Japanese major, cool/cold climate

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Demographics

  • US domestic, Oregon
  • Type of high school: online, small, private
  • Gender/Race/Ethnicity: Female White
  • Other special factors: n/a

Intended Major(s)
Japanese

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.89
  • Class Rank: school does not rank
  • ACT/SAT Scores: SAT 1400 EBR&W 760 Math 640

Coursework
No AP, IB, dual enrolment;
currently taking Calculus and 4th year Japanese as a senior;
cool electives - creative writing, 3 years of drawing/manga

Awards
Nat. Merit Commended

Extracurriculars
Weak area - volunteered at a library in 9th and 1st half of 10th grades, supervisor has moved so no letter; this will be a big empty space on apps as free time is spent drawing manga

Essays/LORs/Other
Guessing a strong letter from 10th grade Physics teacher

Cost Constraints / Budget
Will not qualify for need-based. Please suggest everything without budget constraint.

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below)

  • Safety *
    Portland State U, U Oregon
  • Likely (would be possible, but very unlikely or surprising, for it not to admit or be affordable) Western Washington U?
  • Match
    U Puget Sound? Lewis and Clark C? Willamette U?
  • Reach
    Whitman C? U Washington?

I’ve included all the Pacific Northwest schools I’m considering.

Looking for a cool climate (I love Portland’s weather) college with a great Japanese program. Leaning towards smaller colleges - did not like Seattle at all when visiting UW in 2019. Before c-19 upended everything, Temple University Japan was a top choice, but not sure about being so far away now.

All suggestions welcome - thank you!

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Are you sure that you are okay with being full pay at a university that costs $75,000 per year or possibly a bit more? Can you do this with NO debt at all?

Taking on debt for your bachelor’s degree can significantly constrain what you can do after graduating. Just after graduating university can be a very hard time to find a well paying job, but a very good time to do any one of a wide variety of things that are very interesting (like taking a short term job in some interesting part of the world, perhaps in Japan). Being able to accept a “barely pays well enough to live on” job can open up many options.

I wonder whether you should consider UBC. It is not small at all. It however has an excellent Japanese program and is in a very attractive location.

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Y UW if you don’t want large? Same PSU or Oregon. Pacific U in Oregon and Linfield are both safeties.

Are you open to outside the area? Macalester. St Olaf. UVM. Beloit.

Check each schools majors. Lewis & Clark, for example offers Japanese but as part of Asian studies so not a pure Japanese.

You might look at college of Idaho and Whitworth too for LACs in the NW. Gonzaga and how about southern Oregon.

You might reach for a Middlebury. You have excellent stats so no need to limit yourself if you’d open your geography.

4

Check out Earlham. Very interesting toes with Japan that extend beyond language.

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With respect to a national search, look into Dickinson, and perhaps a few other schools in this topic on colleges strong for languages: For Those Seeking a College. Other smaller schools listed include Holy Cross, Grinnell, Hamilton, Macalester, Middlebury and Smith. Note that a few from this group are highly selective.

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I like your choices of colleges. I think Whitman may be her target than reach. I like Whitman.

I also feel tsbna44’s suggested schools are good ones. I like Macalester college which is about 10-15mins from St.Paul and Minneapolis.

My son is looking at Macalester. We are from Southern California. He will take Japanese classes there if he gets accepted.

Your daughter may want to take another SAT test, just to concentrate on Math this time. English portion is very good.

I hear that Macalester offers very generous financial aid and scholarship. Just search Macalester in CC to read about it.

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My D’s friend studied Japanese at Hamilton College in upstate NY.

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In theory, yes. In the real world, most likely the $75,000/yr college would be passed over in favor of a less pricy option. But a girl can dream!

UBC = British Columbia? Great idea, thanks!

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No reason to spend $75k. The schools under the top tier will give merit because they know people won’t pay full pop, especially when you have better stats than the rest of their student body. Hence Pacific, Puget Sound, Linfield or I saw two great cold Midwest recs of Earlham and Beloit. You can look at southern Oregon too. Also have you looked at the WUE ?

I clicked on two Japanese majors and an Asian studies but play around with it. Just note if you only look at the pac northwest you do limit yourself a bit.

https://www.wiche.edu/tuition-savings/wue/wue-savings-finder/?degreetypes=Bachelor's&majors=Asian+Studies%2F+Civilization%2CJapanese+Language+and+Literature%2CJapanese+Studies

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You can check out CU Boulder. It has Japanese and Asian studies and a very nice Linguistics program. Expensive, but there may get some merit aid. With those stats and applying to A&S, I don’t think there wouldn’t be any trouble getting admitted.

The weather is the opposite of Portland in terms of rain/sunshine.

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Yeah, UW is on the list because it’s the school out here, but just probably not for D22.

Macalester, Beloit - maybe? Both look to have interesting programs in Japanese. St Olaf - liked the idea of studying with the students learning Chinese but the Japanese program seemed tiny. Will check out UVM. Middlebury does look amazing.
TY!

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Typical cu merit is / has been $6250 a year

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Earlham is a great suggestion - and should have been on the initial list. They’re sending lots of email. TY!

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Thanks! It’s good to keep WUE in mind. Hoping to have a stronger program that Southern Oregon.

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Will do, TY

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We hope to visit Whitman. Good to hear from quite a few people recommending Macalester - thank you.

Yes, she may take the SAT again to bring up math. So many tests were cancelled - it felt like a miracle when she actually got to take it in March.

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Thanks! We hoped to visit at the beginning of August to check UC Boulder out, but weren’t able to. I guess it is competing with U Oregon, which is less expensive and has a comic studies minor.

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If you want to get out of Oregon then Utah is worth considering, it offers WUE and has a Japanese major.

A friend’s kid is doing this degree at American, where he spends two years in DC and two years in Japan: Sakura Scholars | School of International Service | American University, Washington, DC

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Interesting program - TY!

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I live in Japan, so I will respond from that perspective. You mentioned Temple University in Japan, but I think she would be better off attending a school in the US and spending a year in Japan along the way. Temple Japan is fine, but it is quite American and it is right in central Tokyo. If I were in your D’s shoes and had four years of Japanese under my belt, I would spend time at a Japanese university in an interesting location. There are lots of possibilities, but two that come to mind are Doshisha in Kyoto and Waseda in Tokyo, both of which have extensive student exchange programs. Doshisha seems to have direct arrangements with many US schools, including Whitman and others mentioned above - I’m including a link to that page on their website, as well as a link to Waseda’s inbound exchange page. Waseda is in a kind of quintessential college town part of Tokyo, and Doshisha is in, well, Kyoto, which would be a fabulous place to spend a year.
https://www.doshisha.ac.jp/en/international/organization/exchanges/america.html