New Paltz with Honors would be better for Liberal Arts than Purchase (which is well known for Performing Arts/Arts).
SUNY Geneseo has a very cute campus, is the Honors LACs among the SUNYs, and 30mn from Rochester I think.
TCNJ is a very strong LAC academically, run rhe NPC (not known for a lot of merit scholarships though).
SUNY Binghamton is a small flagship (like UVermont but cheaper¬ as pretty town) with very strong Liberal Arts.
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@Heather44, in thinking about your daughter, these are some other schools that your family may want to investigate.
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Lake Forest (IL): About 1700 undergrads at this liberal arts college along Lake Michigan. Itās a 15-minute walk to the train station and then a 1-hr train ride to the heart of Chicago, with trains every hour.
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North Central (IL): This school of about 2400 undergrads is right next to historic Napervilleās downtown and with a 5-minute walk to the train station, and after an hourās train ride, students can be at the heart of Chicago.
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Beloit (WI): This Colleges That Change Lives (CTCL) school is about 1h12m to Milwaukee, 1h2m to Madison, and 1h47m drive to Chicago.
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Xavier (OH): This Jesuit school of about 5100 undergrads is about 5 miles away from downtown Cincinnati but is in a more residential/suburban area of town.
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Muhlenberg (PA ): This school has about 2100 undergrads and is a 1h8m drive to Philadelphia and a 1h43m drive to New York City.
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Ursinus (PA ): This school of about 1600 undergrads is also a member of CTCL. Itās a 42m drive to Philadelphia and 2h to NYC.
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Rowan (NJ): A larger school with around 15k undergrads. A 2-minute walk to the train station followed by 65m on a train will bring you to the heart of Philadelphia. Alternatively, a 30-minute drive will bring you in to the city as well. Students with unweighted GPAs above 3.7 are invited to apply to the honors college, which also sponsors trips to NYC, Philadelphia, and D.C. @MACmiracle may be able to provide more context about this school. My impression is that it is not a suitcase school.
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Seton Hall (NJ): This school of about 6100 undergrads has been mentioned by others, but I would second taking a closer look at it. A 14-minute walk to the train station followed by a 38m train ride will get you to Penn Station in NYC. Itās also a 1h30m drive to Philadelphia.
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Wagner College.
Iāve been off line for a while, just seeing many posts. Thank you all and I am looking forward to going through them
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Ok! I have been researching like mad including many of these recommendations and I think we have progress. Weāre heading out there next week for college visits.
This thread really helped me, and her, start to clarify somethings she wants. The suitcase concept is definitely a big concern so weāre being extra careful about that.
Also, realizing that the Northeast is a challenging place to go to college for someone in her situation (not super-strong app, moderate budget). Now weāre thinking of going
Northeast as one big reach, and will look more at the midwest and places like Elon for safeties. Weāre guessing that sheāll only go if she can get into one of the more ānationalā vs more āregionalā schools, and get enough aid for it to work.
Also it seems her deepest desire is for lots of small, discussion-based classes with highly engaged students and profs and mind-expanding ideas. But also practically wants internships and pathways for professional development and jobs (really worries about getting a job).
Specifically would like there to be a journalism and criminal justice option, but thatās not a dealbreaker. She loves to study history, law, government but worries about employment there. Sheās also business-curious. And fundamentally is just not sure what else she might be interested in that she hasnāt discovered yet.
Ideally 3,000-10,000 students, would really like to avoid going down to 1500 or too big (not sure what that is). Ideally very close to a city, but open now to sacrificing that priority if thereās enough benefit.
So our visit list now is:
Brandeis
Clark
UMass Amherst
Providence
URI (was very hard to choose btwn this or UNH)
Quinnipiac (in the spirit of a safety she might really like)
Fordham
Lafayette
Lehigh
Franklin and Marshall
ā¦and maybe Gettysburg if weāre not too tired
(Fairfield has come on and off the list probably 15 times)
Thank you all again so much for your help with this! Iām open to more thoughts or advice as well.
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I forgot to answer: the 3.88 is unweighted. Also, update, took the ACT full practice test for a baseline (no prep) and got 28. Sheās now doing prepscholar and tests in September.
No Marist?
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Getting aid/merit at a national (rather than regional) school in the northeast is going to be extremely difficult. I agree that Marist should be added. You might want to look at URI.
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Can we get back to budget ? Is it the Purchase price or more ?
