How to rate scholarship chances:
- Automatic for stats the student has: safety.
- Estimated by the net price calculator based on student stats, but not explicitly guaranteed: match.
- Competitive: reach.
Arizona State and Duke also have devil mascots.
Just one comment. You are getting great advice. I am under the impression that school administered ACT does not include writing.
While many schools not require writing, some do. Just something to keep in mind.
You may be able to get JMU under 30,000 is your son is awarded merit.
If JMU ends up in his list, I suggest applying EA, and applying for the Dingledine Scholarship.
Yes, JMU is on his âto addâ list - great suggestion - as is Dickinson and Gettysburg. I know he signed up for their emails and snail mail but hasnât yet really read up on these ânewâ ones⊠He would like to consider others.
He did initially resist looking at anything smaller than his high school, but toured Sewanee and Rhodes, both of which have lesser populations, and was fine with it. Any insights on either of those two for poli sci/internation/history? Their locales somewhat concern the hub and me, as DC connections or internships seem possibly (??) more likely with mid Atlantic schools. Again, this degree/career area is outside our bailywick, so insights and experiences from others would be a help.
Thank you!
Iâm assuming LA has Congress people in DC who hire summer interns or semester interns. Of course, most of these kids are NOT going to college in DC. Your kid could apply for these summer internships which might involve work in DC, or might involve work at a congress personâs in state office(s).
Iâm not sure why you think that itâs essential for this kid to attend a college that is in close proximity to DC in order to eventually work inâŠDC. There are lots of government employees who didnât attend college in the greater DC metro area. Lots.
I feel that he will be looking at grad school or law school. He doesnât need to be in DC for all of undergrad.
See USAJobs website for âpathways student internâ
He may be interested in Library of Congress, National Archives, Smithsonian and large variety of museum and specialty library collections.
His federal officials, as well as any trade group, industry, charity, non profit, also will have opportunities.
Well, we donât necessarily âthinkâ itâs essential - we are randomly guessing that it is logical until we can become educated in what to expect. We are a well educated couple but government is not our bailywick.
Put it this way - I majored in the geosciences as an undergrad but lived & studied in an area of the country where there was no oil or natural gas exploration, no seismic stations, no vulcanology labs, no paleontology digs, no hyrdrologic studies, nothing. By sheer luck, I ended up contacting the CEO of an independent oil company in Texas, and was brought out to intern one summer.
I met dozens of other students who got summer internships with various exploration firms in that particular city, but every single one of them went to college in Houston or Dallas or College Station or Austin. Every professional and every intern I met at the local luncheons for engineers and geoscientists was gobsmacked when they heard which school I attended. When it came time to attend grad school, I did so in the same âbig oilâ city as where Iâd interned. Making contacts that one summer, keeping in touch with the various professionals from the oil company, visitng them again before graduations gave me not just the summer experience, but a huge network of contacts. Could one contact have helped me land a job? Sure, but having a larger volume of contacts was better. George Mason University versus Eckerd College- which one would I guess has better opps for government-related internships?
So thatâs my paradigm. If a kid wants to study the ties between coastal subsidence and the relative excess rise of sea level, I probably wouldnât suggest s/he study that field in Nebraska. Could I be wrong? ABSOLUTELY⊠which is the entire point of my participation in this forum. We are looking for insights.
Hopefully, that makes sense. If proximity to that area of the country is worth nothing, then i truly would like to know. Thanks!
Here is an example of trade association with essay contest for high schoolers
The American Foreign Service Association
http://www.afsa.org/essay-contest
Scholarships and internships also available.
Many think tanks, media outlets, even big tech Google, Amazon, seek student interns, often unpaid, however.
These ideas for internships and âpathway jobsâ are terrific! Iâve pulled up both suggested links and am pretty amazed that youâve got the knowledge you do (and are kind enough to share with some random family).
On that essay contest, I donât know that a semester at sea would interest my kid or that he has anything more than a vague idea of how foreign service workers interact with civilians to promote diplomacy, but - this is the kind of thing that is entirely in his wheelhouse.
