When no university in- state offers desired major

<p>Dd thinks she wants to major in linguistics. That is not an option at any in-state school. I have tried to explore southeastern exchange and it states that there are no exchange programs listed. Am I missing another search option?</p>

<p>Not stated in your post, but presumably relevant:</p>

<ul>
<li>Net price limit?</li>
<li>Student’s academic credentials as they may be relevant for qualifying for admission to selective schools with good financial aid or earning large merit scholarships?</li>
<li>Any other needs or wants in a school?</li>
</ul>

<p>You could try searching for all colleges with the major on the usual college search sites, then applying the affordability and other screens to them.</p>

<p>What branch of linguistics? She should be reading the college/university catalogues carefully. Depending on the specific branch of that field, the coursework might be inside any number of other departments.</p>

<p>She is only a sophomore. We have started looking since there is no IS option. We are homeschoolers. She is an advanced student. She.is currently taking Russian 2, Latin 4, French ? (Not sure how you would translate it in PS terms. She is reading books like Chronicles of Narnia in French and has completed through AP texts but hasn’t taken the AP exam.). She tookthe ACT in middle school for a talent search. The only scores i remember are the ones that mattered… 29 math and 24 English. I assuming she’all score around a 32 BC she is such a strong student and she freaked out going into the high school when she took it before.</p>

<p>Finances will drive the decision. We cannot afford our EFC.</p>

<p>As far as which branch, she isn’t sure. She is also interested in Slavic studies. She loves Russian. We are traveling to Chicago in the spring for the Olympiada. We have looked at various depts and have not seen any linguistic majors, mostly just a handful of classes.</p>

<p>My daughter’s first choice of major was not available in-state either. We did two things. First, we looked at what was available in-state that she could make work for her interests and found a first and second choice school in-state so that if she decided she didn’t want to leave home, or we couldn’t find an affordable option out of state, she had a plan. Then we made a list of schools offering the program she wanted. This was less than 25 schools. From that list we researched the schools and programs and the likelihood of merit scholarships and applied from there. One was in our western states exchange program. The others were farther off. She’s now a happy freshman at one of the out of state options.
It’s great to start the search early and have time to do the research on specific programs for the kid with focused interests. </p>

<p>what is your state of residence?</p>

<p>you might try a large search using college navigator. plug in your major interests, narrow it down if you can; narrow down the region if you can.</p>

<p><a href=“College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics”>http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>There are over 500 linguistics programs in the US. Some are in departments of classic; others in english; others in Slavic languages but not any other languages. One of them has to be affordable and a place where your D can be admitted.</p>

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It can be difficult to find linguistics courses outside a proper linguistics department. The most you’ll typically find in various foreign languages (Slavic, Germanic, Semitic, etc.) is a course on comparative linguistics (specific to that language branch) and/or a historical linguistics course (again, specific to that language branch). General introductory classes, if they’re offered at all, would most likely be in the departments of English or anthropology (linguistic anthropology courses). </p>

<p>At the very least, an undergrad should have a solid grounding in syntax, morphology, phonology, phonetics, semantics, and historical linguistics – so look for those courses. Be sure to investigate how often they’ve been offered. Courses like sociolinguistics, computational linguistics, neurolinguistics, and language acquisition are nice, but they’re not necessary for most undergrads. </p>

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It’s possible to get in-state tuition for a program that’s not listed. Look into the petition process. </p>

<p>If the ACM doesn’t work out, you can start looking for colleges with good linguistics programs that tend to offer a significant amount of merit aid.</p>

<p>UGA has an extremely good linguistics program. Strong applicants can get their OOS tuition waived, and the best will get more merit $ on top of that. Arizona, Pitt, BU, Tulane, and the like would also be decent options if she could get sufficient merit aid. </p>

<p>You may have to look pretty far afield for good linguistics and good merit aid. With the notable exception of UT Austin and a couple of others, the South is significantly lacking in colleges with good linguistics programs. You also won’t find much in the way of relatively obscure languages at southern colleges, but she’s interested in pretty mainstream languages, so that’s less of an issue. </p>

<p>Have her start by checking comp lit and modern language programs. Courses for other branches of linguistics are likely to be found the psychology, anthropology, comp sci, cognitive science, etc. programs.</p>

<p>Look at schools that let you design your own major and have those classes within other depts. Like @happymomof1 says, look to see what a school offers in its modern language programs, as well as English, psych, anthropology, etc. </p>

<p>Also, keep in mind that she’s only a soph in high school…she could end up changing her career goals a few times before she settles on one.</p>

