I’m currently finishing up junior year at a school in Westchester, NY and I was wondering what suggestions you might have for colleges I should look at.
Stats:
SAT: 1990 (1330 CR+M) (I took the old SAT)
GPA: 3.67 uW – strong upward trend
I want to major in some area of business, maybe just econ but I’m not sure yet. I’d prefer a smaller school but I would also really like a school with big sports – school spirit is important to me. I’d also like to be somewhere in driving distance, or at the worst a short flight.
For now don’t worry about financial aid; I’d like all the suggestions I can get and I can narrow down based on my financials
separately.
Have you looked through a copy of The Fiske Guide to Colleges? Your GC may have a copy. Once you identify schools, take a couple of steps:
Run the Net Price Calculator on each college website. Note that they are not super accurate if your parents are divorced or have a small business or own rental property. A huge reason students can’t go to the colleges they prefer is finances, and this gives you an idea of affordability. We also have a lot of experience with this, so you should come back here to discuss if you have any financial constraints. Don’t skip this, you will waste a lot of time.
Google “Common Data Set” with each college name. You will see a lot of info on each college – test ranges, financial aid info, etc.
For an analysis of economics departments at smaller colleges, this source would be worth a look: “Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges,” IDEAS.
I would try the supermatch function to the left. Also get your hands on some college guide books (ex. Fiske, Insiders Guide, Princeton Review) at your guidance dept, library, or bookstore and start reading.
Also, there is a big difference between applying to business programs and being an economics major so think about what you want to do. If you want business, you need to limit yourself to schools with an undergraduate b-school In general, economics is a liberal arts course of study and is very theoretical at the higher levels. If you go the b-school route you will take a core curriculum of business classes in areas such as accounting, finance, IT, management, etc. and will major in one of those disciplines. One is not better or worse, but they are different paths. Spend some time looking at the curriculum of the different ways to go at some schools and see if one path interests you more than the other.
In general it is hard to find a combination of a smaller school and big time sports. Some ideas might be Fordham (Rose Hill), URichmond, Villanova, Lehigh, Lafayette (no b-school at Laf) --but Lehigh and Lafayette have a huge sports rivalry that you may enjoy,
Bucknell seems like a solid choice, I’ll definitely look into it. Only thing that concerns me there is it seems a bit too fraternity based for me. I’m not opposed to joining one but I don’t really want to feel like I have to. Richmond seems like the best for me probably probably; definitely on the right track there. Lehigh, Lafayette, and Nova all seem like good options too. Thanks for the help
If you want school spirit, you might want to look outside NY even if you want a state school. NY public ed isn’t a place I’d look for school spirit! If you want to stay close to NY, Penn State is always a great and an obvious option for someone who wants a lot of school spirit but it is not small. You typically find school spirit and sports at larger schools. State flagships often have great school spirit and great sports but you’d need to improve your scores.
Villanova may be the perfect fit for you. Just finished my freshman year, and it is a school on the smaller side with HUGE sports. After winning the NCAA national championship this year, sports will be even bigger in the upcoming years. As for your stats, Villanova may be a reach for business after this year’s #1 ranking by Bloomberg. However, it seems like a great fit and there’s not too much harm in applying! (Despite the harm to your wallet)
So if you do need financial aid at all, Penn State should probably not be on your list. You are out of state (and even in-state aid is pretty poor). You won’t get any financial aid at all, so it will be very expensive.
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I’m currently finishing up junior year at a school in Westchester, NY and I was wondering what suggestions you might have for colleges I should look at.
Stats:
SAT: 1990 (1330 CR+M) (I took the old SAT)
GPA: 3.67 uW – strong upward trend
I want to major in some area of business, maybe just econ but I’m not sure yet. I’d prefer a smaller school but I would also really like a school with big sports – school spirit is important to me. I’d also like to be somewhere in driving distance, or at the worst a short flight.
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Are you going to retest? Are you also going to take the ACT?
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For now don’t worry about financial aid; I’d like all the suggestions I can get and I can narrow down based on my financials separately.
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BAD PLAN. people here are only going to suggest 20-30 schools at most. Likely most or all will not be affordable if your parents can’t/won’t pay much or the schools don’t give much aid.
WHAT GOOD does a list of 30 schools do you if none are affordable???
Do you want to be posting a year from now saying that you got into 8 schools, but NONE are affordable???
There are hundreds and hundreds of colleges we could recommend.
Wouldn’t it be a LOT better if we knew the financial circumstances so that when we recommend some to you, a good number will be likely affordable???
Ok here’s the deal with financial aid. I have an older brother in college right now and my family and I understand how the process works. Due to our financial situation it would be most beneficial if we stayed away from OOS public schools and were more focused on private schools. Financial aid is important to us (although my family is able to afford nearly $50000 per year) but it’s impossible for you to know what type of aid we’d get, so I’d like as many options as possible. One other thing, a lot of these suggestions look really good and I’m visiting many (Nova, Richmond, Lehigh…) but if I do have one complaint with them as a group is that they seem to be very fraternity focused. It’s not something I’m opposed to doing but I don’t want it to feel like its thing to do around campus
It is not impossible to know what kind of aid you would get. Every college has a net price calculator that you can run to see an estimate of the need based aid you would get. A few colleges show merit aid, too. You can also look at the Common Data Set (Google it) for almost every college, and there is a section that shows the # of students who get merit aid and the average amount – so a rough way to think of it is that if you think you are in that percentage of the top of the admitted class, you maybe get that average amount of merit. You can glean more info from the pages on scholarships on the school website, too.
It is not unknowable, you just have to know where to look.