Thank you, those schools all sound great. Georgia Tech might be too intense/competitive for her?, but Rice sounds like it would be a great collegial setting. Atlanta does seem great and I think Houston would be okay too. But yes, unfortunately my daughter and our family are just not comfortable even traveling in the South these days, even though the suggested schools and cities they’re in sound very inclusive (and just amazing as places to learn). It’s just something about being within a state/region that doesn’t feel welcoming that is something we’d rather avoid.
As Asian Americans we are often viewed and treated as foreigners (sometimes even here in liberal California), and the recent rise in anti-Asian violence is especially unsettling. Then add on the attacks on LGBTQ+, reproductive and voting rights, general anti-immigrant sentiment, it’s just not somewhere she’d feel safe. I think pre-Trump she would’ve considered some of these schools, but so much hate has bubbled up and is hard for us to ignore. I don’t mean to slam folks in the South and realize it’s ironic to be painting with such broad strokes, but I hope you understand our discomfort.
I guess the good thing is that by cutting out Southern schools, we’re keeping her from adding to her ever-expanding list. Those are also reaches for her, so I don’t mind not adding to that caegory too.
Thanks for the CMU info, I didn’t know about the business school and forgot about the arts part of the school!
Wow just read up on Agnes Scott and it sounds amazing! But yes, it’s probably not a good fit because of location, size (too small) and women’s only. I’ve tried to get her to consider women’s colleges but she’s decidedly against them so I’ve stopped pushing (and I guess I don’t mind an easy way to cull her lists!). And although she understands some of the benefits of women’s colleges, especially for one interested in STEM, she thinks it’s anti-inclusive to keep men out of her classes and social circles. Half her friends are guys and she would really miss those relationships and perspectives.
Sounds like a good plan to start with safeties and targets. All the CSU and UC apps are due end of November so that will help get that ball running. She’s also applying EA to MIT, UChicago and Case Western so I think that’s helping her realize how much work the essays are and inspire her to start cutting down the rest of her list, especially the crazy reaches.
Thank you, yes I think a quarter system is good for exploring. She actually looked into Northwestern earlier, but I think took off her list since it was another reach school, plus she thought the vibe might be too Greek and/or too “preprofessional” for her. Of the Chicago reach schools, she prefers the UChicago vibe (also quarter system). Thank you!
I guess this is all up to how you define “worth it.” On a pure ROI, none of them are worth a premium over your CA options for ME, if she gets in. Below are listed the median 2 year salaries for MEs from College Scorecard, the only source of non-self reported data that I know of.
MIT $79K
CMU $75K
Cal Poly $74K
Stanford $78K
UCB $75K
Yes thank you both, that’s part of her struggle is looking into which schools restrict switching into their engineering programs. So she realizes she should probably start in the engineering school if it’s separate but, like you said, that makes the admissions hurdle so much higher.
For the UC’s, especially, we’re learning how restrictive it is, and it’s so much harder since she’s undecided as to which Engineering school major she’d want to start with. It looks like UCLA Engineering only allows you to change your major once(?), so those additional barriers make the UC’s so much less attractive than before she started the college search. So she’s got to check each campus and each school to see what their policies are (and I’ve looked too – those websites are not easy to navigate!).
That’s one big reason why Case Western rose to the top of her list since they allow you to more freely try other courses and even switch into engineering more easily.
Well you’re definitely helping sell SLO to me! Seriously, it’s a great school and I really think as she looks into it more it will rise on her list. Again, it would be hard for her to figure out which of the more competititive majors she should start with, so that’s part of her research assignment.
That’s a great point about the LAC’s. I think Pomona is high on her list because of the vibe and courses in general, but she has not looked yet into whether she’d be able to do a major at Harvey Mudd later. They’re both such high reaches, I think she should focus on one, depending on which allowed students from other campuses to do a major in their campus. I think I recall all Claremont campuses had some restrictions on which classes/majors students from the other campuses could partake in. I’ll have her look into that.
Yes that’s a huge part of our comfort level going outside of California. Even Case Western being in Ohio makes me nervous, although Cleveland sounds great, and we would definitely visit if she got in.
It’s not that you can’t switch into engineering. At a lot of schools you can. It’s that the curriculum is so cumulative, the student starts at ground zero the moment they switch into engineering. With the exception of Physics, most other majors don’t have classes useful in shortening that sequence.
She cannot. You can take a few classes at Mudd, and take CS at Pomona, but engineering will not be an option if she isn’t a HMC student.
