My top 3 college choices right now are Macalester, Colby and Lake Forest. Although I like Macalester the most, Colby is the most prestigious with the best environmental studies program. At the same time, Lake Forest College is offering me a full scholarship. Although I can afford to invest in Macalester or Colby which cost roughly the same for me, going to Lake Forest would be a huge financial relief. Lake Forest has also given me the smallest work study package and I feel like I will feel a lot less financial pressure. Especially as an international student, I will also be able to travel home often.
Yet, I am aware that Lake Forest is ranked much lower than the other two schools. Their environmental studies program is also not as specialized and well developed as the other two. I also plan to potentially pursue graduate studies further or get a PhD and go into academia. I am very confused about the choice to make here.
Macalester’s environmental studies program receives sufficient recognition (e.g., Top Colleges - Environmental Science) for you to place it, cost aside, as your first-choice school since you appear to like it the most generally.
If you can make an academic case for Lake Forest, then it would offer obvious financial benefits and perhaps a good opportunity overall. This may be an underrated school.
Based purely on program strength, Colby probably will remain justifiably tempting to you.
The full scholarship is hard to ignore. All the moreso because you describe it as a “huge financial relief.” Personally, I’d describe a full scholarship the same way. Being in a financial situation where you are able to visit home without financial distress is not something to be overlooked. Also, the lower COA will positively affect many other parts of your life during and after college.
Your post-grad plans also indicate containing the costs of your undergrad education should be a key consideration for you right now. Not to mention that even if you feel a Lake Forest degree is not as prestigious as the other two, your graduate degree will supersede your undergrad degree. If accepting the full ride to Lake Forest puts you in a better financial position to pursue your Master’s degree, you can chase prestige at that point.
It would be hard for me to justify a significant increase in COA (say, $40K-$100K over 4 years) to choose Colby/Macalester over a full ride at Lake Forest. If your family is wealthy and that amount of money is inconsequential, choose any of the three. If that amount of money would matter in your life, Lake Forest has to be the front runner.
Lake Forest has a very diverse student body, 16% of whom are International.
If you really want a PhD path, you want to focus on whether you will have research opportunities at Lake Forest. If there are research-active faculty and there is a path to working with them, I’d say the financial appeal of Lake Forest wins. You could reach out directly to faculty at Lake Forest to ask, if you wanted.
You clearly will get research opportunities in enviro at Colby, and I presume at Mac too (one of the real appeals of top LACs). But for most phd programs, your specific research experience matters more than some vague measure of prestige.
Define prestigious ? If you walked up to 100 people on the street, I’m quite sure 95% of them would not have heard of Colby and of the other 5 only one or two could tell you the state it is in. You are seeing that a magazine or website says it’s good. That’s a bit scary you’d spend many many many more thousands of dollars bcuz of what someone says…in hopes of selling magazines or subscriptions.
You say maybe academia so then maybe Colby or Mac would be better. But what if you don’t pursue academia? And it’s not like Lake Forest isn’t a fine school. It is.
If you worry about financial pressures then that should be a consideration.
For your intetests, Colby has the most robust program and incredible resources.
Prestige doesn’t really matter, and as an international student, these are all probably equally unknown in your community. The others are likely well known and respected in their regions but generally not beyond that. Within academia, graduate programs tend to know UG programs, professors, etc.
With that said, the financial concerns are not trivial. You need to be very realistic about how much debt you can take on. It sounds like Lake Forest is your only truly affordable option.
If you are thinking of doing a PhD, Macalester has the highest proportion of students who end up with PhDs. However, that may be because of the students who attend Mac.
One of the most important considerations for anybody who wants to do a PhD is, in fact, not having debt when finishing your undergraduate. At least half of all students who go on to do a PhD take a year or two off to gain work experience. Having debt to pay back limits your opportunities, since you would need to takes jobs that would provide the money to pay back, rather than being able to focus on the best professional opportunities.
