Please help Undecided STEM (and Undecided about STEM) Girl’s college list

College Search & Selection
621

Take a deep breath and plan for some activity that is relaxing next weekend as you go through the final wave with her this week. I honestly had never tried acupuncture until about this point with my D21 last year. Your D22 has one more batch to hear from and there is not much point in going through all of the analytics and anxiety until you have all the cards on the table and can compare opportunities and your actual costs.

Clear your heads.

Wait on Rochester - not worth the stress until you have more info.

I would put Case Western into some kind of email filter for her for the week. They will still be there. They are just email bots doing their job :slight_smile:

And Wesleyan at full pay is just a distraction - does not beat her current instate options or Oregon. Definitely a different vibe than WPI, but nearly $80,000 compared to around $45,000 with the merit - WPI would come out as a better option for STEM.

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622

Wesleyan is actively committed to supporting women in science:

https://www.wesleyan.edu/wis/

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623

Thanks, I was just considering cost since WPI starts off slightly less and then has Offered $30,000 in merit. Both are committed to advancing women in STEM careers which is great. She has other acceptances that fall in a similar financial range or less I believe.

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624

That makes sense. I was hoping she could mention WPI but I guess Rochester wouldn’t consider it a peer. :frowning: Thanks for your help!

Well, that gives us some hope! :slight_smile: Do you have any suggestions on how they did it?

Thanks, but we won’t really have any new info after this week as we’re pretty confident they’ll all be rejections. Even if not, they are all schools that don’t give merit aid.

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625

Thank you so much for your help! Yeah, we’d prefer not to pay more than in-state, but are willing to if it is the best fit for D.

The thing about CS is that she is very possibly going to change her major, and we’re concerned it will be difficult to do that at our state schools. We’re trying to gauge just how hard it would be at her remaining schools since she was admitted to CS/SE, which hopefully makes it easier to switch out.

The other thing with SLO, Oregon and WPI, and I think SDSU and SJSU, is they don’t offer Neuroscience, which is one of her other possible interests that she wants to keep available for now. UCSC, PItt, Rochester and Wesleyan seem to offer all the possible majors she’s interested in and then some.

We’re liking UCSC and Pitt a lot more as we keep looking into them, and especially like their price and UCSC’s proximity to home. Rochester and Wesleyan would give her the freedom to really explore so many interests and create her own path, with Wesleyan giving that true small, LAC experience that she also craves. So we like those schools more as we learn more about them, except of course the price (and distance).

Of course, Undecided Girl also likes the very practical “learn by doing” approach of SLO and WPI too, so she’s still all over the place. :woman_facepalming:

So I’m really hoping the visits help her decide. But, if after visits we find she’d be equally happy at any of these schools, we’ll probably decide based on cost and distance.

Haha great idea!

Ah, yes, you are so right, I think I need a spa day! But you know, since we really do expect all rejections this week, starting today we’ve started settling into her list of possibilities and are now at the stage of excitement in helping her pick. Each of her options is great – not perfect, but really great – so it’s been fun comparing the schools.

But I still need you and the other sane folks here to keep talking me back from the edge! :wink: Thanks for all your great advice!

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626

That’ is great to see, thank you! It really does look like an amazing school in so many ways.

Another cool resource I found says that UCSC is tops for women in university leadership - yay!: https://www.womenspowergap.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/WPG-Power-Gap-at-Elite-Universities-v17.pdf

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627

Thanks for the link. It’s a very interesting read.

I assume that you’re going to squeeze in a visit to Wesleyan when you come East for WPI? I live 15 minutes from Wesleyan and can offer suggestions for restaurants if you’d like. There are dozens on Main Street a few blocks from campus. My son-in-law went to med school in Worcester, so we can also offer suggestions there. He’s Asian-American, so if you prefer, he can suggest Asian restaurants.

Wesleyan is an interesting last minute option for a lot of reasons. First, it has a lot of students from California (13%), which is the 2nd largest representation of any state on campus behind NY (20%). Second, it is very LGBTQ+ friendly. Third, Asian Americans are well represented on campus (10% in addition to international students). While it is a traditional LAC, it is one of the larger of these (3200 students) and graduate programs up to the PhD with Math & Computer Sciences being one of the departments offering a PhD. In addition the offer a 5-year combined bachelor’s/master’s program in Computer Science.

