So the reality is - in the real world (forget ranking or what people up front perceive), and assuming VA is your state - there is no difference between Bama, Clemson, U of SC, NC State and others you have - so you can de stress by eliminating schools you know you won’t attend. Fordham is a possible scholarship so if he wants NYC, then worth keeping.
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Yes we are in VA. The only caveat is that Bama will be significantly cheaper due to the scholarship. We did the math, and after the scholarship, we are looking at about $60k for all 4 years. That’s hard to pass on.
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If you are getting the Hispanic recognition - it’s four years tuition and one year housing housing and $1k per year, you will spend less than $60k.
When kids move off campus, it’s less there.
My kid went there. I figure I spent $60-70k but had about $3k tuition after merit, no free housing for a year or extra $1k scholarship.
And the career outcome is as good as any school on your list (engineering).
Many are fearful of the south but don’t forget that they are 58% OOS with over 1.5k come from Illinois, 1k from CA and Texas and 1500 total from NY and NJ.
They buy kids in - so it’s not red neck like people want to think.
The town is ehhhh but the campus really nice. Not quite Va Tech nice but really nice.
Good luck.
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Thank you for the feedback. VT is also on his list, we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
Any West Coast applicants here?
I am wondering if anyone could give feedback about any of the New Mexico colleges? We are just now researching those.
Paging @sbinaz I believe her DD has visited and been accepted to a few NM schools
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NM has 3 in-state public universities:
- Univ of New Mexico (in Albuquerque)
- NMSU (in Las Cruces)
- New Mexico Tech (in Socorro)
NM Tech is a STEM school. Small overall student body & it’s in a small town. For example, small enough town that there’s no movie theater. Albuquerque is about an hour’s drive away. All students are required to take engineering calculus & physics for all of freshman year…yes, even if you’re an IS/IT major.
UNM & NMSU have WUE and “WUE Plus” scholarships if you reside in a WUE state. This gets you in-state tuition. We’re from AZ. On campus room & board are cheaper than Univ of Arizona, for example, so overall COA is less than in-state options for us in Arizona.
UNM & NMSU also have non-WUE out of state student scholarships which would get you in-state tuition rates. There’s info on their scholarship websites and it lists out what the GPA and test score requirements are.
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I wrote some long posts on the following thread earlier this year about NMSU and UNM after we did on campus visits:
What sort of major(s) is your kid interested in?
What sort of things is he/she looking for in a college?
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We considered NMSU last cycle for my son. They have a pretty decent merit calculator on their site. Son would have received full tuition ++. Decent school and lovely town. In the end, my son did not want to apply.
Happy to be here! I’m brand new to these boards so might take me a bit to figure out the lingo and abbreviations.
D24 has approximately 3.7 (just under UW and just over W) and terrible ACT (20) so we are applying TO. Here is her list so far (we live in MN):
- UW-Madison (target, top choice–applied, waiting to hear)
- University of Iowa (already accepted)
- University of Minnesota (already accepted)
- Drake University (already accepted)
- Indiana (applied, waiting to hear)
- University of MN-Rochester (applied, waiting to hear)
She has a few others on her list that are more “reach” but I’m not sure she will end up applying to them. Those reach schools are NYU, Brandeis, and Tulane.
I am keeping my eyes and ears open for other interesting options. She is interested in a big school close to a city or with amenities of a city/college town. She has always wanted to be pre-med (and is being accepted as such so far) but is starting to second guess herself. She is now mentioning Business as a second choice.
We think she would do better in a smaller setting with more support, like at Drake or U of MN Rochester, but she is not so interested in either. We are also unsure of Rochester as it focuses only on health sciences so if she decides not to go the med route she will end up needing to transfer. But we were impressed with both schools if you are looking for a smaller school in the Midwest, one private with merit and one public.