Cal Poly is not without its drawbacks. No school is. The biggest thing, other than how competitive some majors are to get into, is that students have to declare a major just to apply. Changing majors will depend partly on how competitive the student would have been for the destination major right out of high school. That said, I’ve known quite a few students that changed majors. It’s just not as simple as saying that you switched from X to Y.
I visited with my son after he was accepted. Case and Cleveland both exceeded our expectations and he was awarded $100K. He didn’t end up there, but it is a great program.
Rochester was previously mentioned. Lehigh, Lafayette and Bucknell would also be worthy of looking at. It would really be a matter of merit as to whether or not they were affordable.
Thank you both, hadn’t really looked at other state public schools. Both Pitt and Univ of Arizona sound really nice, will have her check them out. Not sure she could get into the Honors program at Arizona but that would definitely make the large school feel smaller. Would be nervous about Arizona’s political climate although I think Tucson is less conservative? And unfortunately, we’d rule out Rice due to it being in Texas.
Yeah, even if she had a 1600 SAT, she realizes she’s probably way out of her league even applying. But she really wants to apply to MIT. As she gets through the exhausting essay process, I’m hoping she will elimninate more reaches perhaps including Stanford.
Oh gosh, your D sounds so much like mine and our circumstances similar except we don’t have the CA schools as in-state options. My kid’s list is a smaller circle that would mostly fit inside the Venn diagram of your D’s list, with the enthusiasm categories shuffled up a bit.
We were able to do an in-person student led tour of Cal Poly SLO this summer, and it was nicer than we expected (except the red brick dorms and bathrooms were truly awful). The part that bothers my D is that you declare a major from the start, whereas their preference is to explore before declaring a major. That said, we were told the school’s reputation of difficulty changing majors is overblown and that around a third of the students change majors. The tour guides indicated that if you’re directly admitted into an impacted major, that would make changing majors easier than vice versa.
We visited Pomona and HMC a couple years ago and really like those schools. When we were there, we saw kids scootering around for classes and it had a really nice energy and atmosphere. Our tour guide told us a funny story about how Taylor Swift came and gave a concert on-campus for the consortium, due to some hijinks the kids at HMC were able to pull off. For an engineering degree, HMC would be the school to go to since getting humanities classes in the other schools is much more straightforward than trying to get engineering classes in HMC from the other schools in the consortium. The HMC buildings are rather unattractive TBH. My kid noticed one of the HMC dorm lobbies had clocks up on the wall with various theme faces and one of them was a rainbow D&D die so that was a plus for them.
Case Western was on the list until we did an in-person visit this summer. Off the list for us once we drove into Ohio and spent a night there.
The other schools on my D’s list are our in-state flagship CU Boulder, and UW Seattle. I don’t know if those would be of any interest to your D? I know they’re OOS for you - just like the UC schools are OOS for us - but the fit might be good.
Edit: Re Boulder and Seattle, the schools are very big so that may not be a fit in terms of size. But honestly, we’ve had a hard time finding a mid-size school that offers both engineering and liberal arts. It seems like if you’re looking for a place that has both options, then the schools are large.
My son is at ASU/Barrett, which I would have highly recommended if your daughter had an actual SAT score in the 1460-1520 range to submit, but is less appealing than University of Arizona if going test optional due to their respective merit scholarship formulas. The Arizona’s political climate is not really an issue. The only impact on colleges at this time is that both ASU and University of Arizona were not able to mandate Covid vaccines as they wanted to and had to settle for mandatory masks indoor. There is a large body of students coming from California that helps spreading liberal values on campus.
I’ll throw in Virginia Tech, Purdue, and Michigan from my STEM daughter’s list.
Purdue’s OOS cost is closer to your number than those listed above (~42k, iirc, unchanged for 10+ years).
We never looked at CA schools, and they may be the best option for in-state students, but these were other strong options in our neck of the woods (she ended up going to, and recently graduating from, Purdue).
Thinking further about it, since you mentioned that you had a 40K/year budget, maybe you could also consider ASU/Barrett even though you would only get half the merit that you would at University of Arizona?
The profile of ASU/Barrett incoming students is in line with the one for Arizona Honors:
“For high school seniors, the average unweighted high school GPA for the fall 2021 incoming class was 3.81. Barrett will continue to be ACT and SAT “test blind” for spring 2022 and fall 2022.”
It depends on which major the student wants to change to. You can check each major on the web site to see if it is difficult to change major. For example, for engineering (including CS) majors:
(Note the different criteria if already in the engineering division, versus outside the engineering division.)