Keep in mind that info sessions are only available on weekdays although tours only are also available on weekends and can be supplemented with a virtual event. Feel free to PM me if I can help in any way with suggestions for your visit.

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628

Check if the schools offer cognitive science or if psychology there has enough course offerings to cover the areas of interest there.

Job and career prospects for neuroscience and related majors are very different from computer science.

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629

Thanks, I believe she’s been checking for both CogSci and Neuroscience, although I don’t know if she’s looked through just Psych majors, so I’ll suggest that.

Yeah, definitely different career trajectories than if she sticks with CompSci! Thanks!

630

Wow, you are so kind, thank you, I may PM you for tips! I admit the more I look at Wesleyan, the more I like it for her, so we are definitely considering it. Those are great points that do check off a lot of her boxes!

The WPI visit is the same week as Pitt, so it would be nice to add Wesleyan while we’re out there. We are still deciding if she will visit, but the clock is ticking to book flights/hotels, etc. Waiting for some of her extracurricular schedule to firm up before I pull the trigger.

I did look at some flights and I knew Wesleyan was pretty remote, but wow the flights cost so much more than we usually pay to fly anywhere else. Cost/ease of travel to/from home for breaks is definitely something we are considering as she looks at schools farther away.

Thanks so much for all your help!

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631

For anyone else interested, I discovered the IPEDS database lists what the schools consider their peers. The info is in the “Data Feedback Report” which I found here: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/Dfr.aspx?unitid=195030

Rochester’s 2021 DFR says:

The custom comparison group chosen by University of Rochester includes the following 13 institutions:
Boston University (Boston, MA)
Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH)
Duke University (Durham, NC)
Emory University (Atlanta, GA)
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD)
New York University (New York, NY)
Northwestern University (Evanston, IL)
Stanford University (Stanford, CA)
Tulane University of Louisiana (New Orleans, LA)
University of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN)
Washington University in St Louis (Saint Louis, MO)

ETA: I got the IPEDS source from this article that has a cool interactive feature to more easily find the “peers”, but it may require (free) subscription to view: https://www.chronicle.com/article/who-does-your-college-think-its-peers-are

It’s ridiculous how much I’ve learned about universities in the last several months! :sweat_smile:

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632

WPI to Wesleyan isn’t a pretty drive but it’s definitely under 2 hours - I’d definitely do both the same trip.

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633

To answer your other question the person I know negotiated using an offer from another school and asked Rochester to meet it. The school wasn’t a higher-ranked school - I’d say probably on par if anything. Rochester did meet it and in the end the student still turned them down and stuck to the other school. Rochester didn’t hold a grudge and admitted a sibling (who attended and had a great experience there) a couple years later.

634

Hmm, hadn’t thought of driving. But we’re flying in to Boston, driving to WPI, then back to Boston to fly to Pitt. So I’ll have to drink more coffee and think about how I’d fit a drive to Wesleyan at the front end of that trip. :thinking: Thanks!

635

Oh good, I was afraid Rochester would be insulted if she mentioned a “non-peer” school. Glad they don’t hold a grudge. Makes me like them even more. :wink: Thanks!

636

It wouldn’t be an issue to do that drive. I mean route 91 is one of my least favorite roads but coming from CA it shouldn’t bother you too much - Boston to worcester is maybe an hour tops, worcester to Middletown is maybe 90 minutes. Not sure about the drive Middletown to Boston, if there’s a shorter way, but at most it would be 2 hours even if you had to go back by worcester. It’s all highway driving and won’t be bad outside rush hour. Everything is much closer together on the east coast :slight_smile:

637

It’s about an hour and a half.

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638

Omg that is NOTHING! I just got back from driving 7 hours to LA, and I think it was over 8hrs to visit Oregon State. We’re waiting to hear if her schedule opens up. If so, we will definitely drive to Wesleyan.

Thank you both!

ps: Rejected from Tufts today so this decision-making is getting easier. :wink:

639

Why not simply drive to Bradley airport from Wesleyan and fly to Pitt.

Or if the trip starts at Pitt, fly to Bradley for the Wesleyan visit, drive to WPI and then Logan for the flight home to CA.

In other words, use the flight between Pitt and Hartford as the intermediate flight to minimize expense and the opportunity to get a direct flight to CA.

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640

Who are UR’s peers? Start with their athletic conference (UAA).

Brandeis
NYU
Carnegie-Mellon
Case Western Reserve
Chicago
Washington University
Emory

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