Great advice. We are in Philadelphia and my daughter’s top choices are Juniata, Temple-Honors and Dickinson. She had a Zoom meeting with Dr Westcott and that is great advice. We are looking forward to going up again next weekend for admitted students day and I do truly think Juniata is at the top of her list. I agree the college experience is what you make of it.
The admitted students day yesterday was great for my daughter. She connected even more to the school. It was the first time my wife had gone and she was a bit more skeptical She is concerned about Huntington not having as much to offer and that she felt that her experience with Dickinson was much better. Our daughter is the one going to school and we want her to make her own decision. My concern with Dickinson is the cost would be 20K more a year and we are not wanting to rack up a bunch of student loans for us or my daughter.
D20 attends a SLAC that is basically in the middle of nowhere (relatively). Nice small town with a few good restaurants, but not a ton to do.
We worried a bit about this but D20 was very happy her first two years at SLAC. She has been studying abroad for her entire junior year. She’s loved getting out into the wider world, and at the same time, is very much looking forward to spending her last year back at SLAC in small, fairly isolated town.
All this to say, there are ways of making the experience larger than staying on Juniata’s campus/in Huntington for the entire 4 years. And with the savings between the two schools - seems like there would be money to put towards other experiences, either study abroad (1 or more times) or summer adventures.
Huntingdon is so-so (personally, as an adult, I would prefer to live in Carlisle ), but Juniata seems to have a lot of activities to do on campus - they bring in performers/performances, have lots of traditions, clubs, etc. (My DC doesn’t go into “downtown” a lot. But does frequent Standing Stone!) Campus and Huntingdon seem very safe.
$80K for any school A over any school B seems like a lot to me (at least for our situation).
And I figure any school isn’t jail - they are “sentenced” there for 4 years.
I definitely liked the town around Dickinson too but had the same cost concern. D23 ended up not even applying because we could see it would not be able to fit the budget.
I think the travel options will be good for my daughter as @beebee3 said. She wants to study abroad in New Zealand for at least a semester, probably do an additional faculty led ESS trip, and spend a semester at the field station. She may only spend her first and last years completely on campus!
If it helps, here are a couple pieces I found in my research on the college that my daughter appreciated reading:
Review from a college counselor who visited in 2019:
A bit older, but another college counselor’s report on her daughter’s experience there
An international student’s report on the impact of his time there
News report about a Juniata ESS grad and what he’s doing for work