Heâd be thrilled to be an unpaid intern - the payment is what heâd learn and how heâd be able to contribute in some way. Other than his ridiculous amount of hours of volunteerism, he also did some grunt work for a local political candidate. He learned some things, but the bigger takeaway was in feeling like he helped try to make a positive impact on the community.
My most sincere thanks to you.
The question isnât so much whether itâs worth more than nothing - I think we can all agree that location (and any other factor that you or he might care about) is worth something. The question is how much is it worth, and IMHO itâs unlikely to be worth the future value of $160k.
Real life people we know who work in government or in DC for organizations you would recognize:
Graduates of Dartmouth, Wellesley, Tulane, University of Maine, Rowan in NJ, Emory, UConn, Temple, Ohio State, Kent State, Marquette.
Two did summer month long internships with their state representatives, one in DC and the other in the state of residence. The others NEVER stepped foot in a government agency for an internship and did not attend college anywhere near DC.
I think you need to be a bit more broad minded in your thinking about colleges. You want your kid to get a great education, be a good thinker, be a good writer, be able to look at a broad range of perspectives impartially, be articulate and polite.
That all can happen at a huge variety of colleges. Huge.
Thanks for that. This is a bit mind boggling the first time through and we appreciate seasoned parents or pros whoâve weighed in. It can be a bit confusing in that we have folks suggesting he broaden his list and then his guidance counselor suggesting he focus it.
One of his ideas is to examine the list of schools in a consortium which is studying the history of/impacts of slavery⊠I think there are 50 of them⊠and check to see which offer merit, what their top 25% hurdle is, and then compare with the other attributes he prefers. Heâs done significant work on the topic, and while every school everywhere offers politcal science programs, this is at least a way to find common interest. He didnât start his research into the topic even thinking about college, but in hindsight, it might be a good cultural fit to look for.
To all whoâve weighed in, our thanks!
Folks here IMHO are suggesting that he broaden his search, not actually apply to an enormous number of schools. His guidance counselor is unlikely to be saying âpick some subset of your current list,â but rather, âdonât apply to an enormous number of schools.â
Itâs totally normal for a list to see enormous movement between junior year and the last application. My kidâs tentative list (which had been highly curated by me, based on criteria she picked, starting in her sophomore year, so it included zero schools we would have been unwilling to pay for or which were otherwise unsuitable) was about 30 schools long at the start of junior year, about evenly split between safety, match, low reach, and high reach.
Then in October of junior year she decided she wanted a womenâs college, and that cut the list back to five, none of which were safeties.
So she decided she was willing to compromise on a couple of wants, which added three safeties - plus she added two reaches that were not on the original mom-list (affordable but wouldnât have been good fits for 2-years-younger her). Up to nine!
More visits in October of senior year, and both the kid picks plus five more were off the list for various reasons. (Seven schools fell off after visiting two, so itâs been slightly less crazy than it sounds.)
She revisited the one that was sounding best, said it was the one, and put in an ED1 application. In August, Iâd have bet money sheâd apply to 7-9 schools EA and RD, no ED school.
Unpaid internships in DC are fun so long as you are willing to pay thousands for his living expenses during that summer.
I would agree with @allyphoeâŠour daughter just finished up her college application process and while she had 8-10 schools on her list to apply to this past June (EA and RD), she ended up applying ED to her top choice with an additional two EA applications as she wanted to be done before Christmas this year. None of the three schools she ended up applying to were even on her list at this same time Junior year.
ED school came through with a very early acceptance and even more merit money than we had hoped; we have had as happy an âendingâ as we could have ever imagined. Our big takeaway was that doing the research about the ins and outs of each school was really important. I truly believe it was all the work done on the front end to figure out which schools were the best âmatchesâ for our daughter that helped make this process relatively smooth and straightforward this fall.
Donât think you need to apply to 20 different schools to find the ârightâ one. But figure out what is really important to you (and be honest as I think a lot of what trips people up with college admissions is a struggle with honesty/authenticity of what the student and parent goals are when finding the ârightâ college).
