@bigfandave - as the parent of a Class of 2018 Swat engineering grad, I’ll just say don’t trust everything you read. Swat is incredibly rigorous, but there is a lot of collaboration among students and the individual support from professors was amazing.
If you asked my recent graduate “why engineering”, after fumbling around a bit for an answer, the response back would likely be something in the neighborhood of “why not”? Sure Swat is one of only a dozen or so LAC’s with Engineering, but it has been offered since the school was founded.
Last comment - nearly all schools now have STEM-focused majors included in their most popular. The top 5 at Bowdoin include Math/Stats, Bio and Comp Sci. Years of telling parents “where the jobs are” has changed the focus of students everywhere.
Very fair points. LACs keeping up with Joneses apparently. I would exclude Econ as a STEM, which has been #1 at many LACs, which apparently are losing many of the “Arts” students as they focus on attracting STEM kids who’d flock to larger universities. Hope kids focusing on the job, aren’t the ones losing sight of what a LAC is and was about and a lust for feeding their intellectual curiosity. It’s often interesting when one sees the Chem or Math major and Spanish or Art History minor or similar variant / double major. Feeding both sides of the brain is also to be respected.
Dave, I not only think LAC educations are gaining in respect, but having seen first hand a recent grad navigate the “first job” market I feel LAC education is being targeted by more and more recruiters. As someone who has hired dozens of people over the past 20 years, my experience as a parent with these kids has changed my hiring practices.
I also think they are the beneficiaries of a 3.7% UE rate and generally positive macroeconomic conditions. How they buy a home isna different question.
intparent- Thank you so much for the book recommendation!
EyeVeee and bigfandave- I appreciate the mature debate regarding Swat. I know a current engineering student there, so I will be sure to get his input before touring that school. Also, I definitely intend to feed both sides of my brain while at college. Some parts of my brain say I should be in creative writing and others like the idea of me in math, so the answer is clearly somewhere in between. Psych appeals to me that way- one must have excellent science/math/research skills, but the field contains a little bit more of philosophy and the humanities than, say, physics or computer science. Of course I could also wind up as a double major or minor in two very different fields, but I want the time to explore options (this thread is evidence that I do not make rapid, final decisions very easily), and I think that’s part of what makes LACs so appealing to me.
I’m definitely thinking about the job market in all of this, although as a sophomore that’s a bit far away, especially if I go to graduate school before taking on any hefty/long-term jobs. And if LACs don’t end up working out, I’m confident in my mid-tier state schools in terms of employment (at least within the state) if I choose my program wisely.
With all due respect, I think every one of you knows that high school can sometimes be pretty hard to enjoy. I’m doing my best, but I am one for building myself over time, proving myself over time, and sometimes 3 years doesn’t seem like long enough. Seniority still exists for a reason- even those of us who can do well academically often know they’re not in a position to accomplish what adults can just yet. I am so happy for the 1% of students who can, and I really commend them, and they deserve all the acceptance letters in the world, but I’m not sure if I’m one of them.
The high school environment is very fast paced. Sometimes I just need room to think, and that’s a hard thing to put on a resume. I’m going to try and do something with those thoughts, but I also have to be a part of my school and keep up my grades. The exploration of LACs is not me trying to make impulsive choices too early, it’s the exact opposite. Believe me, I’ve toured a fair number of in-state publics and I’m sure I could carve out a home at those schools too. LACs appeal to me because they will allow me to continue to think and mature- I don’t have to pretend I know what I’m getting into. I only want to say I did the most thorough job possible of finding a school that works for me (prestige is not nearly as important).
In short, this post is thought, not action-- and I see tours as more thought-oriented than action-oriented. Don’t worry about me acting too quickly when it comes to college. I learned that lesson last year (I’m actually thinking about it a lot less now).
