<p>Once again, thanks to the CC community. She actually built her list of colleges based on a lot of information gleaned from many sources, including CC. D had visited all of the schools she applied to and went into this saying she had 8 top choices. And, honestly, her results exceeded our expectations. She has some great choices (and she does know it). </p>
<p>I showed this thread to my daughter and let her read it. She had already been leaning towards Holyoke for the financial reasons and now she feels even better about that decision. There are some aspects that make it a super fit for her even without the financial considerations. </p>
<p>She did tell me “Why didn’t you mention that Pomona has been my dream school for years?”. I told her that in this context, it isn’t germane to the discussion. The LAC education is supposed to foster critical thinking skills, problem solving ability, flexibility and creativity. Thus, this has been a wonderful opportunity for her to start down this path. That is one of the reasons why I didn’t want to tell her what to do, but, rather, give her the opportunity to work out the various issues at play here. I am incredibly grateful that this community here has been able to help her continue to balance a variety of factors and reinforced her ability to step back from school and peer group pressures in a thoughtful and considerate manner.</p>
<p>Pomona’s just not worth another 134,000 dollars over Mount Holyoke. MHC is a very strong institution in its own right, that will provide your daughter with a comparable education to Pomona if she invests herself in it.</p>
<p>Inasmuch as this type of hearsay is just as valuable as the next hearsay, it is worthy of a closer examination, including a better definition of what social opportunities. From my vantage point, I’d rather try to find out what people who actually put ONE foot on a Claremont campus might say. And this because the lack of social opportunities for Scrippsies within the 5C sounds like truly bizarre, at least for reasonably normal people. </p>
<p>I would recommend to ask the same questions in the LAC forums. </p>
<p>Xiggi is right, the social opportunity comment is bizarre. Students a the 5Cs attend parties across all campuses and regularly attend classes with students from across the 5 colleges. With a pool of 5,000 students (and the other 4 colleges being co-ed), that really doesn’t make a lot of sense.</p>
<p>I am not saying at all that your daughter should not choose MHC, it is a fine school (and a lovely campus!). But the social opportunities outside the actual school are going to be easier at Scripps. </p>
<p>Fwiw, I also believe that the differences between the Claremont schools and MHC are not worth six figures, but one fools herself to believe that the differences are not trivial. For starters, students who were accepted to schools as selective as Pomona but decided to attend Holyoke will be extremely rare. The student body is and will remain totally different and not interchangeable. </p>
<p>Sorry to be thick, but could you please clarify the figures? For example, is the debt for Pomona in total for four years or times four? If she chooses Pomona does she graduate with $16K in debt or $64K? Where did the “$134,000 more than Holyoke” calculation come from?</p>
<p>I’m also curious to know why Pomona’s cost is so much lower than Wellesley. I wasn’t aware that Pomona gave merit. Seems like they did in your daughter’s case.</p>
<p>I’m a fan of women’s colleges and I’m a fan of remotely located colleges, but my observation is that unless you’re signed on to both, you’re not going to be happy with the environment. The consortium helps balance the gender ratio at Holyoke and Smith, but at the end of the day they’re still women’s colleges which are a different experience from what she would have at Pomona. Also, small town Western Mass is vastly different from suburban Southern Cal. I have my own preference, but maybe your daughter is thinking that she’d like to experience another geographic environment.</p>
<p>I agree with @xiggi: the differences between Pomona and Holyoke are significant. My son has two friends who made fateful decisions: one turned down Yale for Pomona and never regretted it; the other turned down Colorado College for MHC and after a year transferred, to a huge State U.</p>
<p>And lastly (and you can throw shoes if you think this question is inappropriate at this point ) does she have any other affordable, coed option?</p>
<p>Regarding the convenience of taking cross registration courses or going to social events at other consortium colleges, a quick look at a mapping web site indicates that Mount Holyoke is about 6 miles from the nearest of the other colleges. Of that consortium, the two closest colleges to each other are Amherst and UMass, about a mile apart.</p>
<p>In comparison, the Claremont colleges are all nestled together within walking distance. (Try to find all of the streets named after colleges in the nearby area.)</p>
<p>But that would not be worth the price and debt difference to most people looking at the numbers you are looking at.</p>
<p>The girl who went to Scripps actually told me she hated it, but they gave her the most merit money.
