<p>My D is considering LACs mostly in the NE. She has started to further her search to the midwest. Does anyone have experience where the oos enrollment at a school is < 25%.</p>
<p>What is the social life like- are these generally suitcase colleges.</p>
<p>Would her NJ status be an admissions plus and possible put her in a buyers market for aid?</p>
<p>Right now her search is concentrating on midwest schools with > 25% oos students.</p>
<p>I assume that would be for an admissions bargain, right? Moving a school from match to safety or reach to match, right? </p>
<p>Try Illinois Wesleyan, Hanover, Centre, Coe. (I know Hanover and Centre are not suitcase schools. I'll bet IWU and Coe aren't either.)</p>
<p>I really like what you are doing. You have plan. But remember the reason for the plan is to find a great school for your kid. Not a school that meets this pre-defined pattern.</p>
<p>Don't get so wedded to the plan that you lose site of wonderful schools like Ohio Wesleyan, Knox, Lake Forest, and Cornell College just because they have greater OOS numbers (and they are most assuredly NOT suitcase schools. You have to check that campus by campus.) They would love a NJ kid. </p>
<p>And anyway, there are other ways to bump the kid up a notch at all of those school as I alluded to on the other thread.</p>
<p>Coe is definitely not a suitcase college. In fact students are required to live on campus all 4 years and they seem to have a lively, warm community and great access to internships, etc. in Cedar Rapids. It is definitely a college-by-college investigation process anywhere. I think it is important to remember that while in the NE, you could indeed be OOS and drive home every weekend...in the midwest and west, you could easily be a home state student and home would be way toofar away for a weekend trip.</p>
<p>you could easily be a home state student and home would be way toofar away for a weekend trip.</p>
<p>Excellent point.</p>
<p>I'm going to sound silly but what's a LAC?
What's an OOS? Out-of-state student?
What's a suitcase school?</p>
<p>Liberal arts college
Out Of State
A school where kids pack there suitcase each weekend to leave campus.</p>
<p>Edit: I removed an attempt at humor I decided against.</p>
<p>Right now my D has fallen in love with Goucher College in Towson Md. She wants to find colleges in the suburbs of cities, in small vibrant towns or in nice areas of large cities. She has focused on the NE. I have discussed extending the search and she is open minded but most likely still wedded to a range of scholls within 200 miles. I want her to consider the midwest I think many schools there would be a nice fit but it will be up to her. It never hurts to provide her as much information as I can. By the way I liked Goucher also.
Her plan is to study English/writing and go to grad school.</p>
<p>How about Denison? There are several nice LACs in Ohio -- and they are most definitely NOT suitcase schools. Everybody is there all the time. In fact, at leaast 2 that I know of, Kenyon and Denison, you have to live on campus all 4 years. Kenyon is really in the middle of nowhere (not even a town around) but Denison has a really pretty, quaint town that it is in and it's pretty close to a larger town, Newark, and the city of Columbus.</p>
<p>Please keep making recommendations. I will have my D go to each school site and take a look. Last week she requested information from Coe so they are on her radar. The schools we have been researching are- Kalamazoo, Lawrence, Beloit,Wooster and Earlham. She would like a limited Greek presence. Other schools may be Knox, Lake Forest, St Olaf and if she surprises with her scores maybe Macalester. She will be top 5-10% of HS class. There are many more NE schools we are researching.</p>
<p>I forgot she was on the sites for both Illinois and Ohio Wesleyan bu.t I do not know if she requested info. I will ask her</p>
<p>If she is looking at Coe, also look at Cornell College in Iowa (30 minutes or less from Coe)--sweet town and very warm community on campus.</p>
<p>Tom, you're looking at some of the same schools we are looking at with our rising senior son. So far we have visited Lawrence, Beloit, Knox and Kalamazoo. We liked them all; he liked them all except Beloit, and couldn't really articulate why he didn't like it. (One of those intuitive things that it's not worth running uphill against.) We are also concerned about the "suitcase college" issue. That's a bit of a concern at K'zoo, which has a very large base of Michigan residents. Beautiful college with a great academic program, but oddly it's also a college tennis center. My wife, who took my son for the visit, was stunned at the size and quality of their tennis facilities, both indoor and outdoor; they were hosting some junior nationals when she and my son visited. That's great, of course, if your daughter plays tennis, but it also seems to add a sort of preppie element to the campus that is a little apart from the mainstream. But again, the campus is gorgeous, Kalamazoo is very nice and the international program -- my son's academic interest -- is terrific. The city itself is relatively large; about 200,000 in the metro area, I think.</p>