Update: Ran net price calculators for various schools and my family wasn’t sure what to think. We weren’t impressed by the calc prices but are still intrigued about visiting in case the price with the application ends up being different. Of course, that change relies heavily on merit scholarships. So I am going to ask someone with that knowledge to split my list into two groups, merit and no merit, if you could. Feel free to include in between groups, I will do the research, just want a starting point.
To begin with, none of the Ivies or NESCACs offer merit.
The NESCACs are:
Amherst
Bates
Bowdoin
Colby
Conn. College
Hamilton
Middlebury
Trinity
Tufts
Wesleyan
Williams
If you check the financial aid page of each college you’re interested in, they’ll say if they offer merit aid or not. I wouldn’t count on the cost being much better than the Net Price Calculator predicts. Each college makes their own NPC. What would the point of having one be if the actual net price was markedly different from the projection? Unless your family owns a business or your parents are divorced, I’d believe the NPC results are probably in the ballpark.
doschicos- it was in the original post. And yes I know it’s fairly easy to research, but since the community here is so knowledgeable I figured I would get the easy stuff here and put effort towards researching merit at schools that offer it.
Sue22- Thanks, that’s extremely helpful. I will discuss this with the family.
austinmshauri- Thanks for the prompt input. I’m in the process of trying to separate truths from false rumors, and one of the things I’ve heard is that costs at schools with hefty endowments are outstanding. However, my family would not describe the NPC costs as outstanding. So I guess I should be prepared to go either the loan route or the state school route. Thankfully I’m a realist and this reality is nothing new to me because I’ve seen it in many news articles.
I am departing for the night now, but I will check back tomorrow on this thread. thanks again for the immediate help!
@isla701 I’d recommend you start by asking your daughter to form a list of what matters generally in a college 4-year experience, then eventually force rank them, then eventually, after visiting, she can prioritize those schools. Do this early, and your daughter will have a leg up.
If biology is believed by many people to be “where the jobs are”, the actual situation could be an ugly unpleasant surprise at college graduation for many biology majors.
@isla701 LACs that offer merit scholarships typically top out at 20-25K, or at most 50% of cost of attendance (College of Wooster and St. Olaf are two examples). Be mindful of the fact that merit typically will not bring your costs lower than your EFC. So let’s say your parents’ EFC is 40K. LACs that offer merit are unlikely to stack merit plus need, bringing your cost down below that number. Many will, however, will substitute merit or outside scholarships for loan aid.
You are likely to encounter the most generous LACs in the Midwest or the South. Last time I checked, Denison in OH had some full tuition grants. Centre and Rhodes also had a very few full tuition grants. You might also want to check out Beloit and Lawrence (WI), Earlham (IN), Knox (IL), and Hendrix (Arkansas), This information might be out of date, so check. These awards are very competitive.
Mount Holyoke has a few full tuition scholarships. Smith and Bryn Mawr offer lesser awards (maybe max of 20-25K/year?)
If you are open to considering larger schools that have larger merit awards, often requiring a separate application, try the mid-sized Case Western, U of Richmond, Vanderbilt, Duke, and Wash U. The competition for these grants will be formidable.
Other options - some public university systems have campuses that have a more LAC feel - William and Mary or SUNY-Geneseo are two examples. Also, your state flagship may have an honors program or college that typically admits high achievement students, often had special perks like advance class registration, dedicated honors housing, and structured activities. This can provide the best of both worlds - a close knit intellectual community within the framework of a large university with extensive course offerings.
Good luck! We went through this process with my daughter a couple of years ago. There are lots of amazing colleges out there and not all of them are in New England.
On OP’s original list of New England LACs, only Holyoke gives merit as best as I know, though perhaps Smith does as well?
The merit/financial aid relationship is important to sort out. At most schools, the family’s EFC is what it is, regardless of merit awards – merit reduces the loans and work study requirements first, but if the EFC is $20,000, merit does not change that. We never found a school which said it would stack merit on top of financial aid to actually reduce the family’s cost of attendance below the EFC, but maybe others did. We found the upside of being full pay, since our EFC was full cost, was that merit awards reduced our actual cost of attendance because we didn’t get any financial aid.
