<p>I am an international student who has been admitted to the above colleges and I am simply unable to come to a decision. Neither of them is my top choice school, but I like both of them. Everyone tells me that I should go to Reed. But, as somebody who wants to go to graduate school for development or macro or international economics, I simply don't know if Reed can offer the same opportunities as Soka. Soka is not nearly as selective as Reed, but its endowment is twice the size of Reed's ($1 billion), and has only 450 students. Obviously the Reed label is much more recognized, but sometimes I have to wonder if I should include prestige in my decision? Who am I trying to impress? I just want to go to graduate school and work in policy later. From a cursory look into Soka, I gathered that 40% of the students went to graduate school immediately after graduating. Now, obviously, I am aware that Reed does incredibly well in PhD production. But I have many concerns about Reed.</p>
<p>1) Is it worth it? I am a poor international, and have to pay significant but manageable money to go to Reed over 4 years. Additionally, I will have to incur $16k of debt. Now, I wouldn't have been very concerned about paying all this, but Soka offered a full ride.</p>
<p>2) Is it true that there is limited access to food at Reed? Lol. This is ridiculous, I know, but I like to eat! Especially when I need to work a lot. I can eat as much as I want at Soka. hahaha I know it's stupid, but it's an important-ish, albeit not huge, concern.</p>
<p>3) Soka offers me the opportunity to study abroad. Actually, I HAVE to. From what I have learned about Reed, study abroad isn't encouraged a lot of the time if you do econ-math or something like that. Now, I really want to go to Oxford or France (I'll study 4 semesters of french), but I don't know if Reed would let me.</p>
<p>4) Summer. Because of the full ride, I could return home during summer. Now this isn't really a concern, but what can Reed allow me to do during the summer? I could go to my family in Washington or Colorado or California and work maybe, but I don't know if federal restrictions would allow me to. Is there funding available at Reed to pursue unpaid internships and such? On campus stuff?</p>
<p>5) Location. Well this doesn't really matter to me. I do not care for the California weather.</p>
<p>6) Opportunities at Soka worth giving up? As part of "learning clusters", I would HAVE to travel to all these places (yay!) and do research. Now I know that research is very important for graduate school, and I wonder if I should account for these opportunities (there are other travel/research opportunities at Soka too, but those are not compulsory, but the OPTION is what's great.)</p>
<p>Concerns about Soka:</p>
<p>1) Preparation. I'm a bit concerned about how well Soka could prepare me in math. After talking to professors there and reading the catalog (my econ major friend at Amherst helped me to review it too), I know that preparation in econ would be strong, but the math seems to be lacking... I like math, not enough to major in it or study a lot of it lol, but the catalog seems to give the impression that math is taught in a very broad fashion. I want enough mathematical skills to be able to handle graduate school.</p>
<p>2) The quality of the student body is no doubt lacking. Compared to Reedies... oh well. How much should this matter? I talked to a student there and she wagers that the students are.. well.. in a group, not the best, but there is a range. So I can definitely find intellectual conversation there, as pretentious as that may sound, but should I care that not all students can offer the same kind of conversation, even though that will more or less change after two years of school for sure?</p>
<p>What I am not concerned about:</p>
<p>1) The size of the student bodies at the schools.</p>
<p>2) The beauty of the campus (Soka wins, though).</p>
<p>I cannot afford to make the 'wrong' decision, though I doubt there is one, because there is little to no possibility of transferring for internationals who need a lot of aid. A friend of mine who goes to a Claremont school found the students to be insufferable so she is transferring, but I don't have that option because I need $$.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>PS By the way, even though Soka has concentrations listed on its website, do not jump to conclusions: courses are offered in all subjects from art history to zoology, often at a major level (except for physics, I guess. Env studies requires bio and chem, methinks.) So economics would fall under "Social and Behavioral Sciences"</p>
<p>Also, I am definitely considering International Studies too!</p>