you should visit The College of New Jersey. It is the #1 ranked public in the north by USNWR and #3 in the north overall. Great small school with a strong reputation. Beautiful campus, New england colonial style. 7,000 students.
If youre a nj resident its a strong option. OOS i know they are trying to bring in more OOS so maybe . It might be a
a reach though. But worth a look and see what happens.
Oh and much higher rated than all the SUNY schools previously listed here.
this site is my favorite and VERY HELPFUL!!! love it; and the senior posters are so so helpful!!! hope you’ll stay on. I have 1 down, a senior now; and 2 to go. thankful to all who contribute.
with that being said, i did happen to identify a kid who wrote 1 thing too many about an extremely niche competition that i’m slightly involved with; and have pictures of the winners for my (pt) work. that was disconcerting.
Mid-Atlantic public mid-sized schools that are terrific for the solid-but-not-spectacular student, and sort of overlooked here on CC:
James Madison University
U-Pitt
Towson University
University of Maryland-Baltimore County
University of Mary Washington
A friend of ours absolutely loves Susquehanna
I saw an earlier post on here about The College of New Jersey. It has a very good academic reputation, but it also has the reputation of being a “suitcase school.” I know they have built new dorms and included some things to keep students on campus, but I would want to visit and see for myself how well this worked out. I do know that a couple of years ago I visited on a weekend and campus was a ghost town. So, if you are really interested, take the time to visit and investigate. Best of luck to you!
You might want to look at options from here, too.
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-colleges/a-plus
I’m not a big fan of their ranking methodology but it will at least cull down your starting list.
Elon
SUNY Albany
University of Delaware
University of Connecticut
Quinipiac
There are a hundreds of great places for B students to study English or similar majors. So the number one thing for your daughter to do now is to figure out how to cull the list. What I did with my youngest who was also undecided though he had slightly better grades and scores was to take him on some college visits so he could get a feel for what was out there. We started off with colleges within a couple of hours drive during our winter break, but while the colleges were still in session.
First trip was two LACs - one very rural (Bard), the other on the edge of a small city (Vassar). He was pretty sure he wanted something bigger than his high school (which at over 3000 meant no LACs), but I wanted him to see what LACs offered, so off we went. He hated Bard. Vassar stayed on the list even though technically it was smaller than what he thought he wanted, but if he changed his mind about school size - it was there.
Next trip I took him to two medium sized universities, one a little more suburban (Brandeis) the other a little more urban (Tufts). He loved Tufts, didn’t like Brandeis.
Final trip - early senior year - we took him to three DC schools. American, GW and Georgetown. By this point he was beginning to think International Relations might be an interesting major, so these schools were on his list because they are strong in this area. He hated GW’s lack of defined campus, but liked the other two.
He saw some schools with friends, some he applied to without visiting, and one he visited only after being accepted. (It ended up being his second choice.)
These were the things that ended up matter to my kid:
Size (3000-10,000)
Small or no Greek presence
Suburban or urban location
Defined campus with a green quad
Strong in IR, but other strong overall in case he changed his mind
4 hour drive or a direct plane flight/easy commute
Try the “Supermatch” tool on this site. You’ll see a link to it on the left side of the page.
William & Mary pops into my head after reading your post-a lot of happy kids there, from everything I’ve read.
William and Mary very difficult to get into if you are OOS and it don’t think OP’s D has the stats for W&M.
I have a friend with kids like the OP’s. The two oldest were superstars. She was always commenting however that her youngest was the happy child. She felt some need to perhaps push him more when he started high school until it dawned on her he was a great kid and happy so she backed off. Iirc, he went to Delaware.
Is that the case at these smaller LACs, like Colleges that change lives? I was under the impression there is more tuition discounting going on than just the top 25% of each class. http://www.tuitiontracker.org indicates that schools like Wooster, Beloit and Kalamazoo are giving 100% of their freshman class grants.
Two schools come to mind that would be worth checking out. Her UW GPA is just a tick under their average GPA, but she’d still fall within their spectrum. I personally know graduates from these schools and they sound similar in personality to your daughter. Simmons College in Boston and Wells College in upstate NY. Simmons is a women’s college but it’s part of the Colleges of the Fenway so there are cross-enrollment/socialization options with other co-ed schools.
@LittleStitious I was surprised to read that so went out looking for the Common Data Sets for those schools. Looke like it’s generally true for Wooster (though it’s 40% get merit without need). https://www.wooster.edu/_media/files/about/know/commondatasets/common-dataset-14-15.pdf
Beloit looks similar - https://www.beloit.edu/irap/collegedata/cds/
and K’zoo - http://www.kzoo.edu/ir/KCommonDataSet2014-2015.pdf
If they have merit with need, are they really getting merit? I think most of those schools probably don’t stack, so those numbers are deceptive.
Sounds a lot like my own child, had a slightly higher GPA but lower test scores- but it was ten years ago. She went to Willamette, got a Masters in Teaching and is now an excellent public school teacher. Also admitted to U Puget Sound and Lewis and Clark. She may want more of a city experience or slightly larger schools- you will have to get some info from her on her likes/dislikes. Good luck!
OP, I think you need to come up with the financial parameters (I know you have at least $25K/year).
It sounds like you won’t qualify for financial aid, and it sounds like your D won’t get much merit aid. That’s ok. I think there are still good options.
It doesn’t sound like your D needs to go to an expensive school, but might benefit from the personal touch often found at private liberal arts colleges. If those are out of budget though, and they are for many people, than I think the best approach is a public school. There is a range between big flagships, and liberal arts colleges focused on the undergraduate.
What state do you live in? For most states, in-state schools are the most cost effective. As far as OOS costs,
as ucbalumnus mentioned, there are some public liberal arts schools like
Truman and University of Minnesota Morris, that are very inexpensive even out of state.
Truman is the state honors college of Missouri, they almost never fill up and you can definitely afford. It has about 6000 undergraduates and is in the middle of the boonies. While your D’s SAT’s seem right in line, 98% of the students were in the top half of their class. I’m not sure if 3.2 unweighted is in top half. Anyway, they have a formula which you can calculate to determine if she can get in.
University of Minnesota Morris is a public liberal arts college also in the middle of nowhere, near the SD line.
I’m not sure all of that is necessary though. Your own state probably has an appropriate college that might make more sense.
The other thing to think about is just how academic your D is in the first place. Is English something she really wants to study, or is it the least objectionable major. Is college a stepping stone to what comes next, or is it an end in itself. Would she prefer a preprofessional college experience like business, psychology, nursing or education, landscape architecture, that provide a direction and still require a fair amount of liberal arts, or are the next four years a gift that you are giving her to study whatever interests her. I think it’s a fair question that too few students address. Too many students don’t actually want to learn for its own sake yet pursue majors where there heart really isn’t in it.
If she’s really a people person, then studying business might really be the best approach because it provides a direction right into a career where being a people person has actual tangible value. This is especially true in the human resource end of things.
It is fairly common for merit to first replace student loan and work study (and unmet need if there is any) in a need-based financial aid package, but check each school to see what its policy on that may be. Of course, merit beyond that amount may not have any impact, until it gets large enough to exceed the total need.
My daughter really liked Duquesne in Pittsburgh and Susquehanna (in central PA). Towson and Widener might be possibilities too, pretty active and friendly campuses when we visited.
At my kid’s highly ranked college, merit replaces grants… you usually have to ask each college, the websites often are not clear.