If you can’t visit the other campuses, then my vote would be to go with Sewanee. I’ve never visited it, but out of curiosity I checked the website: the campus and immediate surroundings look amazing. If this is important to you, and you also felt a good connection with the student body, then i would go for it, if it is affordable.
Brandeis campus is not for everyone (the physical campus). It’s not particularly attractive – although i must say my kids did like it. It’s a little outside Boston, and if that’s of interest, i think you really need to do a little more digging to see how much students really do venture in. My guess is that most of the life is campus-centric.
I would not be concerned about a difference in the quality of the academic experience – unless you sat in on classes at Sewanee and felt that students did not seem engaged in discussion or what they were learning. Research, too, shouldn’t be of concern – most LACs encourage students to get involved with research, and students don’t have to compete with grad students for those opportunities, as might be the case at universities.
I only used Forbes ranking because it is the only one that I know of that ranks liberal arts colleges and research universities together; so that Brandeis could be compared to the other two. Plus the point was not to rank them but to show that they are comparable. I do not consider the difference between HC at #53 and Sewanee at #98 to be notable. My purpose was to refute the notion that Sewanee should not “be in the same conversation” as one poster stated.
All college rankings contain distortions. Forbes is not more distorted than any other, just differently distorted. The actual differences between Forbes and US News are quite minor. Most rankings confirm conventional wisdom.
The worst thing is that some schools have learned to “game” the rankings in order to raise their profile. Worse yet, no ranking can tell any student how well he or she will fit in. Which is extremely important. Thus, OP is wise to disregard them generally.
@midatlmom those aren’t very good sources to form a ranking but I’m not sure of any rankings that seem to use great criteria. I like rate my professors more than some random peer assessment that US new usues. Neither help anything too much though. Definitely agree about pay scale. All the top schools are big on engineering.
@par72 thanks for the input! I think I could be happy academically and socially at all three. It’s hard for me to distinguish holy cross and Sewanee academically too much. Brandeis is different obviously because it’s a national research university. They do offer a wider variety of interesting majors but I’m still not crazy about larger intro courses and a bit uneasy about research taking away from teaching.
Honestly I think I’ll be happy at any of my choices. I’ll try to really think through finances and talk to my mom but f it can work I’m still leaning towards Sewanee because of the visit.
Given your visit, and its outstanding reputation, I think that Sewanee is worth the slightly higher cost if you can make it work. Go For It! :-bd
The cost difference (for you, personally) between Brandeis and Sewanee is only about $3500 per year, or about $14,000 over four years. This for a college you really like versus one that you are hesitant about because of “larger intro courses and a bit uneasy about research taking away from teaching” which is a totally legitimate consideration.
Sewanee! If you loved Sewanee, I can’t see passing up that opportunity for Boston - forget the rankings.
Sewanee is an amazing place. Brandeis is great, but good luck finding “nature” in Boston. (I went to grad school there). No question other expenses will be higher at B, and travel to Boston (all the way from Texas, right?) will be a nightmare in the winter and more expensive, most likely.
But I live in Colorado and have visited Sewanee…No comparison! Sewanee is 13,000 acres of nature, right there without having to look. It must be seen to be believed!
I’ve heard Brandeis isn’t bad for green spaces as far as suburban campuses but I do feel like Sewanee is fairly unique as far as access to nature and something I really want. I will try to learn more about the Brandeis outing club. The cost at Brandeis will be less but I do think it will be easier to keep a low personal cost at Sewanee to close the gap a bit. I just found info on merit scholorships and I found that the merit part of my award for Sewanee only requires a 2.0 to renew. I plan to succeed but I find it kind of scary when schools have a 3.25 or higher requirement for renewing scholarships. My other serious choices are all need aid only(unless Denison made a serious mistake with the aid they have me. Merit there but virtually no need based) Anyway I’m just going to do as much as I can to learn about Brandeis and Berea and give them a fair chance but I feel comfortable choosing Sewanee now after giving my excitement from the visit some time to settle.
Unfortunately, almost all colleges apply merit aid to need aid first. In other words if your need is, say, $25,000 per year but you earned $20,000 in merit aid, then you would only actually get $5,000 in need aid. In short, the merit aid does not do you any good unless it exceeds need.
I live near Denison and have visited a couple of times. Excellent school, but personally I would choose Sewanee over Denison if the costs were similar.
