<p>Not mentioned yet:
Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA
Linfield College in McMininville, OR
Pacific University in Forest Grove, OR
Not quite west coast, but College of Idaho</p>
<p>JHS: Three schools that are popular at D’s NCAL high school and seem similar to a Muhlenberg are Lewis and Clark (Portland), Willamette (Salem) and then slightly easier to get into is University of Redlands. If you have a daughter, you could also check out Mills College in Oakland.</p>
<p>All of them have pretty high acceptance rates, and do offer merit money.</p>
<p>I do know a lot about Mills. My mother is a proud alumna; she turned down Radcliffe to take a merit scholarship there (and tick off her mother), and she never regretted it. My sister is very involved with it, too.</p>
<p>Does anyone think where the OP lives may give added leverage?</p>
<p>I’m from PA & I know the PA schools mentioned in the title (specifically Ursins & F&M) give much more weight to out of region kids to provide diversity. I was wondering if it works the same wit the West Coast schools if OP’s child is from the East Coast. That could provide leverage in getting a better merit package to attend.</p>
<p>It seems like there is some significant academic level differences in the schools we’ve mentioned here. Would love to have other’s opinions, but it seemed to us like PLU and Linfield were an academic level below, say, Willamette and Trinity. Maybe we were wrong?
I need to do research on each school’s individual website.
If I were putting them in order of academic rigor, I’d make it something like:</p>
<p>Claremont Mckenna, Reed
Whitman
Lewis & Clark, Willamette, Trinity, U of Puget Sound, Chapman
U of the Pacific, Loyola M, U of SD, Seattle U, U of Portland
Redlands, Santa Clara, PLU, Linfield</p>
<p>Does that sound about right?</p>
<p>And the REALLY important question - How do they order in terms of merit aid, for a high (but not perfect) GPA + IB kiddo? (PSAT = 211 - no SAT/ACT yet)</p>
<p>experiences?</p>
<p>Gloworm - thanks for the tip on Trinity - that may put it back on the radar :)</p>
<p>puma12, </p>
<p>I think you’ve got Santa Clara too low. As far as I can tell, it would squeeze in under the Lewis & Clark level but above the University of the Pacific level.</p>
<p>JHS, there are historical reasons why you are not going to find, in the left half of the country, quite the large concentrations of LACs available in New England, New York, and Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Exceptions include Whitman College, Colorado College, Mills College, Pomona College, Whittier College and Reed College. All of these were established on the eastern liberal arts college model (by church people, or by entrepreneurs who wanted to bring civic culture to the west). Whittier (Richard Nixon’s alma mater) and Mills are less selective than the others in this group.</p>
<p>Some of the schools listed in posts above are not really eastern-style liberal arts colleges (although they may be fairly small, and they may meet your needs). The University of Portland, for example, has schools of Business, Nursing, Education, and Engineering. Different model. Willamette University has law, business, and education schools. The University of the Pacific is a Ph.D.-granting university with graduate programs in dentistry, pharmacy, education, etc.</p>
<p>If finances are a concern, Southwestern University, a school in Texas listed under Liberal Arts Schools in US News, has a calculator on their site which will rougly approximate your financial aid given some basic numbers:</p>
<p>[Southwestern</a> University: Financial Assistance: Financial Aid Estimator](<a href=“http://www.southwestern.edu/assistance/understanding/calc.php]Southwestern”>http://www.southwestern.edu/assistance/understanding/calc.php)</p>
<p>While I am not particularly familiar with this school, I thought the calculator was cool and helpful.</p>
<p>Occidental in Los Angeles.</p>
<p>University of Puget Sound in Tacoma has been very good to us with merit aid, partially as they were looking for geographic diversity. My D and another neighborhood girl are very happy there. My D was a good but not perfect student with a lot of ECs.</p>
<p>I’ll add Scripps, the women’s college of the Claremonts which gives out a decent number of half-tuition scholarships. Lewis&Clark has good merit, including 10(?) full tuition.</p>
<p>JHS - PA is kind of unique in the sheer number of good-quality, not-too-selective LACs.</p>
<p>EDIT: Nvm about Whitman, they changed their scholarship requirements a bit.</p>
<p>Though Scripps won’t serve the OP’s son.</p>
<p>Good friends’ recent experience with Gonzaga–very good merit aid. Willamette also gives very generous merit aid.</p>
<p>^^Oops! Missed/forgot the gender specification.</p>
<p>The most popular LACs in the NW that good students from our high school attend are these (in most selective to least selective groupings):</p>
<p>Whitman
Willamette, Santa Clara, Seattle University, Seattle Pacific University, Gonzaga
Linfield, Whitworth</p>
<p>I agree with the above post about not borrowing for undergrad if your student is seriously thinking of med school. My D graduated from a third-tier state university with no debt and is borrowing the entire amount for med school.</p>
<p>^But of those, only Whitman, Willamette, Linfield, and Whitworth are true LACs (small size, focused on undergraduate liberal arts, no/very few pre-professional programs). PA is an outlier in having SO many true LACs–Muhlenberg, Ursinus, F&M, Lafayette, Dickinson, Juniata, etc. are all traditional liberal arts colleges to the core.</p>