That’s an excellent summary, @agatha1939. I’m not pushing Reed on your son, just trying to dispel some misimpressions that people have. One other large upper-midwest university for you to investigate: University of Wisconsin (Madison). Truth in packaging: I attended UW for graduate school and met my future (and current) wife there; her family goes back to the early 1900’s in UW attendance (her parents and grandparents, and a number of aunts and uncles are UW graduates).
Winters and snow are harsher than in Ann Arbor. But Madison is a great college town, diverse and interesting social and political vibe. Very strong academic programs across the board. Beautiful setting right on Lake Mendota and in the middle of several lakes. Look it up. We have considered Madison as a retirement destination.
If he does not like the idea of “too much party/drink”, he needs to check carefully on whether that is a problem at the small rural schools in the northeast and midwest that he thinks he wants.
As I mentioned in start of this thread, my D17 has similar stats and interests. When she ran the college search programs, schools like Williams, Amherst, Ivies came up as “match”. Right. Those schools have very low admit rates. Look at the RD rates (that’s the rate w/o the athletes). It’s very low. Secondly, like you, we would be full-pay at all these places. What is it now? $65K or so? And it goes up every year. Once you get some of those acceptances, you’ll be weighing them against in-state options that are half the price. At least that’s what happened to us.
With S19, we are focusing more on finding good-fit schools that he is likely to get into. With D17, we would visit a “Williams/Amherst” and then visit a higher admit similar school as an afterthought. This time, we focus on schools where admit rates are higher and throw in a low admit school if there is time. Also this go round, I have a better feel for what ‘premium’ we are willing to pay over our public options (for us that includes nearby states through an exchange, perhaps VA has the same thing).
I have read this entire thread and gone back and forth on this recommendation because I have limited info on the LGBT community. However, if you are planning a trip to the Chicago area you should consider Valparaiso University and its Honors program. Genuinely nice kids, limited drinking culture, some frats but non-stereotypical, intellectual vibe, some sports but not overpowering, music for the non-major, strong math/stats program, public transportation options to Chicago, etc. Search for the President’s statement on inclusion and Honor’s program emphasis on vocation ( hard to provide links from my phone). Scholarships are available to bring costs down to comparable to in-state. Full disclosure: I have a DS there now. He also wanted smaller, non-competitive, and snow but has high stats. He loves it. You can PM me if you have specific questions.
2 things to think about as you go through the process - not school recommendations as you asked but things worth thinking about given your son’s stats:
Your son has great stats but will still need safeties and matches. Finding those is increasingly difficult for a high stats kid because so many schools are reaches for everyone these days with the competition and so many acceptance rates under 20% now. Especially with LACs and as you get into less tippy top schools, Demonstrated Interest becomes more important. Look up each school’s Common Data Set (most publish it and you can find with a google search). Here’s an example of Haverford’s. Look at section C7 and check out how much they consider “level of applicants interest”. Lots of other good stuff in there, too.
As you venture into less tippy top schools to round out your list, you’ll start moving into a tier of schools that offer merit aid. With your son’s stats, it wouldn’t be surprising for him to wind up with some acceptances with merit aid. Think about what that means for your family and have open discussions on what you will decide in that likelihood. We see many threads each spring on whether to take the higher ranked school or the school with merit aid. For those families where dialogue didn’t happen beforehand and kids and parents are on different pages in terms of expectations, it can get uncomfortable.
I am going to rally for UChicago as well. My DS is a second year there and although, yes, the workload is intense, I have never heard him mention competition between students at all. On the flip side, the students seem to support each other immensely. Study groups abound and my son says no one ever discusses grades.
Oberlin certainly didn’t have it when I attended it in the mid-late '90s as alcohol was considered a vice for the “old fogies” of the establishment and thus, the opposite of being cool. While the campus did have a bar, it was populated almost exclusively by older faculty members, staff, and similarly aged guests.
The vice of choice at Oberlin when I attended was overwhelmingly weed and psychedelics with those who partook. However, they were very live and let live and if you weren’t interested in partaking, it was more than fine. I never partook in those popular vices and yet, my social life didn’t suffer for it and many who did remained friendly.
If I had my choice of being on a campus with a heavy drinking culture or one where weed/psychedelics predominated, I’d overwhelmingly choose the latter because they don’t get as noisy, in your face, or belligerent as I found heavy drinkers, especially undergrads/young professions were in the greater Boston area after college. Had to call the cops on the latter group a few times in the Boston area for picking fights with passersby.
@liska21, @doschicos You both raise good points. I do have enough money saved to pay for his school without any aid, but I have to say it’s a huge amount of money and I do wonder… because of his very bad HS experience, I am willing to make the best school/fit happen regardless of money, but yes, I would love to save part of that money for him later on (grad school, buy a condo, travel the world, whatever). So far, without any visits, his favourite is St. Olaf and I think he could be accepted there and maybe even get a merit scholarship, so that would be great if that school ends as the best fit for him. Neither my son or I care at all about prestige or Ivy/Top-20, etc, so that will not be a consideration. I do want him to be happy with friends/school and content with his classes, that’s it.
