Hello,
My son is an Asian international student with a 3.2 GPA from a US high school and a 29 ACT. He has been in the US for 5 years. His main extracurricular is choir, and he has sung solos. He has devoted a lot of time to it.
He is interested in a school with between 5,000 and 10,000 students, not in a hot climate, and preferably urban. He would like a school that is diverse and has a significant international population. It could be a Christian school or a non-Christian school–either is fine. Cost is not an issue at the moment, so no financial aid will be sought. He is thinking of social sciences, particularly psychology and education, although he has no experience in these fields, except as a caretaker for younger siblings who are 10 years younger. He might want to switch to engineering or try a 3-2 program which offers both. He would like to continue singing in college, probably not as a major but would like a school that has options for that. He also enjoys intramural volleyball. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Thanks for the link!
Most colleges have psychology and sociology majors and they are materially very similar across colleges. Generally speaking, if the college is a good solid college they likely also have a good solid major in that field.
For education, is he potentially interested in being a teacher? There are some schools that have education majors/minors that are more academic, whereas other schools prepare students for licensure as a teacher in the public school system. If he’s interested in the later, you have to make sure that the school’s education major prepares students for teacher certification.
Also, I am a big proponent of students exploring and taking their time to figure out what they want to do. Unfortunately, engineering is one of the fields that requires a pretty early commitment, since the sequence of classes the student needs to finish in 4 years is pretty structured. For a 3/2 program it’s even more important, since you have to finish the prerequisites before you can transfer to the engineering school. So I’d have your son think pretty critically about whether he wants to be an engineer; it might make more sense for him to try that out first and then switch to one of the other majors later rather than the other way around.