If going into government is on your kidâs must have list, take the time to find out what those pathways actually look likeâŠright now it sounds like this is more of a dream than a goal let alone a plan.
If prestige is important, accept & embrace that and figure out what you are willing to pay for the pleasure of being able to brag to friends and family.
If location is the most important aspect, or quality of lifeâŠdefine what that means for your child and help them find a good match.
I think you might want to examine your idea that you are a family âthat can afford to buy a Mercedes but would be happy buying a Hondaâ. Because if you were happy to buy the Honda, you could just go with the three really good options youâve already identified. The fact you arenât satisfied with those options says you arenât just looking for a Honda. Figure out what you are actually looking for, and then figure out if you are willing to jump through the hoops those choices present. Good luck, you have plenty of time to figure this out and it will work out. 
you arenât just looking for a Honda. <<<<<<<
Spot on.
Yes, youâve lived la vida loca for sure! The list is nebulous, of course, at this point in the game. With suggestions from various folks here, heâs added probably six or seven schools to his list (ie, search) and is now on their mailing lists. He will certainly not apply to everything, and we will not be having him appy ED anywhere.
Weâve gotten some great suggestions on schools in PA, and heâll have time to investigate further over the holidays. Best wishes to your daughter!
Thanks very much! We tried to get a low stress, early start on all of this during spring of this year, touring schools after having taken the ACT scores, but now comes the real juggling. Our hope is to have, as a family, worked through some of these concepts before application time comes next summer⊠and yâall here are helping!
The government thing is something he envisions as a way to âserveâ for a time, but hello - he is 16. Who knows how he will serve? He does gravitate toward DC and the midAtlantic in a big way, although of all places, he absolutely loved Sewanee (University of the South⊠in Tennessee). I cannot find diddly doo on CC regarding that school. Hmmm.
Hereâs another little item he thinks about. One of the things he didnât care for when visiting Rhodes that, of all those gorgeous gothic styled buildings, there wasnât a single chapel or even a little room where kids could worship. Now, we only started going to church a couple years ago (hubby and I were force fed as kids) and when most local churches didnât have accomodations for âthis kind of childâ (our older boy has autism), we blew it off until our 14 year old started to ask to go. He doesnât talk about his faith, doesnât pray before dinner, and a couple of his bffs are atheists, but he gets me up every Sunday morning to drive him. So yeah - there are little things that mean something to him that Iâd never have even considered.
He isnât concerned about prestige, but the hub and I are currently brain stained that certain schools/areas âmightâ be better for networking than others for the areas he is interested in.
As for the Honda, Iâm literally talking about what we drive. A Honda would be a step up from my 11 year old Ford! Weâd love to stick the kid in a Cadillac, if thatâs the metaphor weâre rolling with. We just have to balance the massive cash out of pocket weâll end up spending on our older kidâs group home and how we donât want college bound boy to have to âsacrificeâ for a Caddy.
Thanks for replying and reading! It is great to have other seasoned parents helping guide us!
Lol, we literally just got rid of our 16 year old minivan last year (we donated it - it still ran just fine for short trips so we didnât want to junk it) so I get the idea of not wanting to spend on a car, even if you can afford it.
I also get the need to balance family funds between children, we have two more children coming up quickly who also will be going to college and there is no way we want to be anywhere near $1million in college costs (which would be very easy to get to with 3 children as a âfull pay familyâ).
Thatâs one of the reasons I am always banging on about figuring out a firm budget before starting the process. Much like house buying, it is easy to fall in love with the âdreamâ one that is way above a reasonable budgetâŠand the bank (or college) will always tell you there is a way to afford it. Setting and knowing your hard limit in advance can help not falling in love with a school that will leave you full of regret (and with a much lighter wallet).
I think it is great that you are incorporating the ideas of your sonâs need for a place of worship as well as his drive to serve. Those are the kinds of âmust havesâ that I think will really illuminate which schools will or wonât work for him as he continues his search. As I said before, it will work out. 