Dickinson and St Lawrence offer about $20-24,000 max in merit awards. Conn Coll and Trinity Coll have just started using merit awards (you can see it in the most recent Common Data Sets), but is new enough it is hard to know who gets it and for what.
Other regions will offer better merit options, including Centre and Rhodes as noted above, and Denison. Denison’s full tuition awards are for a pretty elite kind of student – we met full tuition award winners at admitted student day, and one was choosing between full pay at Stanford vs. full tuition award at Denison and another was choosing between full pay at Chicago or Columbia (I can never recall) and full tuition Denison. The first chose Stanford, the second chose Denison. Denison’s other awards are pretty generous, roughly $16-24k a year. Denison is increasingly selective, with about a 33% acceptance rate.
Other midwest schools where 1/2 tuition awards (and which often have lower tuition and housing costs to start with), include Lawrence University in Appleton, WI, Beloit in WI, Earlham in IN, Wooster in Ohio.
The comment was for STEM as a whole. I’m pretty sure biology is still a science (not my doing).
If I told you the Golden State Warriors were a great basketball team, would you point out that Jonas Jerebko is journeyman averaging 6 points per game over his career? I think you’d agree he has a better chance of being an NBA champion this year than Lebron James. The world is flawed…
@EyeVeee, I haven’t seen a huge shift in majors at the more competitive LACs. Perhaps a few more Economics majors and a few less History, but overall these schools are not going pre-professional. The most popular major at Bowdoin is Government and Legal Studies, followed by Econ.
As I am reading your posts, I am getting the sense that part of the reason that you are interested in college is because you aren’t really all that happy in high school and that there is comfort in thinking ahead to a “better place”. There are situations when this is a good strategy – like when you’re sitting in the dentist’s chair! But overall, it’s a good idea to figure out how to find joy where you are in life rather than to just push your way onto the next thing (which may not give you any joy either – how depressing!) Given that you are less than 3/8 of the way through high school, I think that you might need to work instead on a strategies for enjoying where you are rather than feeding fantasies of another place.
First of all, on the academic front, see if you can figure out some ways to be more effective in your studies and more interested in class so that it leaves you more time for what you enjoy. Maybe you take notes on your reading and then in class, make notations when the teacher talks about each of those things, and maybe you see a pattern about what is emphasized on tests. Maybe as you do your reading, you do it in a way that doesn’t require you to do it more than once. Or maybe it’s something as silly as using different colored pens because that’s more fun for you! Think about assignments and what the point of them is. Problem sets are about practicing concepts and making sure you understand them. Do them with that in mind – no need to obsess but make sure you’re getting out of them what you should. FL worksheets are similar. If you take a FL and want to practice, consider watching one of your favorite movies dubbed and with subtitles – which you can probably do several times. (Teletubbies for grown-ups – again, again!) It sounds like you enjoy writing, so you can invest more effort in those assignments There’s a book about being disciplined and effective (written for people who sound like more disorganized students than you) called “That Crumpled Piece of Paper was Due last week” that has some good tips in it even for good students. But the point here is that perhaps you can probably be as successful as a student without so much stress and time just by working smarter.
On the EC front, think about what you like and how you can do more of that. If you like animals, can you volunteer at a shelter? You like to write, so how about offering your services to your local newspaper, following events that interest you (or ones at your school.) If you are interested in politics, you can cover your school board meetings or your town council. A girl I know who loves fashion offered to “merchandise” at a consignment store and put together really cool outfits and window displays for them. I know kids who help with crafts for kids at soup kitchens, who organized knitting groups to make baby caps for the hospital, who went and visited their congressmen and senators about issues that mattered to them. Or you can get a job! I’m going to bet that you’ll feel happier and more fulfilled if you can clear away a little time and do what you like with it – and perhaps connect with some other people outside your school community. And along the way, you’ll get a better sense of what you like (and what you don’t) and this will serve you well.