@NROTCgrad I think I’ll feel the same way. I’m visiting next weekend though. Another free fly out which I feel extremely lucky to get. I’m not appealing the aid at Denison unless I like it more than Sewanee and after last weekend it will be tough. Also I get what you are saying about aid and it seems to be true. It’s just the net price calculator came close to meeting my need and it was on that list of most socioeconomicly diverse on NY times with a decent net price for low income. Also heard good results from aid in the past for other students. When I got aid they gave me decent merit but left a huge gap around 10K dollars more than other offers.
Jmbakh - Have you asked Brandeis it if will fly you out to see the school (and you could probably tack on Holy Cross in the same trip)? I really don’t see any reason not to ask.
All 3 schools are very good academically. I think it basically comes down to fit. We visited Brandeis with my first college student and found the place to be depressing. No one looked happy. It’s kind of an old and dumpy looking place. Holy Cross is your typical post card campus. Nice buildings and beautiful grounds. It is on a big hill though and ugly Worcester is right on the other side of that noisy highway. Can’t speak for Sewanee.
@midatlmom I could try tomorrow. I should have earlier. I was just hesitant because I haven’t contacted my admissions rep ever for either school and I though a free trip was a pretty uncommon thing. Brandeis says they are no longer taking over night requests so I doubt they’ll fly me out.
@hastalavista I am a bit worried about the Brandeis campus. I mean I don’t want to be superficial and I think it looks cool in pics but I’ve heard mixed reviews and it makes me more nervous without the visit. Plus combine that with the fact that the Sewanee campus blew me away.
Also I just found out I got into St. Olaf off the wait-list today. It seems really weird. I didn’t even know schools accepted off the wait list so early. That WL result was my first RD result and I did tell the rep I was interested but I supplied none of the information he asked for because within the week I had other acceptances an I knew how bad WL chances are especially when financial need is in the picture. Anyway I didn’t want any more options but I will definitely consider it if the aid is good.
There is zero comparison between Sewanee and Brandeis. Different planets. Especially because you are not used to East coast culture. Just no. My D had Sewanee as her first choice but because our EFC is too high, we can’t afford it. Same for Denison.
Be very, very thankful for these offers . You have more options than many others. Then accept the one that makes most sense. Probably not Brandeis.
@4kids4college they are definitely very different schools. Brandeis seemed like a perfect fit for me socially, but Sewanee always seemed like a bad fit socially and I really liked it there. I’m not sure the culture shock would be bad at Brandeis and it is a very diverse student body. I am concerned about the size and style of academics not being what I was looking for. Even though it’s a great school and maybe the smallest national research university, it’s still not a small undergrad only LAC like my other options. Anyway I’m sorry Sewanee and Denison can’t work for your daughter. I’m likely the same for Denison but I do recognize that if my family wasn’t going through tough times economically I would never be considering any of my choices. I’m very lucky in that regard. Anyway I thought your daughter was headed to Southwestern and if that’s the case it seems like a great school! I really liked all three Texas LACs. They definitely have great merit but I avoided them in the end only because I knew the need based aid wasn’t there.
In terms of small classes, both Sewanee and Brandeis offer almost identical percentages of classes with fewer than 20 students - approximately 60%, so I’m not sure you’re completely correct about the size and style of the academics at Brandeis being all that different. Moreover, there’s a stat that I often think is crucial that you might want to consider. At Sewanee, 88% of the freshman return for sophomore year and the 6 year graduation rate is 78%. At Brandeis, 93% of the freshman return for sophomore year and the 6-year graduation rate is 90%. Although we can’t know the reasons (could be the school is not a good fit, could be financial, could be a change in academic focus, could be unhappiness with academic options or campus culture etc.), that means that a very significant percentage of freshman you enter with at Sewanee are not sticking around. Brandeis, by comparison, is retaining and graduating a much higher percentage of entering freshman, which generally means that they are fairly satisfied with the opportunities offered and their experience at the school.
I’m pretty familiar with the common data sets for all the schools I applied to as I used them to help determine my chances. I agree that the six year graduation rate is very good at Brandeis but Sewanee does not have a bad rate at all and I have a feeling it’s improving. I mean not many schools are above 75%. I thought it was alarming when I was seeing state schools in the 40s and lower but 70s seem fine. According to admissions there was a 50% increase in applicants from last year. Currently there’s a decent gap between entering student stats between Brandeis and Sewanee so I don’t think the difference in graduation rate is surprising or an issue. I know Brandeis has small classes but Sewanee had 3 classes last year with over 50 students where Brandeis has 42 classes 50-99 and 19 over 100. That means I’ll have fairly large intro science classes. I plan to be a pre med bio major and bio is their most popular major. I’ve heard intro bio and intro psych can be as big as 240.
