Student generally likes schools in the midsize (~15,000-25,000 student range) and pretty much anything visited outside that range gets shunned for being too large or small. However, two schools are on the list post-visit that fall way outside of those parameters, in opposite directions: University of Alabama (38,000+ students) and Lyon College (a little less than 700 students). Reasons stated for liking both are: weather, prominent Greek life, heavy academic focus, lots of resources directed at the respective psychology departments, and good merit aid opportunities, which are things that seem to be real key points for schools seen in terms of making or not making the list. That said, I figure out what made these two schools that are drastically different in size, both from each other (a 37,000+ student gap!) and from the rest of the list, “click” so much. Any of thoughts on the relative pros/cons of a very large or very small school for a student who seems genuinely drawn to mid-size schools?
My kid’s top two choices…one was a public university with 30,000 students or so, and one was a private university with 6000 students or so.
At this point, your student is applying, not matriculating. If the kid likes all of these schools…apply and see where he gets accepted.
Has the student visited all of these colleges? If not, once accepted, pick the top three, and visit…you can wait until after acceptances if you want to.
I agree with thumper1, some students are not ready to decide big versus small.
And they could change their mind on major, so that might eliminate small later, so leave them all on there, if you can afford for your student to apply to many schools.
I think this is pretty common. Kids are still figuring it out senior year. My D applied to a lot of small, a couple medium, and a few large colleges b/c she didn’t know what she wanted in terms of size. One of the large colleges made the list b/c of a particular program they had that she was interested in.
It was during accepted students visits that she realized she wanted small, though one of the large made her ‘final four.’
Agree with other posters to leave them on for now - your child will figure it out once acceptances come in and visits are complete. My d applied to all small LACs and one outlier and ended up at the outlier.
With 700 students and a Forbes grade of C for financial health, Lyon College may not be around that long…
Thanks. These impressions are post-visit. The current list is:
-University of Alabama
-Lyon College
-Missouri State
-Appalachian State
-Florida Institute of Technology (that one’s a bit of a merit aid question mark, though)
The idea of a small college not having the options if plans change is worrisome, though, especially because the heavy need for merit makes transferring not really much of option.
One of my D’s safeties was a tiny school, where the rest of her list was large ones, but she loved the vibe - down to earth students, great facilities, collaborative approach to engineering, research opportunities, study abroad for engineers, co-ops, and ability to keep up with her music so checked every other box aside from size.
Size is less important than the quality of programs, the curriculum generally (what majors are offered, for example), and the “quality of life” (which I think of as student life, atmosphere, school spirit, extracurricular options).
My older kid applied to colleges ranging from small liberal arts colleges to mega-universities. He ended up in between, based on the quality of the programs and the location. But he had a good range of choices after the acceptances came in. That worked out just fine, after a couple of campus visits.
Fl Tech is not in the ‘ideal’ size for him either. It may list 9000 or so students but there are only about 3500 on campus. There are a lot of students on co-ops or internships, there are a lot of online students. The psychology program is very very good, for both forensic psych and autism studies.
The NPC includes the amount you should get in merit, although the programs change so often you can’t be sure of what will be there. Most merit is based on gpa and test scores, so somewhat automatic. There are ‘bonus’ merit awards (or guaranteed minimums) for things like being an eagle scout or in robotics or going to a STEM high school.
My kid applied to schools with student bodies from 1400 to 40K+. Program quality and faculty were big deciding factors in applying. He ended up at one of the bigger schools despite initially being drawn to the smaller/midsize schools he applied to. Let him apply and let the process unfold. They learn more about the schools and themselves through the process.
My kid was pretty sure he wanted a mid-size research university. (5000-7000 undergrads). He kept Vassar on his list in case come April he changed his mind about LACs. Come April he still thought Vassar was too small though he liked the vibe otherwise.
Same as @MusakParent over here. My kid applied to schools that ranged from 1,600 LAC to 40k mega-u. Ended up at the mega-u. While he would have been fine at any of 'em, he decided that after attending small Catholic schools for 12 years, it was time to go big. 
Looking back, it was probably good that he applied to a range. He had choices.
Both kids were absolutely certain that they wanted small LACs (and that is where they ended up), but we encouraged (insisted?) that they apply to at least one larger school, because a lot can change in the year from when they are choosing schools to apply to and when they actually show up on campus.
It’s interesting to me that people wonder why a student should have, say, a large public on the same list as a small private, but no questions it when a kid applies to all the Ivies. They are also a very diverse lot of schools.
Having colleges of different sizes on the list should not be too surprising, unless the student’s “fit” criteria actually do include a specific size range (many students do not have size range in their “fit” criteria).
Similarly, applying to all of the Ivy League schools suggests that the applicant’s “fit” criteria are primarily based on exclusivity or prestige, rather than other characteristics of the schools.
- The daughter of some close friends wound up with her "final four" being -- a public flagship (19,000 undergraduates, 30,000 total) engineering school in a mid-sized city -- a very high-prestige computer science school in a private university (6,500 undergraduates, 14,000 total) in a mid-sized city -- a very high-prestige private university (6,300 undergraduates, 17,000 total) with no engineering department in a large city -- a top-20 liberal arts college (2,000 undergraduates) in a small town They were all obviously very different, but there was something (really some set of things) about each of them that appealed to her (including, for the public university, that it would cost a lot less than any of the others. None of them was her first or second choice -- she wasn't accepted at those schools.
She, too, wound up choosing the outlier – the small-town small LAC. It was a great choice. She did all the things she wanted to do in college, including sophisticated research (at a different university) and a semester of study abroad in India, and she wound up with exactly the job she dreamed about getting when she was applying to college (working alongside graduates of various famous technical schools and Ivies). There is more than one pathway from point A to point B.
- My daughter was pretty certain she wanted to go to a research university in a large city. But she applied to one rural LAC as her "LAC safety" in case April rolled around and she couldn't handle something that was big and non-intimate. As it happened, she didn't need it, but under other circumstances she would have been glad to have kept it alive as an option.
My other kid sounds a bit like JHS’s kid #1. He was looking for good CS programs and top science. His schools ranged in size from 800 undergrads at Caltech, to several mid sized research universities and originally had planned on applying to UCB, with 30,000 undergrads. He didn’t think it was too big, but dropped it for other reasons.