<p>Our son is wrestling with a decision between two programs that constitute an unusual choice. He's finding it difficult to identify points of comparison from online sources, so I suggested we ask for input from CCers.</p>
<p>Since he's an avid marching band snare drummer and we fall in the middle-class no-need-based aid zone, he chose to look at Honors programs with strong marching bands. It's come down to these two. Here are their main selling points:</p>
<p>Barrett is a separate college of ASU with its own campus on the main Tempe campus. It has 3,000 students, seven dorms, its own dining hall and student center, its own advising staff and a faculty of 19 Barrett-only faculty + Honors liaison faculty in every department. One of their prime selling points is an Office of National Scholarship Advisement that works individually with their students to prepare and coach them for Truman, Rhodes, Marshall, Udall, Goldwater, NSEP and Fulbright scholarships. Their walls are covered with hundreds of pictures of their scholarship recipients.</p>
<p>UGA Honors is a more traditional Honors program with 2,000 students, a mostly-freshman Honors dorm, and a lounge in the Honors building. Its program is centered more on the in-class experience, though the quality of campus life at UGA is highly-rated by students, so I doubt that many Honors students would want much separation from the larger student body.</p>
<p>Both offer priority registration and smaller class sizes in Honors sections.</p>
<p>The mean SATs at Barrett are 1320 / 1600 with a quarter of the students out-of-state and a more diverse student population than what we have in Georgia. UGA's Honors SATs average 1460 / 1600. Being 70 miles from our home, the student body would be similar to what we know in our town, and perhaps not expose our son to as many different perspectives.</p>
<p>Both marching bands are excellent. The drumline may be slightly more accessible at UGA than ASU, partially due to the relative sizes of the schools.</p>
<p>UGA as a whole is generally higher-ranked academically FWIW, though ASU's evaluations are often colored by an admissions policy for the larger institution that is intentionally less-selective.</p>
<p>Tuition would be free at UGA - he'd pay for room, board, some fees and incidentals. At ASU, tuition over four years would be about $70,000 after the scholarship he's been offered. We've put away $ for college and can afford the $70,000, but we are not so affluent as to be price-insensitive, and the 70K could also help fund grad school.</p>
<p>Any thoughts?</p>