<p>Okay, I’ll figure that out as soon as possible</p>
<p>You should contact the school, but there’s a good chance your FA won’t change since they use the Profile which has more detailed information. Presumably they took all that info into account for your FA offer already.</p>
<p>Wellesley is not worth 22K more a year than L&C - what are the other options? Right now there seems to be a huge gap - is there another “middle ground” option with a better quality place ? Oh and Seattle’s awesome - you should be happy you live there! Did you apply to U-Dub?</p>
<p>^Including loans and work-study Wellesley is about an 18k difference,. At LC I’d just have to pay room & board, with no loans, no work study, nothing.</p>
<p>I didn’t apply to U-Dub, it’s a great school but not my style, especially with all the budget cuts.</p>
<p>The gap comes from the fact that the LC award (full tuition, not full ride) is merit</p>
<p>Kenzie, I think that this is a situation that really is going to have to be resolved with a spreadsheet & a list of pros and cons. I think L&C is a great school, and Wellesley is a notch above L&C academically and definitely is worth more … but how much more I can’t say. If it were a matter of taking out fully subsidized stafford loans at one school and no loans at an other, then I’d say go for it – but it’s more than that for you. </p>
<p>I also have to say that it depends a lot on the person. I’ve seen a lot of culture clash with my kids going from west to east coast, as well as the money thing-- they never quite fit in socially in an environment where the majority of kids came from very privileged backgrounds. Wellesley has the added factor of being an all-female environment, which is a mixed bag. Yes, there are some wonderful advantages of attending a women’s college, but there are some disadvantages as well. </p>
<p>What areas do you plan to major in? What are your goals, post-college?</p>
<p>I’d also be very concerned about the financial aid at Wellesley if your dad’s income from self employment varies much from year to year. You could find yourself in a situation midway through where you simply didn’t have the money to return. I’ve been in the situation of being very scared that was going to happen with my daughter, and I can tell you that it is not a good place to be emotionally. </p>
<p>Finally, think about the impact the choice may have on your other options down the line, with whatever debt you might be taking on. College is 4 years of your life – after college, there is everything else … but there could also be loans that you are carrying for 10, 20 years. I think that is is particularly important for a woman to consider, because in real life, some of us at some point are confronted with trying to balance career and family, and if we strike that balance in favor of family it often cuts into our career options and earning capacity.</p>
<p>If you were my daughter, I wouldn’t think the $18K difference is workable. $5K yes. $10-$12K maybe. But I would think $18K plus the uncertainty of future aid was a deal breaker.</p>
<p>I think the teller here is that I’m really happy with the answers I’m getting. Money is a huge factor for me, and it is something that really stresses me out. If I can avoid the situations during college of having to work full time over the summer and a lot during the school year to meet my allotted student contributions and instead focus on schoolwork, that might be better. Not to mention avoiding the future stresses of trying to meet loan repayments…</p>
<p>There’s some good info about L&C housing options in the student reviews over on the website-that-shall-not-be-named. (You know, the one that rhymes with “howler”). It will give you an idea of which specific dorms to avoid.</p>
<p>My son visited L&C 10 years ago on an overnight, and also had some concerns about party atmosphere in the dorms, but liked the students he met in the international-themed dorm. (He was hosted in a different dorm, went walking around campus in search of something more to his liking). I had the impression that the students he met there were more serious & quiet – but that was a long time ago, and it’s possible that my son was mostly attracted to the diversity in that setting. </p>
<p>I do think that your college experience can be heavily influenced by your housing, so it definitely would be worth your while to do some detective work to figure out which dorm would be the best match for you. Does your scholarship give you any other perks, such as priority in housing assignments?</p>
<p>It gives me a $2,000 stipend for any sort of project in relation to my field of study (which is a very attractive perk) but unfortunately nothing to do with housing.</p>