Since you’re in CA and trying to stay on a budget, I probably wouldn’t apply to any state school outside of WICHE. The Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) offers tuition at 150% of instate. ASU, particularly Barrett, is a standout. Utah is amazingly underrated. My son almost picked it over Cal Poly. The free year followed by 3 instate, being a ski racer, and our willingness to share the savings, didn’t hurt. Colorado State is also a very pretty campus in a really cool town.
I don’t get the fascination with MIT. It would be grossly over budget and severely restrictive on the number of majors offered, clashing against two objectives stated in the original post.
Given those preferences, it maybe worthwhile for her to see how she’d feel about Barnard College of Columbia University (NYC). It’s a “small” women’s college, with its own housing, administration, facilities, women leadership,… that’s fully integrated in the large co-ed University, sharing the university facilities, course-catalogue, etc. Students freely mingle in both directions socially, and classes are held at either institution - separated only by Broadway.
Despite the academic rigor of an Ivy-League university, and the academics level of the student body, my daughter found it to be a collaborative and caring environment.
Omg yes! Really want her to get more realistic schools into the “Most Enthusiastic” categories.
Yeah, she doesn’t want very large (30k+), but can’t be avoided with most of the UCs and CSU’s, except I think Cal Poly SLO, UCSC and UCSB (their smaller sizes add to their attractiveness). So medium size is a preference, but we understand it can’t be a requirement at least for UC/CSU.
Yeah, Oxy seems to be an outlier for many reasons, including the size and lack of access to a consortium. But she did like the LAC vibe and course offerings, although wonders if it’s nerdy enough for her. She’s still researching that school.
Univ of Arizona and Pitt sound great, other posters recommended above too, and I’ll have her look into them although we hadn’t planned to look at other state public schools. Hadn’t heard anything about Utah, although I think it might feel too conservative for her.
She previously considered Univ of Rochester which sounded great academically and vibe, but thought it seemed too cold and isolated. RIT was strong but didn’t seem to be as good for non-tech majors and also very cold and isolated. But maybe her/our perceptions of upstate NY states is wrong?
I don’t think she looked at the other schools you listed so I’ll have her check them out. Thank you!!
ASU does not offer WUE tuition at the main Tempe campus. It offers WUE at some programs at its other campuses, which appear to be more focused on commuter and non-traditional students.
D chose (a full ride at) Utah over Berkeley, UCLA, Regents at UCSB/UCI etc and is very happy there as a liberal atheist from NorCal. She definitely likes it better than her twin brother’s choice of UCLA.
She picked Utah for the highly ranked dance program but has found it easy to complete both a BFA and a BS. The Honors classes are interesting, eg the Praxis labs (https://honors.utah.edu/praxis-labs/) and the campus is very nice, with great modern facilities and views of mountains and across the basin to the lake.
SLC is less religious/conservative than the rest of Utah, and like most colleges the university is more liberal than the city itself. It is a great school for outdoorsy kids, she spends lots of time skiing, climbing and backpacking. Many people note that campus can be quiet at weekends, that’s because when there’s not a football game everyone goes to the mountains.
Yea, WUE exchange is labile. For many years Oregon State didn’t participate. Now it does. Cal Poly and most, if not all of the UCs don’t. It’s really a matter of looking at any given time at what’s available. Barrett gets many of their students from merit that is even better than WUE, but of course, they are very high stats students.
I will say this again. I think The U is one of the most underrated colleges, both academically, and from the overall experience, in the nation. The MUSS is crazy cool!
Ok, I’ll jump in - mostly because of the kind shout out in the original post
I agree that the list is a bit reach heavy, and since you seemed to suggest as much, I’ll try to suggest a few that seem to fit the bill, and aren’t quite so tough admission-wise. Trouble is, the first few places that jumped to mind were on her “no go” list… Reed, Brandeis, Rochester. You don’t say what this disconnect is, but those are the ones I’d lobby for a second look. As a B’deis alum, I think she’d be a great fit there.
My small-school bias is creeping through, I’ll admit, but I think she’d be more likely to find the nerdy, cooperative, non-preprofessional, intellectually curious vibe she’s looking for at a LAC than at a larger school. If you make it nearer a major city, it feels bigger…hence B’deis, Reed, and even Lewis & Clark as a safety.
To toss out one that hasn’t been mentioned yet, what about Clark University? Worcester is a mid-sized city, within reasonable drive of Boston. Progressive, cooperative vibe, solid academics, and she’d have a decent chance of getting some merit money, I’d think.
Your daughter sounds like a great kid, and I know she’ll have terrific options. Good luck!
