I’m basically going to go for a bachelor’s in history and get my certification to be a social studies teacher, while working on getting internships to be a copywriter if it seems like teaching isn’t for me. I’m moving to Seattle because it’s a similar atmosphere to rural NY where I’m from with the evergreen trees and the mountains, but it’s climate is milder, with more opportunities than rural NY without having to move somewhere as intense as New York City.
I applied to UW Seattle and got rejected and decided to put off transferring at all until Fall or Spring 2021 to finish my associates and get everything sorted with moving out of my parent’s place. I knew the Tacoma and Bothell campuses existed but I didn’t know that they had radically different acceptance rates (84 and 80 respectively), I thought they had the same acceptance rate as UW Seattle.
Then there’s the other 4-year colleges around the area unaffiliated with UW which you guys may or may not be knowledgeable about: Pacific Lutheran, University of Puget Sound, Seattle University, and Seattle Pacific University.
How do these 6 smaller Seattle campuses stack up against each other, particularly in terms of history and language programs? The ranking sites vary wildly beyond all of them saying UW Seattle is the best for obvious reasons. About the only constant between all of the ranking sites that I’ve seen so far is that Seattle Pacific tends to rank very low out of all Seattle area colleges.
Seattle Pacific - strongly Christian. Make sure your aligned with their mission before applying. Because of their niche, you probably don’t want to look at rankings that compare them to non-faith-based schools.
Seattle University - Catholic, but open to all faiths. (You don’t need to explain your faith on the application there!)
Both Seattle U and Puget Sound are merit-aid schools: if you’re interested, apply and see if you get scholarships. You can get a good liberal-arts based education at either of these schools. One nice thing for a history major is that you’ll have smaller class sizes and better feedback on your writing at either.
I know little about Pacific Lutheran.
If you really want an environment that is closer to rural NY, look at Evergreen State college. Strongly hippie (check for culture fit! don’t apply if you could be derailed by exposure to a drug culture!), but it tends to be affordable for out-of-state students, and their Master’s in Teaching program produces some of the best teachers in the state. You can move to Seattle after graduation.
How will you afford any of these schools? What are your parents saying?
Right…can you pay the full out of state costs to attend the public universities…because you won’t be getting instate tuition at them.
The privates are pricey and don’t guarantee to meet full need, and especially not for transfer students.
What’s wrong with switching majors where you are, and moving west to get a job when you graduate?
Are you on a gap year or did you get an affordable acceptance last year? What’s wrong with the SUNYs?
For an education degree you should be considering Western Washington University in Bellingham. Beautiful campus in a beautiful city close to Vancouver BC. It’s a former teaching college so they have what is probably the strongest education program in western Washington.
I second the recommendation of Western Washington University.
Seattle University is a very solid school with a great location.
University of Puget Sound is also an excellent school with a great location.
If Portland, Oregon is an option, then Portland State University might be of interest to you.
Not sure if I can reply to individual posters or only write normal replies.
I’m just going through my associate’s 3 classes per semester, not a gap year.
To AroundHere and Publisher, how would you say Puget Sound and Seattle University compare to UW Bothell? I guess the academics at all 3 are pretty similar so I would be thinking more comparisons of stuff outside of academics. And the number of students is pretty similar (at least in terms of SU and UW Bothell, not so much with Puget Sound). I know personally one thing that’s attracted me to the main Seattle campus is the large amount of clubs (like most huge public universities), but actually I called UW Seattle recently and asked if people at other Seattle area universities can join the clubs on UW’s main campus and they said yes, so that’s actually no longer a factor in my decision at all either.
Are your parents willing/able to pay OOS rates for WA?
I’m doing this without parental contributions.
How can you afford this (without amassing a huge amount of debt)?
Guess I can cross off replying to a poster that got banned before he had a chance to read my response off my list…
I haven’t paid a dime out of pocket for the 19 community college classes I’ve got under my belt so far, really good federal, state, and state ADA aid.
Just because you got aid at one school does not mean you’ll get aid at another. If you depend on state aid, do not leave that state’s system. Washington’s state aid is not likely to be as good,
NYS has great need based aid for its residents. You won’t get that kind of aid if you go OOS. The Pell Grant is available no matter what state you’re in, but the NYS aid is only good for NYS colleges.
Finish your history degree at a SUNY school with the great financial aid and in-state price tag. You’ll get done more quickly because the transfer will be seamless, and you’ll save a ton of money. Then use the money you saved to relocate and get your teacher certification through a Masters In Teaching program in Washington State, so that you do your student teaching and get your license there.
WWU’s program is offered both in Bellingham and in Everett, which is less than 30 miles outside of Seattle, https://gradschool.wwu.edu/master-teaching-bellingham and UDub has both elementary and secondary M.I.T. programs as well https://education.uw.edu/programs/teacher/secondary-tep These programs take a year to a year and a half - not much more than you’d lose in the “friction” of transferring between systems.
If you really need a taste of the PNW before you finish your BA, attend one of the many SUNY schools that participate in the National Student Exchange, and spend a semester at one of the participating campuses in Washington or Oregon, while continuing to pay in-state rates.