Any experiences with or thoughts on this school? It seems to be growing, and COA is low, with decent merit aid on top of that.
My daughter just finished her freshman year at MoState. She began as a marketing student but switched to education. She has loved everything about it from student involvement to the tutoring available in the library. The cafeteria food is her only complaint. She is currently spending her summer living at a resort and working full time at Universal Orlando as a result of becoming involved with one of the campus organizations.
I really don’t know anything personally, but I did come across it in our college search and definitely liked the price. Thought it seemed nice from the website. It gets a B+ on Niche, which is pretty good. You might check out that site. Take some reviews with a grain of salt though because more people go online to review when they have a bone to pick than when they are perfectly happy.
We just didn’t go visit because of location. At 6 hours it’s farther than we wanted DD to drive, and not convenient to fly either. Otherwise it would definitely have been on our list. Missouri has some very reasonably priced schools.
Hope you get some more responses, there’s not a lot of people on here that talk about Midwest non-elite schools.
Thanks for the replies! @bjscheel , any thoughts on the other Missouri public universities, other than Mizzou? (Nothing wrong with Mizzou, just the size)?
My oldest daughter is at Southeast Missouri. Very affordable and fantastic merit aid but the campus opportunities/student involvement are lacking. General education classes often fill up and can be difficult to schedule for underclassman. They do have a fairly new performing arts campus with beautiful facilities that is about a mile away from the main campus. The town has fairly limited opportunities for college students.
@scholarmin Well my DD’19 is going to attend Northwest Missouri State. It’s not as cheap as MSU or SEMO, but still decent auto merit. Doesn’t take too much to get in state rates plus additional merit. Books and laptop are included at no additional cost. It has a good reputation in our area. Everyone we know there, with the exception of my nephew, loves it. And even that nephew did think the cafeteria was good. It’s about 5000 students which I think is a perfect size and is pretty compact & walkable. Nice looking campus. A lot of ag and education majors, but there are a lot of other majors- they have every one DD has ever considered. Great sports too- especially football and basketball. DD is looking forward to having a winning football team because her HS has only won like one game during her years there. I think student involvement and activities are good.
Missouri Western is inexpensive but DD didn’t like it and it felt like a community college. However, we went on a 95º day in the summer with no students around so that might not have been a fair shake. We liked St. Joseph though.
Don’t know about Truman State but it has a good reputation here on CC.
We also thought about SEMO due to the merit but didn’t visit due to location. Could fly to St. Louis and then it’s another 2 hours away. People on the Musical Theatre forum seem to like it and another CC’er with a daughter there had good things to say about it.
So happy to see these schools being discussed.
@bjscheel , thanks so much. Are the merit scholarships at NWMSU stackable with regards to the Bearcat Advantage (OOS tuition waiver) and the other auto-merit?
@Just3girls , does MSU have a strong week-long presence, or is it more of a suitcase school?
@scholarmin Yes, you can get Bearcat Advantage plus the Admission Based Freshman Scholarship from the chart. DD has Bearcat Advantage + Distinguished Scholars making the COA just under $16,000. $10,000 of that is room & board…living off campus following years will be cheaper yet as you can get rents around $300/month so I figure she will save a few thousand off campus.
I wouldn’t say that MoState is a suitcase school, but there is certainly a local population that does go home on the weekends. We are a 5 1/2 hour drive, so trips home were limited to holidays and she didn’t ever feel like the campus was empty. The dorm parking lots are always full on the weekends. School spirit is alive and well there. You can’t go anywhere without hearing Bear Up! The whole campus comes out to tailgate during football season, and it was a really good compromise on size for all of us. It’s big enough to have lots of opportunities, but not so huge to feel lost. And it has the coveted lazy river swimming pool. 
(It’s never used.) Some of the residence halls are a little older and she was worried a bit about that but it wasn’t a problem at all this year. She was actually really sad to move out.
The Greek system is fairly strong which may be a positive or negative depending on the person. She will be living in a sorority house next year and has really enjoyed Greek life so far.
One thing that we weren’t aware of is that they use a plus or minus grading system. It’s up to the course instructor if they would like to use it. Not a huge deal unless you have a kid like mine that wants that perfect 4.0. She lost hers this semester because she had a 92.44 in a history class.