<p>What is your state of residence? I wrote a chapter in my book that deals with getting in-state tuition for out of state students. Many states have reciprocity deals with certain schools in their region to offer instate tuition for majors that aren’t offered in a particular state. If you can post your state, I can check my book to see if it is in a region that offers this and give you a phone number to find out more information.</p>

<p>Look at New College of Florida, it offers some majors that your daughter may find of interes. OOS tuition is not too high. It is a public honors college. </p>

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<p>Your actual price limit would be of relevance.</p>

<p>Being able to afford $35,000 per year with a FAFSA EFC of $50,000 is a lot different in terms of what colleges can be affordable from being able to afford $5,000 per year with a FAFSA EFC of $20,000.</p>

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<p>not too high is relative. It’s not too high if the COA is what the OP can pay.</p>

<p>We need to know what the target net cost is. For instance, if the target net cost is $15k per year, then the student would need a full tuition scholarship.</p>

<p>Thank you for all of the replies. I did use the nces search engine, and I still could not find anything in-state. Based on our lives right now, $10,000/yr would be our max. Her brother is currently attending his school on multiple 4 yr scholarships (merit, not need based.) That fits our budget well. ;)</p>

<p>Warblersrule (love your posting name. Dd’s other passion is ornithology) thank you for all that info. I will start investigating the possible petition process. There are several linguistic courses on iTunes U and opencourseware. We are putting together a more indepth study for her to start in the spring. She is hoping it might give her a sense of direction.</p>

<p>While I am not completely positive she will pursue linguistics, I am confident she will be pursuing something along those lines. She loves language. It is something she just really enjoys immersing herself in. She is the type of kid who reads things like Marmion for pleasure reading and would study a 4th language tomorrow if she could drop math and science. (Which is sad from my POV bc she is a really strong math student, too. My kids up to now have been so tilted toward STEM degrees that her interests are far removed from our frame of reference.)</p>

<p>She may want to continue math study to the point of being good with logic and statistics, as these appear to be of some use in linguistics (and statistics will be of use in many social studies subjects which may be of interest in relation to linguistics).</p>

<p>Your D’s interests are a lot like my D’s, and your need for a prudent COA is familiar. My D has a lot of experience with other languages than yours but like your D she just likes languages. We found strong linguistics programs at UMD-CP, which does a lot of work with compsci and federal govt-funded language institutes. They were equaled in our eyes by UPitt, where she is now. Pitt linguistics requires at least a semester in a non-European language, which is good prep for grad school, of course. Both schools had strong language departments, with the variety edge going to Pitt. The neuroscience possibilities were greater at Pitt, and Pitt neurosci is some of the best in the country. So she might double major. Another interesting bit about Pitt is that a lot of students arriving with lots of AP/IB credit will double major and minor. Harder to do that at UMD. Pitt also offered good merit; it was tough to get but it was available to OOS students.</p>

<p>Take a look at Ohio State, too. It’s a strong program as well. All these schools come in 40-43K/yr and each offers merit to high-achieving OOS students.</p>

<p>The NRC/Chronicle ranking covers about 50 graduate programs in linguistics (<a href=“http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124741/”>http://chronicle.com/article/NRC-Rankings-Overview-/124741/&lt;/a&gt;). There probably are not too many more robust undergraduate linguistics programs, other than the ones at those ~50 schools, that cover the gamut of linguistics subject matter including phonetics & phonemics, morphology, syntax, semantics, historical/comparative linguistics, etc. </p>

<p>Public schools that are on the NRC list, and have OOS costs under $40K (before aid) include Ohio State, Maryland, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. At Minnesota, the COA for OOS students after average n-b aid is about $21K, according to Kiplinger’s (which may be a year or more out of date, so check the online net price calculator). Don’t forget to factor in “self help” (work-study or loans).</p>

<p>The University of Pittsburgh is not on the NRC list, but does seem to offer a good selection of linguistics courses. Pitt offers merit scholarships (although the standards appear to be pretty high: <a href=“https://oafa.pitt.edu/learn-about-aid/academic-scholarships/”>https://oafa.pitt.edu/learn-about-aid/academic-scholarships/&lt;/a&gt;).</p>

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<p>That’s not necessarily the kind of kid who would enjoy linguistics (the scientific study of language).<br>
If she has not done so already, she better research what linguistics entails before making programs in that field a deciding factor. She might be happier with something else such as comparative literature or area studies.</p>

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<p>Thank you, but she has actually spent quite a bit of time researching linguistics. My point was that words fascinate her. The structure of language fascinates her.</p>