Moreover, the salary for environmental scientists are not all that high, meaning that any student loan debt would be waiting for you throughout your PhD, likely compounding interest, and you would graduate in your late twenties/early thirties with a burden of debt.
So attend Lake Forest, and, if you feel that your portfolio isn’t good enough for the grad school you want, go and work in the field the 18 months that you have in the USA, and then apply for grad school.
Moreover, there are a very many opportunities for internships, part time jobs, or volunteer work in the Chicago area related to environmental science. There are for-profit environmental consulting companies, multiple environmental non-profits, the Cook County Forest Preserve District, the park districts of the surrounding counties, and there is an entire environmental network for the region. The most important factors in being accepted to grad school is your experience in the field, and the Chicago area is a great place to gain that experience.
Since all are in the Chicago region, all of them are familiar with Lake Forest College.
Forget about prestige. Focusing on that is a waste of time and energy. It truly doesn’t matter. It’s not about which is the best college but about where you can be your best self. Any college is simply an opportunity. What will matter in your life is what you do with that opportunity, how you take advantage of whatever opportunity is presented to you. Lake Forest is a good college. The reduced financial stress and more limited time in work study will certainly put you in a better position to tak advantage of that opportunity.
Time to think outside the box. If I were in your shoes, I would get excited about Lake Forest. I would be determined to make a big splash on campus, be the kid whom the professors look forward to having in their classes. I would look to take advantage of LF’s strengths their entrepreneurship major, for example. I would combine that with Environmental Studies with the goal of creating an environmental non-profit. The process of doing this would be a great learning process. This is exactly what students do ar Babson College, the #1 college in the country for entrepreneurship. You can do the same thing atLF.
Something else that LF does well is liberal arts. I would use that to hone my writing skills. Running a non-profit involves grant writing, so I’d set a goal to learn how to get good at that. LF is only 40 miles from Chicago. That’s a good target for fund raising.
It’s common for students to take a semester or a year abroad. There are also domestic programs that some students pursue, like the well known Washington Semester. My point is that LF doesn’t have to have all of the environmental courses that you need. Take a semester or a year at another college to round out your study. Pick one of the best colleges for environmental study or sustainability you can find either in this country, or Canada, or abroad. Miami and California are ground zero for the climate crisis in this country. Perhaps study there. The point is that you don’t have to be limited by the courses available at LF. There are also internships you can pursue and LF seems tuned into that.
If your finances are more comfortable at LF, you’ll have more options for grad school.
Congratulations on having such good options. Best of luck with your decision.
If you are someone who can hustle to make your own opportunities, there will be so much in Chicagoland for you to use towards research and field experience while acing your classes at LF and saving a ton of money. It will be helpful to find an academic mentor to work with you in planning towards a grad school application - could be an LF professor, or anyone with useful contacts at masters or Ph.D programs (finger on the pulse of what you need to be doing).
There is prestige in being a full-ride recipient - be as proud of that as you are of the Colby and Mac acceptances, and save the money, I think.
Thank you everyone for your detailed responses! Overall I’m glad to hear that Lake Forest has a large number of research and grad school opportunities. Just to clarify, if I choose to go to Macalester, I will not be under debt. However, I will be exhausting my family’s funds for my education and I’ll have to either find a fully funded graduate program or work in the US for a while to earn enough money to fund my graduate education.
In this case, wouldn’t investing my education funds in Macalester and then getting access to a well-funded grad school make sense? From my knowledge Macalester has a good reputation among graduate schools.
Yet I also understand that individual research and working with professors also is a huge component in getting access to graduate schools.
However, I will be exhausting my family’s funds for my education and I’ll have to either find a fully funded graduate program or work in the US for a while to earn enough money to fund my graduate education.
Don’t count on this opportunity with a student visa!
Do not exhaust your education funds on undergrad if you have a scholarship option that doesn’t do this. You seem to want to go to grad school and funds may be needed for that, and agree with post above that working in the US is not a given if you are here on a student visa.
Also, consider changing your user name if it is your real name.