We are praying she gets in to Madison. If not, it will come down to financial offers and I’m not sure how much schools like Iowa or Indiana give. Best of luck to us all as we make it through this fun, crazy, exciting, stressful year!
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Congrats on all her acceptances! Has she been to NYU? That seems very much an outlier in terms of setting compared to the rest of her list. There is no campus, it is just random buildings scattered throughout that area of NYC (I went to grad school there). I know you said it is a reach but wanted to make sure she knew about the setting/campus.
What is your budget? Good luck.
She already has great acceptances although as you note, maybe not the right list.
Perhaps we can help with a few more smaller schools.
For Iowa, if you run the Net Price Calculator (NPC), it asks for academic stats which means that it will probably give an indication of the minimum amount of merit aid your D would receive: Net Price Calculator
Has she thought about Marquette? They tend to be pretty generous in giving out merit aid and its location in Milwaukee would definitely be a city. It’s a Jesuit school with about 7500 undergrads. Classes tend to be smaller than you’d find in the big schools and more individualized attention, and it’s unlikely there are many restrictions/difficulties in terms of switching into various majors (i.e. bio to business). Creighton in Omaha is another possibility and that has a good reputation for both health fields and business and would provide a more intimate environment.
In terms of publics, has she thought about U. of Minnesota-Duluth? It has about 8800 undergrads and probably some closer contacts with faculty and staff, and according to the College Board, 92% of first year students live in on-campus housing. Perhaps U. of Wisconsin-Green Bay? It has about 9100 undergrads and is classified as primarily residential, but only about 57% of first year students live on-campus, according to the College Board. Perhaps @prezbucky or @ScouterMomof3 might have more info about it, if you’re interested?
Some smaller colleges that have no religious affiliations that she may want to check out include:
-
Beloit (WI): About 1k undergrads and less than an hour to Madison, 1h10m to Milwaukee, and 1h30m to Chicago.
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Bradley (IL): About 4100 undergrads in Peoria. It’s not a big-name city, but it’s definitely not the middle of nowhere (which pretty much applies to the next two schools, too).
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Illinois Wesleyan (IL): About 1500 undergrads in Bloomington, IL (she could apply to two different schools in Bloomington!)
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Kalamazoo (MI): About 1200 undergrads and it’s in the same town as Western Michigan (which has about 14k undergrads) so your D may feel like there are social opportunities of a big school but get the small sizes and support of a small school.
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I don’t know what kind of support you are looking for, but support is available at the bigger schools (tutoring labs, advisers, study groups) but she’ll have to seek them out - as she would at smaller schools. No one is going to go looking for her, make sure she goes to class or turns in papers. A class of 25 at a small school is likely to be the same as a class of 25 at a big school.
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C24 finally has an app submitted! I don’t know why I feel relieved: it’s just one school of 10 or so that they plan to apply to, and they still have to schedule/attend auditions, but I’m still really happy about it. It’s the school that I’m secretly hoping they’ll end up attending, too.
And now that they’ve submitted one, there are two other schools that they may as well move forward on, since they only use the Common App and don’t have supplements.
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My experience at UW-Green Bay was limited to basketball camp participation some 30 years ago.
At that time, the only thing I didn’t like about my dorm room was the shower – it was one of those energy-savers that put out a weak, misty drizzle of water. Didn’t really save energy because it took twice as long to get the soap and shampoo off.
But if memory serves, the food and campus generally were nice. But I was there to learn from Dick Bennett, the great coach. His son Tony Bennett was getting ready for the pros, and we saw him practicing in the arena. He went on to become a successful coach himself.
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Thanks for the info!
My daughter is interested in Biology, BioPsych, or Neuroscience. Thanks.
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To give you a rough idea, my older child attends university of Iowa currently. We are OOS from west coast. My oldest had higher stats, but Iowa gave a total of 14k per year in merit scholarships, good for 4 years.
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Hey AustenNut, DePaul is looking more and more interesting! Thank you again for the tip.
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