I am currently committed to UD and was waitlisted at Marist but was recently offered admission by Marist. I toured the campus and it was very nice, but I am very torn between the two schools. Marist offered me a much better financial aid package and is definitely affordable. While I can afford UD, I would have to use up almost all of my savings to attend. They are both beautiful campuses but very different; Marist is a lot smaller than UD. If anyone went to one of these schools or knows anything about the schools, which one do you think is the best option in terms of academics, social life, etc? I don’t have a lot of time to decide since May 1st was a couple days ago and if I don’t commit to Marist instead of UD soon they’ll offer my spot to someone else on the waitlist.
Which do you like best? Maybe you’d be happiest and do your best there.
What do you want to study? I would question the social life at each. U Del seems more social to me. Marist has the advantage of NYC and a smaller study body if that is important.
I applied to UD as undeclared and applied to Marist as a Digital Media major. I know that Marist has a brand new art building, so that was a big positive. I’m just not sure which one as the best student life or things to do.
UDel will have the larger student body and the activities you can find at any major flagship university. I’ve actuslly have heard very good things about UDel and students liking it much more than they originally thought they would going into freshman year.
Two experiences with Marist. One had two grads and they loved it all.
The other is a friend of my daughter and a very nice young lady. She transferred to BU this year after one year. She felt like a lot of the students from around the new york region go home or have friends come up. It felt too quiet on the weekends. How much was her outlook and attitude. I don’t know for sure. But she’s a social kid and definitely not known as a dramatic or “extra” in the friend group. She also wanted some access to a school sports teams for fun but obviously BU isn’t offering much beyond men’s ice hockey.
——However, please note that these are two very narrow examples. It’s just that it seemed to me that your concerns where exactly what happened recently to the student known to me. It could be her and not representative at all. ——
They are really different schools. UD’s social atmosphere got it listed as one of the top party schools in the country; prevented from throwing nighttime raves, the students held daytime “daves” instead. But I have relatives at UD who find it easy to avoid that scene if you are actually focused on academics first. This is especially true if you can get into either the honors program (separate dorm) or the world scholars program (check that out if you haven’t already). Marist (another relative’s school) feels a lot smaller. What you get at Marist is access to NYC internships. The folks who I know from there turned that into their first career jobs. If you want to work with a media firm in NY, you can get undergrad experience there. At UD, I believe their biggest draws historically have been nursing, chemistry/life sciences, engineering, business/finance, then the next tier of offerings. (The nearest city for a similar internship from UD’s campus would be in Wilmington or Philadelphia.)