I asked her about the academics & since she wasn’t complaining about that, I had the impression it was something else & knowing the girl, assumed it to mean social.</p>
<p>If we are going to point out bizarre statements, this one takes the cake:
</p>
<p>That simply is not true in today’s financial climate. MHC uses its merit money to attract students away from top-ranked LAC’s, Ivies, and Ivy-equivalents. MHC also has need-aware admissions – that means that when they see an applicant who has not applied for financial aid (or who has applied but clearly has a very high EFC) – they know that they can put themselves in a competitive advantage by offering generous merit aid to that person. If they are smart, they use those merit dollars entice top candidates who do not qualify for much need based aid away from other colleges. </p>
<p>So if your daughter attends Mt. Holyoke, she probably will find many other students like her who are smart enough to figure out that the number 15 is less than 50. She will probably be amazed to learn of some of the schools that her classmates turned down – not always for financial reasons, but obviously an offer of a big merit award is going to be very attractive. Because of its position within the consortium, Mt.Holyoke is probably a very attractive alternative to students who have been admitted to Amherst but can’t come up with the money.</p>
<p>Mt. Holyoke will also be filled with students who have excellent qualifications but were waitlisted or rejected from top colleges simply because of the current admissions climate. That is, students who easily have the stats for Harvard, applied to several Ivies, didn’t get in, and then are looking at their remaining alternatives. There’s really not a dime’s worth of difference between a student who has the stats for a mega-selective school but doesn’t make the cut, and one who does. Again - Mt.Holyoke will look at those stats and offer merit aid to many, and anyone who can count is going to take that offer quite seriously unless they have similarly generous offers from other colleges they prefer. </p>
<p>It’s not rocket science. Your daughter has 3 affordable options, one of which is more than affordable: it’s a bargain. Given your family finances, it probably frees up funds that can be used for other opportunities, not to mention savings for grad school. So the only question is whether she will be happy there. (My urban-focused daughter was horrified at the photos of Mt. Holyoke’s vast lawns on the brochure - her “dream” school was NYU- but she turned down a spot at NYU without hesitation when the financial aid came up short).</p>
<p>We drove by Mount Holyoke again this weekend and are still amazed at their beautiful campus. There is a small area of shops right across the street. On the route from Mount Holyoke to Amherst, we saw at least four buses in transit. The 5 college area is very vibrant. While in Amherst (we went to a film and dinner), we saw at many buses - some were ‘tandem’ buses designed to accommodate many people. They ‘circulate’ constantly between the colleges and the towns in the area. </p>
<p>AIso, I know 2 people who attend Mount Holyoke and they are the among nicest, most genuine people I know and they love their experience there. </p>
<p>Until you’ll share one legitimate source to validate your opinion, I will stick to my position and educated opinion. </p>
<p>In case you missed it, my position is not solely based on the ability for MHC to attract students with higher stats through merit aid, but also on the ability of those students to be admitted at the most selective schools such as Pomona. </p>
<p>I agree that this is not necessarily true. We were lucky enough to be able to afford the price differential between Mudd and MHC, and my D had a strong preference for Mudd because of the STEM focus and other students there. But if we had not saved a lot of money for her college ahead of time, the MHC scholarship would have made it a very likely candidate among the schools that gave her merit money. Most people are not in the same financial situation we are. I know a LOT of strong students last year from our high school who did not attend the highest ranked school they got into in order to take advantage of merit offers or less expensive state options. The recent recession, continuing rapid rises in tuition, and a growing realization of how burdened many students are with debt coming out of top schools is starting to make a difference the choices students from our high school are making.</p>
<p>@upforfun – I’d just add that the scholarship that your d. was awarded at Mt. Holyoke offer a few perks that are not to be sneezed at. With the numbers you’ve posted it’s fairly clear what the offer is – those extra perks may translate into a variety of opportunities that your d. would not get at another college. There was an old-time CC’er whose daughter turned down Yale for a LAC that is less well known and significantly farther down the US News rankings ladder than Mt. Holyoke about 8 years ago, accepting a full-ride scholarship - the d. later was awarded a Goldwater Scholarship and went on to an Ivy League med school. Would she have won the same recognition if she had started out at Yale? No way to know – but it’s safe to say that her chances of being nominated for the award in the first place were greatly enhanced at the college where she came in as Presidential scholar.</p>
<p>Your daughter will be in good company – it’s pretty easy to figure out how many students Mt.Holyoke admits each year in its top two scholarships categories, what their stats are, and what percentage of the entering class they represent. Mt. Holyoke admissions is very competitive, and probably chosen as a match-level school by many top students seeking admission to mega-selective colleges (like Ivies). There are plenty of threads on CC this year - as well as in past years – to get a sense of the large number of high caliber students who will end up attending their safeties after results are in. </p>