<p>I’ve been looking at ************** and talking to admitted students about dorm options to try to get a feel for what would be the best choice for me. I do like the idea of the international dorm :)</p>
<p>The Wellness dorm (substance-free) looks good too – one of the student reviews described it as “quiet”. It’s very clear from the reviews which dorms to avoid!</p>
<p>L&C is a good school – my son came to regret turning them down. (He dropped out of his original school after 2 years, and 3 years later tried to transfer back to L&C, but really couldn’t afford the tuition - so ended up getting his degree from a CSU). </p>
<p>I also think that if you do well there, you will be in a good position for grad school.</p>
<p>^I agree about grad school (or at least with my limited experience and knowledge, I want to!). I’ve already been contacted by the head of the Chemistry department, so I’m pretty sure if I continue a correspondence with her I could start research experience right off the bat.</p>
<p>Plus, I’m a full IB student and I’ll come in with a full semester to a semester and a half of credits at LC, which combined with the $$ would make it much easier to do the completely-unrelated-to-my-major Art History study abroad trip to Italy that I’ve been dreaming of :)</p>
<p>That sounds wonderful! Will the full tuition scholarship at L&C be applied to study abroad? From the web site it looks like L&C sponsors its own study abroad programs, with plenty to choose from! </p>
<p>Do you have the Neely scholarship? According to the web site they only give out 5 of those per year-- so my guess is that Neely scholars are probably treated with a lot of respect.</p>
<p>Do you like boys? They have many more of them at L&C than at Wellesley. (just kidding… but it’s definitely something my d. would have taken into account.)</p>
<p>The scholarship is applied to study abroad, and I’ve looked extensively into all their different programs, the one I was considering was a “general culture” program in Siena. And yes, I do have the Neely scholarship.</p>
<p>The boys thing has definitely come into consideration. Lewis and Clark has a very attractive student body ;)</p>
<p>I think that L&C is the right choice. Keep in mind that having a named scholarship is something of a prestige factor - the kind of thing you list on your resume as an “honor” when applying for internships and your first job out of college – in addition to the perks & recognition you get within the college. So that also impacts your educational experience. Basically it opens a lot of doors for you that may not be open for the typical undergrad at the school. </p>
<p>For example – 5 years ago the daughter of a CC poster turned down a spot at Yale, with weak financial aid, for a full ride at Rhodes, where she later won a Goldwater Scholarship and was accepted to (and now attends) medical school at Yale. Would she have had similar undergraduate research opportunities at Yale? Hard to say. Would she have won the Goldwater – my guess is probably not, because it would have been tougher for her to stand out at Yale. </p>
<p>So of course no one can see the future – but I think you will do well at L&C and will find your social niche there as well as getting a good education.</p>
<p>Yeah given all the other details I say Lewis and Clark .</p>
<p>I have to disagree somewhat. I think this would be harder if you were comparing Wellesley to a top 20 LAC like Colby or Hamilton but I think you will find a different caliber of student at L and C. Probably quite a bit lower median SAT scores. Coupled with the fact that you would like to get out of the northwest I think that it’s really a shame to give up on Wellesley. If you spend one year unemployed after L and C and get a job out of Wellesley, that’s a $40,000 difference or so right there. Wellesley has international name recognition, an amazing alum network and absolutely top notch academics. I don’t think talking to the placement people at L and C will help much because they all say their students do well. L and C is just not the same quality school.</p>
<p>Kenzie, Hitch is dead wrong. My son didn’t have any difficulties finding employment right after graduating from a CSU. He was a national merit finalist and it didn’t harm him to study alongside of students with lower test scores – they were interesting people in their own right. It is true the school itself was not as challenging academically as my d’s college, but if anything that enhanced my son’s post-college employment prospects because he was able to work half-time and still maintain an A average, and he also was awarded a prestigious fellowship at his college. There are some advantages to being at or near the top academically. As far as school, my son formed friendships with some of the faculty, he had some profs who he described as “brilliant”, and he created more challenge for himself by petitioning his department to waive lower level course requirements to allow him to pursue more advanced coursework. </p>