<p>Lawrence just kind of oozes quality and quiet confidence. Very pretty campus located on a bluff over the Fox River. Some superb newer classroom facilities in social science, science and music/arts. It's very close to downtown Appleton, which is the middle city in a contiguous group of cities known as the Fox Cities in Wisconsin. (We are from Milwaukee.) Total population is about 140,000, so it's by no means rural or isolated. Downtown Appleton has nice amenities and there is a large regional shopping mall and an airport with good puddle jumper service to the big hubs about three miles away. The presence of the music conservatory provides a lot of cultural/performance events for a 1500 student LAC. Great school. A close friend went to Lawrence as an undergrad, then very successfully to Harvard Law. He unhesitatingly says the education at Lawrence was better.</p>
<p>Knox and Beloit are a little different. Neither is rural like, say, Grinnell or Kenyon. But they are in towns of about 35,000. So the local amenities are a little sparer. Beloit has a reputation as a tough town in Wisconsin (unlike Appleton, which has the opposite reputation) but I don't believe it's really a problem for the college itself. The campus is gorgeous, with nice facilities and beautiful trees. I can imagine it must look spectacular on a crisp autumn day. The people I know who have gone to Beloit rave about it and are very supportive of it. </p>
<p>Knox, in Galesburg, was by far the friendliest visit, not that the others were bad. A very welcoming place. You know that an Open House is designed to be that way, but it was clear this was no act. We really liked the philosophy of liberal arts education they are dedicated to. The facilities were very nice, and of all these schools there is much more open space on campus. Galesburg is a little harder to get to, but there is regular train service to Chicago svereal times a day, about three hours away. We liked it and will definitely apply. It's known to be very generous with merit and financial aid, also.</p>
<p>A couple comments about some other schools mentioned. Illinois Wesleyan in Bloomington appears to be a very good school with tremendous facilities, but something like 86% of its students are from Illinois, and it even has a significant commuter population. That was a turnoff for us coming from a different state. (We did not visit it.) On the plus side, there is also a large state university (Illinois State) a few miles away, so there are many more students in the area. (By the way, this is also true of Kalamazoo; Western Michigan University is nearly contiguous to K'zoo College.)</p>
<p>Finally, Macalester is a superb school, in a very good (but non-suburban) location in St. Paul. The Twin Cities are vibrant, and would offer much more to do than any of the hometowns of the other schools listed. My son would have been very interested, but his cousin was a year ahead in high school, was the valedictorian and is heading for Mac this fall -- so he wants to get out of her shadow. :)</p>
<p>To sum up, these are all terrific schools. The fact their midwest locations make them almost without exception much less expensive than the eastern LACs makes them even more attractive.</p>
<p>MilwDad- I read your reports and they are what really got me to recommend my D look at the midwest. I personally think Lawrence would be a perfect fit for her. If she could get in at Macalester I think that would be a nice fit also. The other school that catches my eye is Wooster but my D is not yet ready to fall in love with a school so far away. One reason I think she should/could push the envelope in distance is she wants study abroad so if Europe is on her radar for any length of time- why not Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota or Iowa etc.</p>
<p>We decided that since there are a number of good LAC matches for our son that are easy to get to from Milwaukee we would see those first before extending to schools that are significantly more difficult to get to. Beloit's an hour by car, Lawrence two hours by bus, Knox and Kalamazoo each about five hours by train (the Amtrak stations are very easily walkable to the Knox and K'zoo campuses). If not for that the other midwest schools we certainly would have looked at are Wooster, Kenyon, Earlham in Richmond, In. and Grinnell in Iowa (although Grinnell and Kenyon are in very small towns, another factor of concern for us).</p>
<p>I think your daughter planning to study in Europe at some point is an important factor in what kind of schools might interest her. My son wants at least one semester abroad and one semester in Washington. Those would certainly be in different years, most likely his sophomore and junior years. We have discussed the fact that in addition to the educational experience of studying elsewhere for a couple terms, it will also be a nice break from the small college model. Effectively, he would only be at Knox or Lawrence, for example, for three years. I think that would do a lot to ameliorate any concern about being "stuck" in a smaller collegiate environment and, perhaps, in a small town.</p>
<p>Lawrence, Beloit and Knox are all members of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest, by the way, which largely exists from what I can tell to organize good international programs for students and faculty in addition to the programs which the colleges themselves operate. Here's the website:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.acm.edu/%5B/url%5D">http://www.acm.edu/</a></p>
<p>Independently, Lawrence operates a program in London, and Knox has a number of well established international partnership programs, including one in Besancon, France which caught my son's eye as he is studying French.</p>
<p>Lawrence, Beloit and Knox all participate in the very well established "Washington Semester" program run by American U. in D.C. In fact, my son may apply to AU as well as to the LACs as an alternative collegiate possibility.</p>
