I am helping a family member who is a rising senior and is looking for additional colleges to apply to. Location preferences are in the Midwest or maybe South, but would be willing to go elsewhere for the right school. She leans towards wanting a liberal arts college, but would also be interested in considering smaller universities that are focused on undergraduate learning.
Stats
ACT: 31
UW GPA: 3.65, W GPA: 4.3
Rank: School recently eliminated rank, but was top 15% of class
ECs: Leadership roles in marching band and chorus. Also involved in theater, orchestra, and student council.
Interested in majoring in a science (chemistry or biology), but is overall undecided.
Would also like a school where music options are strong and participation is open to non-majors. A school that has a marching band with color guard would be a big plus, but we realize this will be very difficult to find at these types of colleges.
Family is not eligible for need-based aid and strong merit aid is necessary.
Schools that she has visited and liked include Lawrence, Kalamazoo, Wooster, Denison, and Rhodes. Some of those (especially the first three) may work financially with merit aid, but we are looking for some additional colleges that might be affordable for the family, but still give her a quality education. She also visited Belmont, which is small but not a traditional LAC and really liked it as well and would be open to similar types of schools.
College of Charleston. If she retook her ACT and bumped it up to at least a 32 she would be competitive for the Honors College and possible merit. They have a good relationship with the Medical University of SC and offer research opportunities. Has approx 11,000 students . It is an urban school located in Charleston , SC
St. Olaf comes to mind for music. Glad Lawrence is already on her radar.
How much merit aid is the family hunting for? What kind of tuition can they afford? Many LACs don’t give out merit aid that would cover the majority of tuition costs.
Thank you all for the great suggestions! We will certainly look into all of them. I was already planning on suggesting St. Olaf due to their strength in music, so it is good to hear that mentioned as a possibility.
The family can probably spend up to 35k, maybe a little bit more, but of course the lower the costs, the better.
Knox College in Illinois and Centre in KY are possible, Knox is one of my favorite “hidden gems” – with the new arts building and renovation of music building, the facilities should be very good, plus I recall that Knox students could audition for the town’s orchestra in addition to on-campus music offerings (which were substantial, my kid was looking at jazz ensembles etc., and impressed). We never made it to Centre, but everything we learned about it suggested it was similar to the schools already on your list.
An advantage to midwest and southern LACs is that the tuition and room and board are often $5-to even 10k less per year, total, than their east coast peers, so a student with a 1/2 tuition merit award may be looking at tuition of about $25 plus room and board under $10k, so just about in this family’s range.
If this family can spend up to $35K, then they’d need another $20K or more to afford St. Olaf.
Merit grants went to about 24% of St. Olaf freshmen in 2015-16. The average grant was about $16K.
Although this applicant’s stats may be high enough for a realistic shot at admission, they don’t appear to be high enough for $20K or more in merit money from St. Olaf.
One place to look at is Holy Cross / Indiana. This is a small LAC that is literally across the street from Notre Dame. Pretty good with merit aid with those stats. Also, they are eligible for all activities (including the Marching Band) with Notre Dame.
Also keep in mind that many schools use merit aid as a way of luring regionally underrepresented students to their college. So if she lives in the midwest, she may see relatively higher awards from southern schools (and vice versa).
Holy Cross is in something of a transition, the school is quite small, I believe between 500-600 students, and has limited academic offerings, as it transitioned from a 2 year, Associates degree school to a 5 year Bachelors only within about the last 10 years or so. There has been a lot of press about transition in the leadership. I would recommend focusing on other, more traditional/more established LACs.
Re my post #10 above – forgive my typo, as Holy Cross in Indiana, across the street from Notre Dame, is a 4 year (not 5) BA program, having transitioned from a 2 year Associates degree program within about the last 10 years.
My son had similar stats, and was offered very generous merit awards from Willamette, Guilford, and Eckerd. He chose New College of FL, where the automatic scholarship brought the cost of attendance down into line with our home-state public colleges. None of those colleges have marching bands, though.
My daughter looked at a number of these schools. I was very impressed with St. Olaf and it worked out to be the least expensive of her LAC options (after merit aid) followed closely by Wooster.
Maybe add Earlham to the list?
I also liked the looks of Ohio Wesleyan, Knox, and Lawrence but she was looking for a specific course of study that wasn’t supported in as much depth at these schools. If not for that particular, we’d have explored them further.
St olaf is the obvious one but sufficient merit is unlikely.
Similar but more likely to offer merit : Luther Drake, and Concordia Moorhead.
The reputable University that faces Notre Dame is St Mary’s.