I’d drop Oglethorpe. Not enough kids anywhere close to her stats.
What about West Coast schools? Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount.
I do not think your D will be challenged at Western New England nor Colby Sawyer. WNEC has a large campus in the middle of a very urban area and neither school is particularly Christian, so I’d take them off.
Why wouldn’t you keep Wake? They do have merit and its good to have a reach or two on your list. I think they are fairly Christian (at least compared to New England schools).
Thank you for the advice and additional schools to looks at.
Thank you for explaining UA to me. I get it now. She liked the Huntsville campus, so will probably apply as a safety.
She doesn’t like where Wheaton is located. We have friends there who’s kids love it though.
I think no west coast schools due to high airfare. It’s easier and cheaper to get flights on the east coast.
I’ll have her check out Rhodes, Hendrix, Earlham, and Trinity. We will keep Wake Forest on her list. I kind of think Emory won’t be a great fit for her. She wouldn’t be academically strong enough for merit there and we can’t afford it otherwise. Our income is too high for need based aid but too low for full pay.
Western New England and Colby Sawyer are only on her list as an option because they’re closer to home.
I thought to get good merit you wanted to be in the top of a school’s stats, which is why she has some of those schools on her list. She wants to go to graduate school and is trying to minimize undergrad expenses.
Hendrix actually looks like a good option in terms of scholarship. Her ACT superscore is 32, which qualifies her to apply for a full ride there. Is Hendrix a good school for her?
mispost- disregard
I think both Stonehill and Endicott are good “safety” schools and your D might get significant merit aid.
What do you want your net costs to be?
Privates can be $55k-70k per year.
$15k-20k per year in merit could still leave you with a high bill.
Many privates throw around $10k-20k in merit, but that doesn’t always make the schools affordable.
@4Hurley I think merit depends very much on the school. The correlation between my kid’s merit offers his scores, and the school’s admitted student score range was not at all consistent. Looking at ACTs only, both his lowest and second highest awards were it schools where he was at the top end of the middle fifty. For the rest he was in the top quarter, but not necessarily by much.
As to the Carolina schools, I would narrow down to Wake Forest and Davidson in NC and Furman in SC. Furman fits her category very well. All of these have great academic rigor.
Look at Gordon College in Massachusetts for her nearby option. Excellent christian school.
Also look at Wheaton College and at Cedarville in Ohio.
Have you considered Connecticut College? Matches her stats a little better. How about Providence College in RI? I think these would be better academic fits for her and would provide her more nearby options.
In my mind, a campus visit is a MUST.
Certainly a campus visit is essential before making a final choice. And SOME visits before deciding where to apply. But you can extrapolate from those visits and apply to places you haven’t visited.
OP - I live near the UAHuntsville campus and actually at one time worked there. I have one DD that graduated from UABirmingham, and one DD that is currently at UA Tuscaloosa junior (the flagship campus, which is The University of Alabama). UA refers to the flagship school. All three are under one Board, but all have their own Presidents and run rather independently of each other for the most part. UAB has the Medical/Dental/other health programs, but the Medical School sometimes is referred to University of Alabama although it is UAB - that goes to some of the history as UA was the first of the three campuses; UAH use to have a family practice medical program that they ‘sold’ to UAB some years ago, and so there is a UAB medical program that is located in Huntsville. Alabama actually has two Medical Schools (the other being at USA, University of South Alabama). The two pharmacy schools are at AU (Auburn University) and at the private school Samford (in Birmingham). AU has the one veterinarian program in the state of AL.
