<p>I want to get my degree in Anthropology and plan on going to grad school</p>
<p>-Tulane University (crazy expensive, awesome city, great education)</p>
<p>-New College of Florida (eccentric, focused on learning for learning's sake)</p>
<p>-Burnett Honors College at UCF (free & close to home)</p>
<p>-St. Mary's College of Maryland (far from home, but great school)</p>
<p>I mean this in a nice way, but how do you expect anyone to answer this for you? We know nothing about you. We have no idea what your academic record is, or what you can afford. I can tell you that you shouldn’t pick your school based on your proposed major, unless you know for sure that a particular school is very weak in that major.</p>
<p>These are really different schools with different environments. Pick the one that you think fits best overall, including non-academic factors, that you can afford.</p>
<p>I agree with everything fc said, but I’ll try to give you an answer anyway (sorta).</p>
<p>If one of your options is free and it meets your needs, then unless your family is very wealthy, you need a pretty good justification to pick a high cost college. “Awesome city” is not good enough. Either NCF are SMCM would be much cheaper than Tulane; they also offer very good academics.</p>
<p>SMCM is a beautiful school. The archaelogical site at neighboring St. Mary’s City may interest you. Still, SMCM would be nearly $20K/year more for an OOS student than NCF for an in-state student. I would not expect a small public school like SMCM to offer very good aid (need based or merit) to an OOS student unless your qualifications are very strong compared to other applicants.</p>
<p>If you strongly prefer either SMCM or Tulane to your in-state options, you can always apply and see whether aid makes a difference. Other good schools for anthro include Bryn Mawr (women only) and Beloit. Either one may give you better aid than SMCM (though the full-pay costs are higher). If you want to consider some of the very top schools for anthropology, check out Michigan, Chicago, and Berkeley (all more selective than the 4 you named), or at least keep them on your radar for grad school.</p>
<p>But again, fc’s comment about majors does ring true (because so many students change majors at least once).</p>
<p>UCF or New College of Florida seems to make the most sense financially.
Additionally, NCF seems to have a good reputation for turning out future graduate student/phd holders.
For a major like Anthropology, I wouldn’t recommend getting in debt for. If worst case scenario you don’t end up in graduate school, you wouldn’t have paid an arm and a leg just to receive a bachelor’s degree.
Also at a school like NCF, you’d probably have more interaction with professors who could write good recommendation letters for graduate school for you. I don’t know anything about the other schools, but I do know NCF does have a small school population.</p>
<p>If you’re fairly certain you want to go into anthropology, the best thing you can do is take a close look at each school’s anthro department website. Look out for the geographical areas the faculty has experience with, field sites the school operates/is associated with, how many faculty there are in the sub-concentration you’re after (cultural, linguistic, archaeology, physical) and what opportunities for undergraduate research they provide.
Despite how expensive Tulane is, they seem to be pretty good with aid. They also seem to have the most solid anthropology program of the schools you listed.
If you are by any chance interested in archaeological anthropology or in Central America, the Middle America Research Institute at Tulane might interest you: [Middle</a> American Research Institute](<a href=“http://www.tulane.edu/~mari/MARIMain.htm]Middle”>http://www.tulane.edu/~mari/MARIMain.htm).
Liek is right about New College’s grad school admissions–they have an outstanding record for launching students into Ivies and similarly ranked programs, and have also produced an astonishing number of Fulbrights and other scholars. If you haven’t already seen it, you could stand to look at the school’s profile on Loren Pope’s Colleges That Change Lives: [New</a> College of Florida | Colleges That Change Lives](<a href=“http://www.ctcl.org/colleges/new-college]New”>New College of Florida – Colleges That Change Lives). NCF is definitely your better instate option. I doubt you’d go wrong between it and Tulane.</p>
<p>We don’t know enough about you.</p>
<p>What are your stats?</p>
<p>how much will your parents pay each year? If you don’t know, ask…</p>
<p>What is your likely FAFSA EFC? If you don’t know, try this.
Quick EFC
[FinAid</a> | Calculators | QuickEFC](<a href=“Your Guide for College Financial Aid - Finaid”>Quick EFC - Finaid)</p>
<p>If you can go to UCF for free (I guess you mean with Bright Futures paying for most of tuition, right???), does that mean that your parents won’t pay much for you to go elsewhere??? If so, that could be a real problem because you won’t be able to cover your expected family contribution.</p>
<p>However, if your stats are high, then you could get some merit scholarships at other schools.</p>
<p>Answer the above questions and we can help you more.</p>