For criminology Iād definitely want a more inexpensive school. A Lafayette, F&M without aid will not be cheap. And schools like that wonāt likely have the major although classes in the sociology major might be able to be cobbled together . Fine schools they are but theyāll be very narrow geographically as well. If sheās ok with that then great.
There are no assurances to internships and jobs. That depends on the studentās effort on securing one.
I saw it with my son, my daughter for this summer and for the fall in Washington DC where sheās put forth large effort and has secured great success.
Hereās one of many rankings. Go to the bottom and you can further search for grip graphs such as New England.
Note that criminology is a solid, psychology&sociology-based major but more common (as a specialization within Sociology) at the graduate level, whereas Criminal Justice is widely consldered a vocational major (DoC, Law enforment).
Lehigh may be too fratty.
Have you visited Muhlenberg already? Ursinus?
Wheaton-MA or SUNY Geneseo and West Chester U may be within budget, StMarys of Maryland sounds like a good academic fit but probably too isolated.
It sounds like she describes colleges from the Colleges That Change Lives consortium.
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I would have SUNY New Paltz on the list ā you probably can visit Marist the same day.
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Iāll loop back and reconsider Marist. I took it off along with Drew and Seton Hall, Fairfield, Wheaton because we had to cut some things out for visiting, and I found myself erring on the side of reach/far-reach as opposed to the safer-sides for the Northeast. We do actually have URI on the list.
My thoughts are that if she just loves the area when we get there, and wants to ensure an acceptance in the northeast, we can pivot and visit more safeties and less reaches.
Any thoughts on Marist vs Quinnipiac?
I have the impression that what might be a reach (financially or otherwise) in the NE might be closer to a match in the midwest, and midwest safeties might be higher caliber than her safeties in the NE. Am I wrong about this?
Budget is hard to say. I think at U of Oregon sheād get very good aid, so it can feel hard to justify going elsewhere. And I am also thinking a lot about saving what she has available for grad school. We could pretty comfortably do 50k net, and maybe more but I just canāt get my head around paying that much for college (my dad was first-generation, in-state public, and I went to a solid but very inexpensive LAC, so itās not in my family culture). Yet it seems that many families who have more experience with education do invest 50k or more. Sorry for the long answer on that.
Forgot to say, with the SUNYs Iām just (perhaps overly) concerned about the suitcase thing.
And, again apologies, I meant to say we could comfortable do 60k net.
My suggestion to you is that you run the net price calculator on the schools before you travel to the east coast. My daughter was accepted to 3 of the schools on your list but we are in state for UMASS but I would definitely run the NPC for Providence College. They are not known for aid and even though my daughter received aid, the cost of attendance was well over the cost of attendance of any her other other schools. Clark University was quite generous and the cost of attendance is lower than some of the Northeast privates. You donāt want to travel to east coast only to find out some of the schools that you visited are outside your budget range.
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Thank you, this hits the nail on the head for me, because I canāt figure out how much schools will actually cost in the end. I look at the college scorecard and the average cost for our income bracket as my best estimation.
Iāve gathered that NPCs arenāt reliable, have you found otherwise? If so that would be fantastic
Also, great to know about Clark and Providence!
The NPC for us was very accurate at all of D23ās accepted schools. In fact we initially took Providence off the list because the NPC was too high. At the last minute she put it back on her app list swapping it out for a school that would have been much more of a reach for her. The NPC was the exact same amount as her financial aid package! One caveat that was an estimate and not a guaranteed amount for 4 years. Also, Providence College will consider 100% of your home equity if you own a home. You might also want look that up for your private schools.
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Thank you for this!! I think Iāll just take Providence off, it was hanging by a thread anyway and makes space for others. Since it sounds like our daughters had a little overlap, any thoughts on schools I should add?
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SUNY Binghamton and Geneseo are not suitcase campuses. New Paltz a little. Stony Brook, definitely.
Marist feels more diverse than Quinnipiac or Providence. More likely to offer merit aid AFAIK.
Iād definitely visit Drew to get a sense of a small campus with easy access to NYC, since itās sth sheās interested in. See if she can meet a professor or student ambassadors from your region or in majors sheās considering.
IMHO itās more important to visit matches bc odds of attending are higher and fit may not be perfect so you want to make sure there are no deal-breakers. YMMV.
NPCs, if they ask lots of questions, tend to be pretty accurate.
OTOH, if they only ask you 4 questions where one is āincome 30k? 40?..99+?ā With nothing above 99k, then the NPC Isnāt accurate.
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