<p>My d. graduated from Barnard – obviously a Wellesley equivalent – and did find employment right away, but many of her classmates had difficulty. My d. had two things in her favor – (1) she graduated phi beta kappa, and (2) she had a really great internship after her sophomore year. The great internship was not something arranged through Barnard, but something she got via networking with friends from her public high school. I’m not posted the part about phi beta kappa to brag, but just to make it clear that you can’t take the accomplishments of a few and generalize it to many. 90% of students at a college are not going to graduate in the top 10% of their class.</p>
<p>That’s particularly important when considering grad school, where your GPA will be important. Will you be able to get into a top grad program if you have a 3.9 GPA from Wellesley? Of course. But Wellesley is not a grade-inflation type of place. – see [gradedeflation.jpg</a> (image)](<a href=“http://■■■■■■/yhKmy]gradedeflation.jpg”>gradedeflation.jpg (image)) – I don’t know what your prospects will be with a 3.3 GPA from Wellesley as opposed to, say a 3.8 from Lewis & Clark. Maybe your GRE score will be pretty important at that point. But if you are one of the top students in the L&C chem department, you probably will have profs writing great LOR’s.</p>
![http://■■■■■■/yhKmy]gradedeflation.jpg](http://goo.gl/yhKmy%5Dgradedeflation.jpg){kind=link}
<p>Please don’t listen to prestige-mongers. I do think that academics are stronger at the elites. I don’t think that employment opportunities post-grad are better – in fact, I think they are often worse, not because of the college itself, but because of the nature of the student body. Most of my d’s Barnard classmates had very limited real-world work experience, and that put them at a disadvantage in the employment market. People talk a lot about the value of an alumnae network, but they overlook the value of a peer network in terms of employment – that is, friends who have jobs and who can share information about how they got those jobs and where there might be similar openings.</p>
<p>If all things were equal financially, then it would be a different question. But that’s not your situation.</p>
<p>I agree. Neither of my parents graduated from college and we’re doing fine. We’re not loaded, obviously, since money for college is an issue, but we live comfortably.</p>
<p>My uncle graduated from Berkeley and then got his masters at MIT and spent 4 years unemployed on our couch. My other uncle gave up Reed due to $$ and graduated from Evergreen State and is now totally wealthy off his work in Hollywood.</p>
<p>It’s what you make of it. Yeah, Wellesley would be great, but you know what else is great? Saving $72,000. It’d be cool if my brother could afford to go to college too, and my parents could afford to retire. It’s not all about me :)</p>
<p>I think I’ve made my decision. Which is good cuz they want me to respond to the scholarship offer by the 20th!</p>
<p>:) You sound like you have a kind of interesting family. I’d love to meet your uncles.</p>
<p>I think one problem may be that your Berkeley/MIT uncle might have been overqualified & overtrained in a narrow field – so when he couldn’t find a job at his “level”, he didn’t have the ability to rebound and find something different – whereas Evergreen would have encouraged your other uncle to be independent, self-sufficient and creative – which probably gave him the personal skills needed to build a career for himself in the entertainment industry. </p>
<p>You sound like a wonderful person. It makes my mommy heart feel all squishy and warm when someone else’s daughter is thinking about the needs of her brother and writes “it’s not all about me”. HUGS for that!</p>
<p>My son had a classmate who was valedictorian of his high school class who went to L&C and by all accounts did very well and really enjoyed her time there. I hate it when people act as if everyone who doesn’t have an SAT score of 2350 or something is stupid. I looked at LAC’s midrange and it is about 600-700 which is well above average – you are going to be surrounded by many very bright & capable students at a campus that is probably far more diverse in many ways that any elite college.</p>
<p>
Very true. I was going to let Hitch have it earlier but decided to wait before posting. And if you think you won’t enjoy L&C because it’s not good enough, DD2 attends and was a NMF with a 234 PSAT, 2280 SAT, ranked #1 in her HS. She loves it (didn’t even come home for spring break)!</p>
<p>kensie1992, you are a very mature young woman with a level head on your shoulders, you’ll do well. Have a great time and congratulations on your scholarship!</p>