That said, I do have a question… how accurate are the estimate calculators in the school’s websites? I checked NW’s yesterday (+70K/year, WOW!!!) and once I entered my data I was surprised to see that I would receive financial aid, and a reasonable amount. I always heard that middle class families were in the worst situation because they made too much to receive need-aid but too little to pay for the school… but if that calculator is correct I will receive some money that would make the school less expensive. So now I’m not sure, maybe I did something wrong? I wouldn’t receive a full ride of course, not even a full tuition, but the amount offered (an estimate of course) was more than I expected (in fact, I was counting on receiving zero).
If his grad school aspirations lead him to pursue a PhD, the best programs are also the ones which provide full-fellowships and a small stipend to live on.
If a PhD program admits you without fellowship, it isn’t worth going not only for financial ROI reasons(i.e. substantial opportunity costs), but also because not having that fellowship to list on your CV is going to make you much less competitive when it comes to pursuing tenure-track positions at universities or some elite/reputable think tanks.
Some of the stipends aren’t that small either. I know students pursuing PhDs pulling down $45-50K a year plus health coverage. I don’t think that’s too shabby.
I agree with #90, at the end of the day.
My only hesitation is that all of these schools will be demanding work-wise. But I think OPs son should just get over that and accept it. Like my D1 should have.
Except I don’t know that the whole of Northwestern can necessarily be just written off as “sports-oriented and mainsteam”. Based on my experience at a different university, which was often described similarly but was actually very diverse. There may be different groups and niches that exist, and a university is typically big enough that you can find your own. For one thing, Northwestern has an amazing theater department. I don’t know that all those people are necessarily running off to all the football games. And one can also probably go into Chicago to expand social horizons beyond the campus. At least on occasion. If the program there is interesting enough I think OP should visit and get more informed.
Plus it may be that OP can’t get in to Yale and Princeton. Maybe they tend to take only top 2% from his school, not down to 10%. He (or his guidance counselors) would know better than I.
@intparent, agree, it’s impossible to single out Hamilton when there are hundreds of LAC’s in the eastern half of the country that have similar small town rural characteristics.
However, do not assume that the net price calculator results for one school will be similar to those of any other school. Use the net price calculator on each school.
Regarding admission, even Nate Silver speculates that he wouldn’t get into UChicago today: From Twitter in 2015: “Just saw that @UChicago acceptance rate has fallen from ~50% (when I got in, 1996) to 9% now. Doubt I’d get in today!” https://twitter.com/natesilver538/status/583844769513807872
It’s not just for financial aid that one needs to be careful to compose a list of “reach, match, safety” colleges for admissions. And you should do your best to tailor your application (essays and other indicators of interest – including visiting) to the colleges. When my son applied to UofC, the acceptance rate was about 35%. But his stats were in the upper quadrant, and we weren’t asking for finaid. I felt fairly confident he’d be admitted there and to most of the other colleges that admitted him then (Carleton, Williams, Reed, UMich, MSU). He received small National Merit awards from Chicago and Carleton, as well as major scholarship offers from UMich and MSU.
I wonder how the sharp drop in acceptance rate at UChicago might be affecting the tenor of life on campus. I understand the application is less quirky than it used to be. Could its rise in the ranks and newfound popularity lead to a more competitive, less quirky atmosphere at UChicago?
My kid who got in a few years ago (after Common App was instituted) turned it down because she didn’t think the accepted students or the students she stayed with fit the UC vibe she had expected. It surprised her – was her first choice, but she walked away without a second glance after feeling like it was a more prestige driven group of people than she wanted.
Not sure where people get the idea that Amherst and Williams are “pre-professional” LACs. I use that term for places like Colgate, W&L, etc.
Amherst and Williams send lots of students to top law, medical and MBA schools, but they also both are in the top ten colleges in the nation for sending students on to get PhDs in all disciplines. Amherst is a top feeder school for PhDs in Biology, English, Economics, History, Neuroscience, Physics, Political Science, and Sociology. Williams is a top feeder school for PhDs in Art History, Biology, English, Economics, History, Math, Physics, and Political Science. Plenty of happy future Nate Silvers and gay students at both places.
Not sure where people get the idea that Amherst and Williams are “pre-professional” LACs. I use that term for places like Colgate, W&L, etc.
Amherst and Williams send lots of students to top law, medical and MBA schools, but they also both are in the top ten colleges in the nation for sending students on to get PhDs in all disciplines. Amherst is a top PhD feeder school for PhDs in Biology, English, Economics, History, Neuroscience, Physics, Political Science, and Sociology. Williams is a top PhD feeder school for PhDs in Art History, Biology, English, Economics, History, Math, Physics, Political Science, Physics, Biology and History.
@doschicos UChicago is still pretty darn quirky, intellectual and nerdy. It’s just a far more self-confident, fun and less socially dysfunctional type of nerdy/intellectual/quirky than it used to be. I haven’t seen any signs that it has become cutthroat competitive.