Hi - so I’m a rising senior looking for advice for college advice. I’ve got a 4.5 GPA, a 1580 on the SAT, and 5’s on all my AP tests. I also am involved in a fair amount of service and leadership in my extracurriculars. I’m looking for a school that isn’t necessarily a reach for me, but instead provides significant merit based scholarships. My dream school would be:
5000-15000 students (8000 optimal)
liberal arts
based in the midwest
wide variety in majors (I’m pretty undecided but looking into healthcare and business)
academically focused (not a party school)
emphasis on teaching over research
I’m open to Christian or secular schools. Please please please let me know if any of you have suggestions! I recognize that I probably won’t be able to fill all my requirements, but any advice would be appreciated. I’ve been doing quite a bit of research but haven’t found the perfect fit yet… Thank you!
First decide whether you want a Liberal Art College (LAC) or one with 5000-15000 students. All LACs enroll less than 3000 students (most of them much less than that…)
Size of the student body is a bad way to think about colleges - you have to think in terms of objectives: do you want to do research with a professor? Would you rather have interactive, discussion-based classes or are you more comfortable sitting in a large lecture hall listening to a professor lecture? Do you want to participate in sports in a variety of teams including quidditch, broomball or ultimate or watch top college sports after a wild tailgate party?
I’ll be completely honest - I never really understood the appeal of research? Maybe I’m thinking about it the wrong way, but we’ve done labs in all my science courses, and I haven’t enjoyed them very much. I would rather have discussion-based classes. I don’t play sports myself, and I don’t really care about the outcome of games when I watch, but I do like the social aspect of getting together with friends and having a good time. Does that help at all?
For reasons stated by posters above, you may want to continue refining your criteria. As your preferences currently stand, you might like the University of Rochester. Though not in the Midwest, UR can be reasonably accessible from Midwestern points.
Leaving aside financial aid issues, it sounds as if you should take a good look at the University of Chicago. That would appeal to the more intellectual side of you. If you are genuinely more interested in vocational and pre-professional studies, maybe you should be looking at Miami University of Ohio or Case Western.
Your state flagship university would be an obvious choice.
Liberal arts schools in the Midwest include University of Dubuque, Loras and Clarke in Dubuque, Is. They are in a consortium. Carleton College in MN and Beloit in Wisconsin are very good schools. These schools are located in very nice and even beautiful places, but are close to cities.
Iowa has a number of good privates as do other states in the Midwest. Search for them on the internet. St. Louis has lots of good schools as does Kansas City.
So your grades and test scores are very high, which means you would be in the running for just about every school out there. If you want to focus on the Midwest, I think most people would rate Carleton, Grinnell, Oberlin and Kenyon as the best LACs in the region. All of these schools have fewer than 5,000 students, however. As Consolidation points out, schools like University of Chicago would fit within your size parameter, but would have a very different focus and vibe from traditional LACs, especially given the large number of graduate students at the school. (For such a strong student, it’s surprising you haven’t done this basic research. But I digress.) IMHO, you are leaving some very fine options off the table if you confine yourself to the Midwest. Many of the very best LACs are in the Northeast with a few scattered about other parts of the country and it would be a broadening experience to attend one of them instead of staying in your comfort zone. Looking quickly at the college and university rankings on the US News web site will quickly orient you to schools you can research more deeply on the internet. Niche is also a decent resource online.
I don’t think Carleton offers any significant merit aid but it is a terrific school. Run the Net Price Calculators for Carleton as well as for other schools that interest you to see what your family’s estimated costs would be without merit aid.
Grinnell, Macalester, Kenyon, Oberlin, and St Olaf are all great options that do have merit aid. Business or health degrees are not commonly offered at liberal arts colleges but these schools offer terrific programs in economics, international relations, and life-science which might interest you. Also look into career planning and summer internship opportunities the different schools offer to see how you would go from a liberal arts college into the fields that interest you.
If you are looking for merit aid you may want to consider some of the Jesuit Colleges in the Midwest such as Marquette, Loyola-Chicago, and Xavier. I think they could meet a lot of your criteria. A complete list of Jesuit colleges is here. http://www.ajcunet.edu/institutions/