Safety Liberal Arts Schools [economics, computer science, political science]

Hello, I am approaching the end of my junior year and have built a preemptive list of schools to apply to. However, with so many schools seeing large increases in applicants and therefore a decrease in acceptance rate, I was hoping to have some more comfortable safeties on my list.

I am an African American male with a 1420 SAT score, 3.9 unweighted GPA, and a number of extracurriculars. Thus far I have been mainly looking at liberal arts schools, but I’m generally interested in attending a small to medium sized school in a suburban or small town area. I also will likely pursue something in the social sciences with interests in economics, computer science, and political science/government. Here is my list so far:

ED: Colgate or Vassar
RD: Haverford, Wesleyan, Kenyon, Skidmore, Hobart & Williams,

If you have any suggestions on good safeties I could add to the list, generally in the Midwest/northeast region, that would be great! Also any other insight or target schools suggestions I should check out would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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Is cost a concern? If so, what kind of price limit are you looking at?

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St. Olaf in Northfield, MN and Lawrence College in Appleton, Wisconsin immediately jump to mind as likely/safeties for you in the Midwest. Both are also likely to give you some merit. If being in a larger city would be OK, I’d also add Macalester in St. Paul to your list - excellent in the social sciences, and also possible merit there.

In the Northeast, Bennington (in VT), Connecticut College (in New London), Trinity (Hartford).

As a prior posted has mentioned, would be helpful to know your budget.

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Hi! fortunately I’m pretty lucky in that cost is not too much of a concern and for the purpose of this post I’m not setting a limit but anywhere with a pretty good need based aid program is good

Ursinus in PA will be a safety. They are very generous with merit and have a bunch of competitive scholarships as well. I’ve been beyond impressed with them (though my child will not attend)

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Perhaps College of Wooster, Goucher, Muhlenberg, Siena (if a Catholic school works).

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St. Lawrence, Earlham, Wheaton (MA), Union, and Brandeis (target and apply test-optional)

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Have you run the net price calculators on the web sites of all of the colleges on your list and any others you are considering?

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Unsolicited advice: Seek out one or two match/safety schools that you can apply to non binding EA or rolling admission. Having an acceptance or two in place by December will take some stress off of the process.

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Truman State in Missouri is relatively low cost for out-of-state students (about $27k per year in billed costs (books, misc, travel extra)) and has an $8k automatic scholarship for your stats. So about $19k plus books, misc, and travel costs per year.

University of Minnesota - Morris is also low cost for out-of-state students (about $28k per year including books, misc, travel) and has scholarships for high stat students like you, although the wording is somewhat ambiguous (“automatic consideration”). So about $23k if you get the listed scholarships.

The one catch is that both of them are in small towns that may be rather remote.

If any of the colleges in the COPLAC list are in-state for you, you may want to consider it:

In addition to other folk’s suggestions, - For “safety”, you could add a Depauw (nice merit), Beloit (very small), Kalamazoo (in a small city), Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall - not a safety but small town. There’s lots of LACs in small towns. Not the Midwest but Hendrix in Arkansas will often match the tuition of your state flagship and is a very good school.

Do you have need? Or if not, do you have a tight budget?

Also, many schools will have fly-in programs for URMs - like Bowdoin for example.

If you want a little bigger, Bucknell (not a safety) or even Richmond…which I would say is suburban, not urban.

Good luck.

Macalester has EA. If you get in, you can drop your safeties. If you don’t, you should add more.

That is true IF the OP likes the college, IF the OP is accepted, and IF Macalester is certain to be affordable.

I continue to believe that it is a good idea to apply to one or two match/safety schools non binding EA or rolling.

Is Mac in a suburban area ? I thought more urban but haven’t been.

Op doesn’t want urban which is why I ask.

It is urban I believe (FWIW Mac was not my recommendation).

I would suggest St. Lawrence, Union, Kalamazoo, Lawrence, Franklin & Marshall, Trinity. Hobart which is on your list is an excellent choice for a safety. I would also suggest looking at Clark University as a safety. While technically not a liberal arts college it has 2300 undergrads and has a lot of overlapping features with liberal arts colleges.

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https://ctcl.org/category/college-profiles/

This CTCL is a great list to look over. If you decide to consider the Pacific Northwest, Willamette is a great school for political science. It is across the street from the Oregon State Capitol and there are a lot of internship opportunities in government, including their own law school classes.

They also recently reduced their tuition by 20% and still offered my D generous merit aid. The cost is now similar to a public, instate school. It’s also in a walkable town and not too far from Portland and Eugene. It feels like a hidden gem.

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While not a safety but maybe safer, Conn College was a nice surprise when we visited with D20 who looked at several of the schools on your list.

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look at Ithaca college and Quinnipiac for medium size. If I am remembering correctly Conn College is 60% female / 40% male. Something to look into if that sort of thing is important to you.

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Not sure if it changes anything for you, but highly recommend checking out Wesleyan’s College of Social Studies (CSS) program, especially if you’re interested in both poli sci and econ.

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