<p>Hello all, I am a parent and with the May 1st deadline approaching, my daughter has narrowed down her college choices to 5 schools:</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins
Notre Dame
UCLA
USC
UC BERKELEY </p>
<p>She's visited all the campuses and was impressed by all of them.
Was wondering if these were your choices, where would you rank them on yourlist and why??? Thanks!!!!</p>
<p>The best school *for her<a href=“and%20you”>/i</a> depends on:</p>
<ul>
<li>The net price at each school, and if there are any merit scholarships involved, what GPA would be needed to retain/renew them, in the context of what you can afford and what amount of debt (if any) would be needed.</li>
<li>Her academic and post-graduation goals and interests.</li>
<li>Her other preferences in a school.</li>
</ul>
<p>Without specific information and criteria, you might just get a few “partisan” boosters or detractors of specific schools replying with comments that may be too general, irrelevant for her situation, or incorrect for her situation.</p>
<p>For me it would depend on what she wants to study. What does she want to study?</p>
<p>Oh sorry!!! kinda new to this. She is going in as an English major and from there who knows. Perhaps law or business.
Price wise, they would all be about the same. Although got a decent financial aid package from Notre Dame and JHU wasn’t bad either. </p>
<p>Hm…clarify price wise. How much are loans?</p>
<p>Ucla and UC Berk are pretty much all loans(28,000+)
USC(Loan amount of about 40,000+)
Notre Dame(Loan amount about 20,000)
JHU(loan amount about 25,000)</p>
<p>Rough figures. I don’t have exact amounts in front of me. </p>
<p>Berkeley - #1 in English</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>If those are per year, then all of them are likely too expensive.</p>
<p>Haha yup. Expensive. That’s assuming we take out the full loan amount, which we won’t. That’s what we are faced with as a middle class income family. </p>
<p>Does she have any less expensive alternatives that require no more loans than the federal direct loans ($5,500 the first year, $27,000 total for all four years)? Putting herself $80,000 to $160,000 in debt for undergraduate is a very bad idea, especially if she wants to go to expensive law school.</p>
<p>With an English major and law school aspirations I would suggest it is more important how well she does at the school than the actual school itself since they are all great schools. Where do you live? Where will she want to live after school? If you are from CA, will the weather at ND be an issue? I know I am not really helping but that is because all of the schools are good and all of them are expensive. </p>