My daughter is accepted at all four and is having difficulty deciding. UMASS Amherst is in state but she was offered scholarships at UCONN and UDEL so costs are similar. She is worried UCONN is too rural and there isn’t much to do off campus. As parents we are concerned with distance to the University of Maryland and without a scholarship, it is hard to justify.
If you want stuff to do, how can you do better than UMASS?
All are fine schools - and outcomes will likely be similar.
UMD isn’t cheap - but you’d have access to DC.
Good luck.
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This site will allow you to compare your daughter’s choices based on faculty publishing in economics: Economics rankings: US Economics Departments | IDEAS/RePEc. Of the three schools that would be similarly priced, UConn appears first.
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UMass comes with the added benefit of cross registration at the 5-college-consortium. Amherst College in particular is within walking distance (long walk) or a short bus ride (free) and has top professors & small classes. Students can take 2 classes at another college within the consortium per semester. A nice bonus is that campus food at UMass. Is consistently rated #1 in the country on Princeton Review student surveys.
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First off I’d eliminate UConn (rural location your D doesn’t love) and UMD (cost/distance). So that leaves UMass and UDelaware. If possible I’d re-visit those two colleges with your D and then let her decide.
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My vote is UMass Amherst for multiple reasons, several of which have already been mentioned.
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Thanks everyone. We agree UMASS is the best choice but there is something we think she doesn’t like about it that she won’t share. It may be it is the backup choice for most of her high school. Ruling out UMD makes sense so that leaves UCONN and UDEL. We’re hoping to convince her to visit UCONN one last time before deciding. She did a tour there and the tour guide wasn’t great which we think impacted her thoughts.
@happy1 I think you are 100% correct and we suspect she doesn’t like UMASS, although she won’t share why. She recently visited both UMASS and UDEL so I don’t know if we need another trip, but we’ll offer that to her. For rankings/distance/price (better merit award), we are trying to convince her to give UCONN one more shot with a visit. We can get behind UDEL if that is her number one choice.
My kids liked the campus of UDel over CONN (too rural). My oldest was between Rutgers and UMASS, with scholarship from UMASS costs were the same, we pursued her towards Rutgers since she had no car and we are in NJ.
Yes, tour guides can make or break a campus visit, so a second visit makes total sense.
This may be wishful thinking, but do any of these schools have “accepted students’ days”? Or an option to be hosted for an overnight?
Despite its rural location, there’s actually a lot to do at UConn, depending on her interests. What are her interests?
High Schoolers can be unrealistic - of course - about what college life is actually like, not realizing that regardless of where they go, they’ll spend all their time on campus hanging out with new friends. One of the things that she may not have thought of is that each academic semester is only 15 weeks or so long. She’ll want to see her new college friends in those other 20+ weeks when school is not in session. UConn is close enough to home - as is the rest of the state that it will be pretty easy to do that. Delaware - & the rest of the Middle Atlantic - is far enough away that it will be difficult to connect with new classmates.
Best of luck
There seems almost a stigma in some Northeast states particularly, where attending their states flagship makes some feel their choice was “too generic”, “not anything special” so to speak.
My daughter is at UMass and loves it, but a lot of her similar stat peers (top students at mid-ranked MA public HS) didn’t give it a chance. Imagine at a tip top school where UMass Amherst is a backup for most students, that’s even further compounded. I’m just adding an additional nod for UMass as it’s far better for most than how it’s often perceived. Good luck!
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@Bill_Marsh Thank you for the ideas. There is an admitted student day at UCONN that we are trying to convince her to attend. She attended one at UMASS a few weeks ago. Her main athletic thing is dancing - ballet, tap, jazz, modern, hip-hop, etc. I’m sure there is a club or something like that at UCONN. She enjoys just hanging out with friends, listening to music, community service, and exploring restaurants. She isn’t big into hiking or anything outside in winter (may explain her adding Delaware and Maryland to the list). Good point about proximity to college friends when college isn’t in session. Maybe that will help her reconsider.
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Don’t ignore gut feel as part of the process. It is fine to visit UConn again but if it doesn’t feel right to her then move on. Same with UMass.
Not necessarily. I remember talking through her choices with one of my daughters. Good in math, she thought a business major would be a good fit for her. Okay so far. Then I asked if she were not interested in business, what would she consider next? Her reply was that she had always wanted to be a nurse. What???!!! She had never mentioned nursing. Not once. Not ever. Not to me. Not to my wife. Why??? “It’s Abby’s thing, so I didn’t think I could.” Abby was a diabetic friend. She had gotten it into her head somehow that only one of them could pursue nursing and Abby was ahead of her in line. Ugh! Adolescent thinking.
The more we talked and the more she dug into it, talking with nurse friends of ours, the more she realized that this was her calling. She has gone onto become a superb nurse and is currently pursuing her nurse practitioner degree. Abby tried nursing, didn’t like it, then dropped it and moved on to something else.
This was a bright kid, top of her class, who had gotten a crazy idea into her head. An idea that made no sense. This conversation led to her eliminating 3 of the 6 colleges where she had been accepted because nursing wasn’t even an option at these schools.
My point is that taking the time to talk things through can clarify issues that weren’t even evident earlier in the process. Sometimes relying on the gut isn’t good enough.
Just my 2 cents.
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I don’t think we disagree…of course discussion/visits are all important parts of the decision process (as are finances as well as any other things a particular family seems important).
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Different points of view enrich the discussion.