<p>tom1944 - "Her plan is to study English/writing and go to grad school."</p>
<p>Kenyon has been mentioned and may not be a match for our D because of location, but it has one of the best English Departments in the country, college or university, or so I have been told often and not necessarily by people connected with the school. My D is a student there and an English major. It was the department's reputation that got her interested.</p>
<p>Tom, if it helps any, my daughter also had Goucher on her list, and did apply there. She also looked at a number of schools in the midwest. Some that she found attractive at one time or another were: Earlham, Lawrence,Beloit, Grinnell, Knox, and St. Olaf. She also liked Hendrix College, which is not technically "midwest" as it is in Arkansas. She felt all of the above schools shared similarities in their student body with Goucher - kind of relaxed, creative do your own thing type of schools. She personally did not like Kenyon as, despite its fine English department, she felt that the students there were not a match with her kind of quirky personality. That, however, was her personal reaction and others obviously find Kenyon a terrific fit. Other fine schools in the midwest include: Oberlin, the College of Wooster, Carleton, Denison, and Macalester. Out of state students could feel very much at home at any of them. I personally really loved Lawrence, but D. nixed it early on because that is our last name. I hope to get my son to take a look though as I think it is a wonderful school.</p>
<p>She is now a VERY happy freshman at Beloit, and has found that it is definitely not a suitcase school, nor is she the only out of state student (we're from California). Just on her floor alone she has met people from:Maryland, New Jersey, Alaska, Ohio, Illinois, Uganda, Oregon, China, and Texas. She's also met kids from just about every state imaginable, as well as many countries. The English department, by the way, is excellent. </p>
<p>Ironically, one of the things that decided her against Goucher in the end, despite a nice merit scholarship offer there, was that she felt that the geographic diversity there was lacking since a majority of students seemed to be from the mid-atlantic and northeast. As she put it, if she was going to go across the country to school, she wanted to go to a school where she wouldn't be the only kid providing geographic diversity.</p>
<p>I'd recommend that, if your daughter is open to schools in the midwest, that you visit any of interest because as MilwDad points out, different kids sometimes have different reactions to different schools. While these schools all share certain commonalities, they each have different personalities and may appeal to your daughter (or not) in different ways. The "midwest" also varies from place to place, and my daughter found certain parts to her liking more than others. One other thing that I would definitely keep in mind is the availablity of direct flights and transportation to the airport. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to talk with you via private message.</p>
<p>Just wanted to add one more thought to MilwDad's comments about K'zoo. It's a great school, but one issue to keep in mind is that, because of its unique curriculum, students are often moving on and off campus due to internships and study abroad. I have talked with a few former students who found this made K'zoo's social scene feel a little disjointed.</p>
<p>tom, (may I call you "tom"?) I can answer your question:
[quote]
Would her NJ status be an admissions plus and possible put her in a buyers market for aid?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>with a definitive, YES, at least in the case of Ohio Wesleyan. My son was admitted and awarded a "diversity" scholarship. I nearly had a heart attack because I assumed they had somehow confused our ethnicity but after further study I learned that they try to maintain a 50% out of state population and award aid to encourage out of state students. The diversity scholarship was actually a geographic diversity scholarship!</p>
<p>tom and/or MilwDad: My S. just started at Kalamazoo College a little over a week ago. He's a recruited athlete and we just visited yesterday for his team's intersquad scrimmage showcase and family picnic. Despite his demanding 17-hour days in training camp, he was as well-adjusted and happy with his college choice as we could hope for as parents. His upperclass teammates have been raving about their study abroad and internship experiences which is why many kids choose the school. The K-Plan components are widely regarded as much more of a positive in terms of unique learning opportunities than a negative as far as a student's social experience. K College is on the quarter system so classes begin Sept. 18th, with freshmen orientation the preceding week. Much more will be unfolding for S. soon, but if you have any questions, PM me and I'd be glad to try and answer.</p>
<p>Thank you all for the feedback. NJres- feel free to call me Tom, is your S attending Ohio Wes.? I really want my D to spread her wings and look at schools everywhere. If she decides she would rather stay close to home thats fine but I hope her search is near and far. I will recommend she apply to some schools outside her comfort zone in case her comfort zone is wider in April 2008 then it is in November 2007. Unless she looks everywhere now the option never enters the picture.</p>