So I know there is a forum for College Search, but I’ve been lurking here for a while and thought maybe I would start with you guys - I am impressed by the range of knowledge you have about different schools (especially in PA). D19 is my oldest and this is all new to me so I’ve been hanging out on CC for a few months trying to get my bearings.
My daughter is a junior in a suburban public high school outside of Philadelphia. Her GPA is currently 4.1 uw/4.78 weighted (I think an A+ counts as a 4.3 in the unweighted gpa). She won’t take the SAT for 2 more weeks yet, but has a 30 on the ACT and IIRC, a 1390 on the PSAT. She will have AP Gov, Human, Chem, CalcAB, Comp, and Psych by the time she graduates. Pretty much everything else is honors except things that didn’t have honors (band, language). Her ECs are mostly music related - marching band and indoor drumline (captain for both), and a few clubs. She volunteered at the local ambulance for a bit but is having trouble fitting in those hours with her courseload and the demands of drumline season. She plans to get certified as an EMT over the summer and resume the ambulance next year.
Her ultimate career goal is to go to medical school. On CC, the prevailing wisdom for premeds seems to be to not concern yourself with prestige and just go for the cheapest undergrad education possible so as to not have too much debt going into medical school. Sounds great to me. But I also see a lot of threads warning of the dangers of “underreaching” - if you go to a school where your stats are well above the average, you may not be challenged enough, etc, etc. We have a good bit of money put away in a 529 but I’d love her to get as much undergraduate merit aid as possible so the 529 money can go towards med school instead. I don’t expect we’ll get any need-based financial aid, and, as we are PA residents, our in-state choices are not the greatest.
Adding to the complication is that she has specifically said she wants to go to a college that has a marching band and the marching band must have a pit/front ensemble (which, for non-marching band folks, is the collection of big xylophone-looking instruments that sit in front during the performance and don’t actually march). She plays the marimba and it is very important to her that she be able to continue it in college although she doesn’t want to major in music. After much research, I have managed to compile a list of schools that have marching bands with front ensembles and the choices are pretty limiting - most small liberal arts colleges don’t have marching bands at all, while larger football-type schools have bands that don’t have a front ensemble (too hard to travel to games with all those large instruments). That said, it is surprisingly hard to get specific detailed info about marching bands so I may not have all of them.
So, if you are still with me, the requirements are cheap/lots of merit aid, marching band with pit, within a reasonable distance of Philly, and a good enough pre-med program to get her into medical school.
Schools that check at least some of the boxes are West Chester, Towson University, and University of Delaware. None of these are super impressive schools (at least by College Confidential standards!) and all would probably be considered “underreaches” if you go by her stats. I’m also not sure about the premed program about any of them (though her guidance counselor says West Chester’s is decent). Moravian also fits the bill but I don’t know anything about it other than that it has a marching band with a pit. Oddly, most of the PASSHE schools also have marching bands with pits - Kutztown, Millersville, California U of PA, IUP, etc. I think West Chester is the best of the bunch there though (and also the closest to us). Other schools that fit the bill but are farther away are UMass Amherst, UConn, Boston University or Northeastern (Northeastern marches with BU’s band), and University of New Haven. In addition to the marching band pit, UMass Amherst actually has a marimba-only ensemble that interests her but I don’t relish paying out of state tuition for another state’s flagship (also a problem with UDel and UConn). BU and Northeastern I would imagine are going to be pretty pricey even if she manages to land some merit aid.
Even farther are Miami of Ohio, University of Cincinnati, Christopher Newport, and Coastal Carolina, and UAB (where they have a great medical program and she’d probably get good merit with her stats but she thinks it’s waaaayyyy too Southern – she doesn’t do well in the heat and after the whole Roy Moore thing, she has a bit of a fear of the political climate in Alabama as well…).
Ursinus is close to us and has a good premed program, but it is very small and has no band. It is another one we are thinking of though. I can’t imagine going to a college that is smaller than her high school though - that seems kind of crazy to me. And no band may be a dealbreaker. I hear they are generous with merit aid, but they have a high sticker price so it may still be expensive even with a good scholarship.
We haven’t actually toured anything yet (scheduled to see West Chester in about a month) so she doesn’t know what she likes as far as size, etc. I don’t think she has any interest in Greek life – her friends now are basically the nerdy band crowd and I will be very happy if that turns out to be her friend group in college as well. She has a friend who is currently attending West Chester and loves it and I honestly think my daughter would be happy to apply there and only there, and be done with it. (It would probably be our cheapest option as well.) I am the one who is forcing her to look at other schools.
So anyway, if anyone has any feedback on any of the schools on our list, or another school to suggest, or any advice on “underreaching” or whatever, I’d love to hear it. Like I said, she’s my oldest so I have no idea what I’m doing! Thanks!!!