<p>I’m assuming it’s no accident that 3 out of your d’s top 4 schools are women’s colleges. </p>
<p>That may be true, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the MHC students are significantly “worse” than the Pomona students . When the most selective schools can skim off the top <10% of applicants, there are many bright, extremely capable kids who are not accepted. Such students can make excellent, motivated classmates.</p>
<p>My daughter recently graduated from MHC and had a wonderful experience. She cross registered and took classes at Smith and UMass while there. She found that the the buses weren’t an issue and her as they ran very frequently.She found the classes quite challenging and her peers very academically focused. </p>
<p>My daughter attended MHC because she followed the money (she was a 21st century scholar) and graduated debt free. In addition to the 21st century scholarship MHC provided about $10,000 in need based financial aid and considered her merit scholarship in lieu of loans. She was also a humanities major and was able to complete an unpaid internship with pay due to funding from MHC.,</p>
<p>Two of DD’s best friends turned down more highly ranked colleges with no regrets. (One was accepted to Swarthmore and one to Northwestern). My own DD turned down Wellesley because the $ was better at MHC. One of her friends, an international student, was accepted to Harvard, Princeton and another ivy for phd programs in a humanities field. She stayed with our family while visiting the programs and it was interesting to hear her perspective. She ended up choosing P, btw. </p>
<p>Not to mention students may turn down much higher ranked schools for other reasons and not always mainly for financial reasons. Some of the schools my Oberlin classmates turned down:</p>
<p>UChicago
Yale
Brown
Georgetown
Pomona
Berkeley
UPenn</p>
<p>The ones for Yale, Georgetown, UPenn, Brown, and even Berkeley were mainly for fit reasons(not hippie-friendly or politically radical-lefty activist enough for them). In fact, there was one classmate who transferred from Berkeley because “it’s become too pre-professional and conservative” in his own words. </p>
<p>This was just posted 4 days ago in a NYU vs.MHC thread:
[quote]
I just returned from Accepted Students weekend at Mount Holyoke with my daughter, who will be a mmember of the class of 2018. … I met several young women this weekend who’d been accepted at “higher-ranked” schools like Wellesley, Wesleyan and Middlebury who had decided, by the end of the weekend, that MHC was the place for them.<a href=“Posted%20by%20@staceyneil%E2%80%8C%20–%3E%20%5Burl=http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1639570-where-to-go-mount-holyoke-or-nyu-p1.html%5Dhere%5B/url%5D.”>/quote</a></p>
<p>I think you are going to find the MHC over Wellesley choice to be fairly common. Wellesley tends to give the strongest need-based financial aid offers, but Smith, MHC, and Bryn Mawr will tend to be better options financially for those who need to focus on merit aid. I would assume that many families who know they will not qualify for much need based aid will encourage their kids to limit their college search to schools likely to offer merit aid - so plenty of Harvard-quality students focus on schools like Vandy or Rice for financial reasons, and any of the Seven Sister colleges is going to be viewed as a viable alternative to a student who knows that she won’t be able to fund Amherst or Swat. Again, even without financial considerations, they are all elite and academically demanding LAC’s, very likely to be included on a college list by high achievers who have well-balanced college lists. </p>
<p>This is the most slam-dunk no doubt about it choices thread I’ve ever read. Mount Holyoke is a fine school. It’s not like it’s East Podunk U. Think of all the wonderful things you can give your daughter with the money saved. A summer abroad, help for grad school, a wedding, a down payment on a house, etc.</p>
<p>Initially, I was thinking that this was 16K in debt, and I was about to comment that Pomona is probably worth 16K more than MHC- since 4K per year can easily be earned during the summer, and due to the relative prestige, opportunities, and consortium at Pomona. </p>
<p>But then I realized you’re actually paying 35K extra for Pomona from your own pocket. Each year. 140K out of your own pocket + 16K in loans? Absolutely not. Pomona’s not worth that much extra. No school is. MHC is an excellent college. </p>
<p>Again I must missing something. I don’t see where these figures are coming from. For Pomona, the parents will pay 35K (per year? in total?) and the daughter will borrow $16K (per year? in total?). I’m still not clear why the cost structure of Pomona is different from that of Wellesley. </p>
<p>To me there’s no question that the OP’s daughter will get an excellent education at Holyoke. But before agreeing that she should turn down Pomona I’d like to understand the calculation. </p>
<p>
This is the other part that’s unclear to me. It seems that the daughter’s aspiration is germane, especially since Pomona’s environment is different from Holyoke’s. Academically we may be talking apples to apples, but socially and culturally it’s apples to, I don’t know, oranges. Both solid choices, but preferences may vary.</p>
<p>Did something change in the family’s financial situation between the time the applications were sent out and the acceptances come in, or is Holyoke’s offer just too good to pass up? I can see having to turn down a first choice college if the money just isn’t there, but I’m not sure that that’s the same as deciding to put the money that is there to another use. Maybe if I understood the comparative figures better, I’d see it differently.</p>
) does she have any other affordable, coed option?</p>