I would recommend DD doing the quick/easy application on line to all 3 UA/UAH/UAB. You want to select the right school for the 4 year merit. Then visit all three as you narrow your selection process. Really examine the pluses and minuses of each. DD may ‘outgrow’ a campus/city like UAH. DD at UAB loved B’ham and was in a medical type program that was super for her at UAB (BSN - very large nursing program, and very deep as well with various master and two PhD tracks; she also could take higher level science classes if she decided to do a graduate professional track outside of nursing). DD at UA is loving that campus - has a tight group of friends, and is able to take advantage of what UA has to offer. Honors students/programs help ‘shrink’ a larger campus to being something more significant for high stat students. DD at UAB graduated with university honors, and DD at UA is in an honors program (STEM MBA). UA has the regular honors college, and two sizable honors programs - emerging scholars (for students interested in research as a college freshman) and the STEM MBA; they also have some small highly selective honors programs.
We know students at all three schools, on scholarship mainly, and a few that are not. UAH and UAB do have a fair share of commuter students, but both campuses work hard to have a real college traditional experience - plenty of dorms/new dorms compared to years ago.
Both Birmingham and Huntsville have decent airports, but flying in and out of Huntsville can be more expensive - again not the tipping point for school selection - UA students have shuttle services to get to both B’ham and Atlanta airports, and have ride share opportunities too.
Feel free to PM me with specific questions.
I second Denison, Davidson, Elon, UAlabama (Tuscaloosa), Wake, Furman, SUNY Geneseo, Rhodes.
Dickinson may be worth a look.
Elmira has a full tuition scholarship for valedictorians/Salutatorians, look into it.
I’d add Muhlenberg and College of Charleston(honors) + Wofford for a Christian college that’s also strongly academic.
I’d remove Rollins if she doesn’t want parties!!!
So, that’d be the list (“match for big scholarship” = low match academically, high match for scholarship)
Matches
Elon University
Denison
Furman
Dickinson
Rhodes
SUNY Geneseo
Muhlenberg (for big scholarship)
College of Charleston (for honors+ scholarship - if she liked Florida Southern, she should love CoC and the honors program is terrific).
Hendrix (for big scholarship)
Wofford
Agnes Scott
St Lawrence
Wheaton MA (for big scholarship - closer to home, better scholarships)
Clark (for big scholarships - closer to home, better scholarships, especially good for premed/Psych)
Safeties
Roanoke College
Eckerd College
Florida Southern College
Stonehill College
University of Alabama
(Closer to home, better academically, still a safety: St Michael’s; great college town)
Wilkes Honors College (of FAU)
Reaches
Davidson College
*Emory
*Wake Forest
I’d cut (due either to poor academic fit or party reputation)
Rollins College
High Point University
Stetson University
Palm Beach Atlantic University
Mercer University
Oglethorpe University
Springhill College
Carson Newman University
Western New England University
Bridgewater College
Endicott College
Colby Sawyer College
Very helpful advice! Thank you so much! We will check out some of those colleges. Many are unfamiliar to me.
We definitely will be visiting any college she gets into which offers good aid. We would love to pay less than 15,000 total. I don’t know if that’s reasonable or not. The net price calculators don’t account for competitive aid. When my son applied, he got lots of merit aid from private colleges but they were still above $30,000 to attend.
Thanks for the great info on UA. She’ll apply for all 3.
$25,000 is still often considered “basic”. 15K means at least full tuition, those are rare.
We are hoping she qualifies for something. She has good stats and the schools we are looking at mostly provide competitive aid. At least she’ll have a shot at something.
@4hurley - I agree with several of the above posters that you should focus on the most academic schools on the list (Davidson, Wake Forest, etc) and also try to apply to some slightly lower ranked (but still strong academically rigorous) schools that offer Merit Aid. Elon and Furman might be good here although Furman may be too far from a convenient airport, but the others are well located.
The other Uni you might want to check out is UMiami. My son received a $26k merit scholarship there. There are a lot of high stats kids there on merit scholarships who are focused on healthcare fields so that might be worth looling into as transport is easy given its proximity to Miami apt.
She is going to check out the suggested schools. I guess we weren’t thinking correctly in regards to fit and merit aid. I assumed she had to be at the top of a school’s stats to qualify.