We visited CA over the holidays and my son fell in love with the Bay Area. We did casual self guided tours of various colleges in the area (Santa Clara U, UC Santa Cruz, Stanford). We visited others in Southern CA but the area didn’t grab him like the Bay Area did. Stanford is not even a consideration and neither are the UC’s. We all loved Santa Clara.
He’s a good student but Santa Clara would be a reach. His WGPA is 3.96 with a mix of AP, honors, and mid-level classes at a Catholic college prep school. His PSAT score was a 1050. He plans to study and enroll in a test prep class so we’re hoping he’ll be in the 1250 range. He leans towards the humanities and areas of interest are law, government, policy, business, etc. Looking for other Catholic or liberal arts colleges in the area. Maybe something that may have a good reputation locally but may not be well known outside CA. Any suggestions would be appreciated. The only interest he’s expressed in going out of state is to attend in CA. Otherwise we’ve got a few great instate options and we’ve told him he can look for employment in CA after college.
St Mary’s Moraga seems quite popular with kids here in the Bay Area who want to stay local and are looking for a similar experience to SCU that is an easier admit.
Definitely St. Mary’s. It’s a very pretty little campus! There’s also University of the Pacific, but that’s in Stockton, which is outside of the Bay Area.
I don’t know what technically constitutes the Bay Area but he’d love anything within an hour of SF, more or less. I’ll take a look at U of the Pacific. Thank you!
Stockton would be considered outside the 9-county “Bay Area,” but nowadays with cheaper housing in the Central Valley, there are lots of commuters to the Bay Area. UoP is located in Stockton, so figure about 90 minutes to 2 hours from SF.
U of the Pacific looks like another good option. The size and academic offerings sound like a good fit. It’s a bit farther away from SF but he may not mind as long as he has reasonable access from time to time.
During our Cali trip we noticed U of SF. He didn’t express interest in checking it out. I wonder if it’s missing that campus experience since it’s a city university. When we go back to visit these colleges, we’ll likely tour it. It’ll be good for him to compare the different types of campuses.
Thank you all for your suggestions. We are genuinely excited about St. Mary’s at this point!
IMHO, UoP is a beautiful campus but, the full price tuition is pretty absurd.
Dominican is a small catholic college in Marin.
Sonoma State is also worth a look, public but small (by CSU standards) and has a solid honors program. CSU Monterey is also small public that’s in a fun place to visit.
Further from SF but Chico is a cool college town and may spark an interest.
What’s your budget and do you live in a WUE state?
USF is another great choice not to be overlooked.
While it is certainly more urban than SCU, it’s on a relatively quiet hill, and is adjacent to Golden Gate Park, with easy transportation.
For SCU, be sure that your son is in contact with the admission folks all along the way. They value demonstrated interest. Another thing that will be important is a good recommendation from your son’s counselor, as well as the teacher rec’s.
Thank you for the new college suggestions! Monterey would probably be as far south as he’d want to go, tho I’m not sure he even knows. We just know he was very attracted to that whole area and as we moved on down the coast, not as much. But it deserves a dedicated college visit.
As far as budget, we live in Indiana where our 2 main state schools Indiana and Purdue run us approx $24,000 and $22,000 respectively (tuition plus R&B). I work at IU so there’s a tuition discount there. BUT, we are excited for our kids to experience life outside of Indiana so we are pushing both to go out of state… as long as we can get tuition around $40,000 or less. Our biggest hurdle with our son will be to break him away from his friends, many of whom already talk about going to IU. If we can do that, California is a great option for him.
Btw, I did reach out to the SCU admissions rep for our region before we visited the school. We were there over Christmas break so they were closed but we asked for feedback on self guided tour and places to eat, etc.
Do you mean tuition, or cost of attendance (tuition, room and board, books, misc / travel expenses)?
The CSUs (Sonoma State, CSU Monterey Bay, CSU Chico, San Francisco State, San Jose State, etc.) are close to $40,000 for out-of-state cost of attendance, with no out-of-state financial aid.