to a large school is somehow not quite so intimidating when it’s your own state’s flagship state university. You will know people – from your high school class, from the classes that graduated a year or two earlier, and from every EC or job you’ve ever had. An in-stater can’t walk across the campus without saying “Hi” to a dozen people. And you will probably have a social circle starting the first day. There’s you. There’s your roommate. There are a couple of dozen people from your high school class who came to UMCP with you. There are a couple of dozen other people from your roommate’s high school class who came to UMCP with her. You’re already up to almost 50 people, and they’re all eating in the same dining hall. This has potential. </p>
<p>I’m not saying that UMCP is for everyone. There are some disadvantages to the place (most notably, its location in Prince George’s County – although some think that is offset by the proximity to DC). But it’s worth a look.</p>
<p>My dd did about 50 points better on her SAT than her PSAT. She refused to study for the SAT and felt it was cheating which I don’t understand but that is how she felt. I did the cost comparison of all our local state colleges last year. UMBC is more expensive than UMCP which surprised me. With an 1800 SAT your dd could get merit money from Towson and maybe UMBC. She would not get a dime from UMCP. Salisbury and Frostburg both are cheaper than the others for COA and they both give scholarships to kids with your dd stats. Towson, Salibury and Frostburg were teaching colleges so they all would be fine for your dd. Saint Mary’s has a 5 year masters program for teaching. There seems to be many more opportunities to get scholarships if you want to be a teacher. </p>
<p>Since her intended occupation will never pay the big bucks don’t go into debt for college.</p>
<p>“My problem is finding schools where I feel like she can get merit aid but still be challenged intellectually.”</p>
<p>-I am not aware of any UG where students are NOT challenged intellectually. I am a mother of D. who graduated #1 from private prep. HS, and was on full tuition Merit scholarship in UG. She was challenged plenty, had to work extremely hard as well as all of her HS friends. She is at one of the top Med. Schools in the country where she is apprently continue to be challenged. She has many HS friends who went to public state schools specifically because families did not want them to had debts before they enter Med. Schools. Some are at Med. Schools, others are starting next year, no debts, but great academic challenges and awesome opportunites and great bunch of top caliber students at every single UG that I am aware of.</p>
<p>Had same worries w/ my DD w/ the 4.3 GPA and 33 ACT. Ended up at John Carroll in Cleveland in their honors program-about 4000 students. Loves it, definitely academically challenging, met a great group of friends with similar drive, intellectual ability who all love to kick back and have fun. Merit aid wasn’t great but wasn’t bad. Very comparable to many of the colleges we applied to. Not too far from Wooster if you would want to swing by.</p>
<p>I didn’t notice anyone mentioned the CTCL schools (except Wooster above). I always loved reading about/visiting them. (FWIW–DS#1 ended up at one; DS#2 looked at several but opted for a larger school.)</p>
<p>Good point. We do have the book and we have Juniata on our list. I can’t remember offhand the names of many of the schools in there but we also plan to look at Allegheny and Muhlenberg. Oh! And Hope College.</p>
<p>Which county do you live in? Montgomery College has several honors programs, some of which have competitive admission and include full scholarships. The graduates of those programs go on to top institutions all over the country. In addition to the honors programs, there are merit-based scholarships for in-county residents that don’t have a need component in the application. I don’t know about the other community colleges in the state. </p>
<p>For someone who wants to go into teaching, Towson is probably the best in-state public. It began life as the state teacher’s college. One issue worth investigating at each of the public Us here, is housing. Some only guarantee on-campus housing for first year students.</p>