<p>Not to horn in on the SLU thread (I’m usually found over at the Marquette one! LOL), but just another reference point for you – last year, Daughter was awarded 12,000 a year with no extra applications or essays. (Forget what this was called – it came with acceptance.) She received just slightly less at Marquette – but SLU’s tuition is slightly more than Marquette’s so it came out a wash. The interesting thing about the SLU scholarship, though, was that $2,000 of it was earmarked for room and board per year. Is SLU working on getting kids to live on campus all four years? At Marquette, everyone lives in the dorms for two, then most move to either university-owned or other apartments in the very immediate vicinity. So everyone is still in the area, just not necessarily in university-owned housing.</p>
<p>Beastman: you are a man after my own heart! I graduated from Iowa (not engineering) and received a wonderful education. Still LOVE Big 10 schools! And yes, it is easier to say you are a Hawkeye than explain what a Billiken is, I agree. Not only that, but I now live in a state where football is close to a religion and no one understands a school without a football team. Not to mention, SLU son played football for 4 years in HS. </p>
<p>Oh, well he can become a Rams fan.</p>
<p>dbwes: yes, that $2000 res life portion of the scholarship is a SLU incentive to students to stay on campus. Luckily, SLU has some great on campus apartments (The Village) for which the scholarship applies. D was in dorms first 2 years and The Village her last two. These apartments also have the advantage of already being furnished.</p>
<p>IllinoisMom, thanks for clearing that up. They referenced the residential part of the scholarship in our information session but I never thought about the reasoning behind it.</p>
<p>Also, FWIW, I emailed our admissions counselor to ask if outside scholarships would reduce the amount of any SLU scholarships awarded and he answered that they would not. That was good news to us.</p>
<p>And I’m with you guys on the Billiken thing. We’re a family of Jayhawks, which we humbly believe to be the best mascot in existence. The Billiken thing is hard to wrap our heads around. ;-)</p>
<p>dbwes, by all means horn in on this thread as I suspect the Marquette/SLU comparison is common and I for one am very interested in these observations and factoids. Marquette is much closer to us and geographically and culturally (cheesehead spouse) but it’s difficult for me to get past my own observation from 30 years ago when I visited friends there and thought it to be a very steel & concrete urban campus with, well, no charm whatsoever. My wife is an alumnus and agrees totally.</p>
<p>There’s no football team? Oh, dear. What rallies school spirit?</p>
<p>I still like Iowa for the lad but honestly, with out of state fees and relatively small scholarship potential, I think one could do better at the sort of schools we’re looking at here. Big school/medium school; public/Jesuit. Ugh! I enjoy analyzing every minute tidbit, but ultimately I think it’ll come down to my son’s preference, once the $ hurdle is addressed. Now if he’s accepted at UW Madison with it’s $17k pricetag, the earth could shift substantially!</p>
<p>Beastman, I believe soccer and basketball are big draws at SLU.</p>
<p>The college rep from Saint Louis gave my son the impression that sports were very big there. I met parents of a boy who plays on their baseball team. He loves it. They say the campus is like Disneyworld.</p>
<p>Good luck on your search! We’re there with you. Son is a junior interested in Biomedical Engineering, and his heart is set on Marquette. </p>
<p>Son’s best friend will be checking out Saint Louis. Best friend is in the school band and loves to go to the games, so SLU will probably be a better fit for him. He’s interested in mechanical engineering.</p>
<p>montegut, congratulations on having found a good fit with and for the prospective BME. We are evaluating the same two schools on top of whatever public schools we can manage that make sense. There are, as you know, only 50-some accredited programs nationwide.</p>
<p>I wish we were able to go to SLU and/or Marquette prior to summer but the visit programs are done until fall (aside from individual visits). I’d forgotten that spring semester wraps up as early as it does, and it’ll be summer at colleges very soon. I’m not entirely sure I want to visit either during the summer as I think attending a class and seeing actual living breathing students is important. We visited a number of schools this year, but not these two. And that’s a good thing, I guess, as we have a lot of time to visit them and any others.</p>
<p>Yes, it does make a difference and you are smart to go when school is in session. The kids like to see all the other kids and the hustle and bustle. Otherwise, they think the place is dead.
I think both Marquette and SLU need to be seen – both have beautiful urban campuses that have been greatly spruced up in the last ten or so years. People sometimes have very negative connotations of both St. Louis and Milwaukee, and generally they are extremely and pleasantly surprised.</p>
<p>Oh – what I meant to say before I got on my soapbox (LOL) – I wanted to sneak in a visit to SLU with younger D on one of these next couple of weekends before the SLU kids go home, and I was very disappointed to learn no Saturday tours (except for once a month – next one May 30, too late). So we may not get there until the fall also.</p>
<p>Thanks Beastman! Don’t I know it about the limited number of programs!</p>
<p>I found the Whitaker site once son mentioned BME and starting researching schools from there. That’s actually how we found Marquette and SLU.</p>
<p>I am also researching where companies that do this work are located, to maybe find schools nearby where son can get an internship or coop and get a foot in the door.</p>
<p>Got a laugh in regards to this yesterday.</p>
<p>I noticed a lot of biomed companies were in Minnesota, so I checked out UMinn Twin Cities, which I liked because it is on the Mississippi, which is near and dear to my heart.</p>
<p>When I proposed looking into this school, son immediately dismissed it because the Vikings knocked the Saints out of the playoffs one year.</p>
<p>Yes, this is from my son who sports are supposedly not important to.</p>
<p>Of course, we are all avid Packers fans down here, so I guess Marquette is okay.</p>
<p>SLU has the Rams, who son avidly cheered for during the Kurt Warner days. They played the Super Bowl down here in New Orleans. </p>
<p>I’m a Viking fan because Archie went there after the Saints.</p>
<p>Well, what can you do. They have a mind of their own, and no matter how much research I do, in the end, it will be where he feels is the best fit for him.</p>
<p>He’s only a junior, and I’m already in a tizzy.</p>
<p>Take care and good luck to all.</p>
<p>Yes, biomed is big here (we live in the Twin Cities) and Boston as well. IMO the U is extremely large and fragmented, spread out the way it is and interspersed with the cities. It lacks the clear college identity of other large institutions. Obviously, many students and alumni love it so my opinion may be in the minority. But it’s not even on my list of schools for my boy for this reason and for the fact that he’ll mature more quickly when outside the area. </p>
<p>I agree that recruiting for both internships and FT is important as it can play a large part of where a student winds up. Of course, trying to anticipate this at this stage of the game is even more ridiculous than the countless hours of crystal-ball-gazing I’ve done over the boy’s choice of school and program! Next to the definition of “obsessive-compulsive” is a picture of…</p>
<p>Thanks for your take on Twin Cities campus. Put it down as a choice to send scores to, but I’ll change to another one now. </p>
<p>Yes, I am obsessive-compulsive about this as well. Can’t you tell?</p>
<p>Very good friends graduating this year, and the boys are going all over.
I’m so proud of them!</p>
<p>Can anybody tell me how hard it is to get into this program? And why you only need to get a 3.0 freshman year? is it that hard or doesnt it seem like its a little to easy? and is it guaranteed admission? Sorry for all the questions</p>