Are there any schools that I should look at that are similar to what I’m looking for in other regions besides the south?
TCU is Christian (not evangelical, but its students are majority Christians; unlike Baylor it has no required religion, doctrine, or theology classe; there is, no required chapel attendance; one of the “heritage, mission, values” core classes has to deal with religious traditions, you can look at what that encompasses, ie., whether it’s faith-based, treated as doctrine/dogma, or academic, treated the way history, anthropology, etc, are treated.)
SMU doesn’t require a theology or religion class, although it can be taken instead of philosophy (either one is required for graduation).
Both are relatively more conservative than Vanderbilt overall.
As a future teacher, I suggest you consider where you think you’d like to live and teach after graduation to get a sense of their licensing guidelines. I’m not an expert, but my guess is that states near the state where you plan to live might have reciprocity and/or more similar licensing requirements. Going from Alabama to Illinois, for example, might involve more hoops – not sure about this but you should check into it.
Also, while your parents might be willing to pay full freight for a private school, if you’re thinking about graduate school down the line you might want to talk with them about totality of what they are willing to pay and whether saving some of that for graduate school is an option in case you want to go into administration or ed research or policy.
As far as outside the South, I think Indiana and Purdue would be good options. Also, smaller school but Butler is supposed to have an innovative teaching program and I bet you’d get merit there. D has a friend going there for teaching this Fall and she’s super excited.
I don’t really know where I want to live and teach in. My guess is I’ll just try to get a job in whichever state I go to college in.
I don’t think that I want to go to graduate school but I am trying to add a lot of schools with good merit aid to my list like Alabama and Baylor in addition to the expensive schools. My parents won’t tell me how much we can actually pay, they claim they don’t know yet, but they’ve said they’re willing to pay full price.
If you worry about TCU and even SMU being too religious, then Baylor is a bad pick because it’s not just religious-affiliated, it IS a school of the Baptist Church like Notre Dame for Catholics.
I really just thought Baylor would be a good school to apply to because there’s no application fee, I’d probably get a good merit scholarship and it matches all of my other criteria. I’m more worried about TCU and SMU because of the names honestly.
Lol. Please look at the core curriculum at Baylor: there are two serious religion classes, one in Christian Scriptures and one in Christian Heritage. The goal is to introduce students to the Christian Bible (sic) as the “basic authority for faith” + development of Christianity, its theological convictions and institutions (including witness).
Chapel is mandatory.
If Baylor were called The Baylor Baptist University you’d take its mission more seriously?
(Its mission is “For the church, for Texas”).
I thought I read on their website that chapel and all of the other religious stuff wasn’t mandatory. Clearly I’m wrong though, so I won’t apply there.
It’s in the core curriculum document. Since it matters to you, whenever you come across a new university name, type into your search engine the name of the university and “core curriculum”. It’ll tell you if there’s a religion class (and you should click and check what sort, ie., doctrinal or academic), if there’s a chapel requirement, etc. It’s usually clear because it’s very important to students who want to grow in their faith.
Thanks! Baylor’s said that those classes were “common” not “required” for education majors. But I can see that’s it’s obviously a very religious school.
“Common” in this context generally means “every student must take them,” not “people normally take them but don’t have to.”
Ok thanks. I was a little confused because all of the other majors listed requirements but education just listed “common” courses.
My list now is Vanderbilt, Alabama, Illinois, Florida, Georgia, Penn State, Texas, and Wake Forest.
I still really love Vanderbilt but I’m really worried that I’m not a strong enough applicant to apply there, even if I apply ED. I’m just worried that it might be a waste of my teachers time to get recommendations and my money to apply there if I have such a low chance. Is it worth it to keep it on my list?
That looks like a good list - good job!
I think Vandy is a long shot but I think you said Education might be less competitive. My suggestion is that if you know your family is aware of your EFC and willing/able to pay that for Vandy, then you should give ED a shot. You don’t want to regret not even trying, but keep your expectations in check.
Lot of great schools on that list! Keep us posted
You’re not applying to Engineering -there, yes, I agree, it’d be a waste of time. 
But you’re not interested in Vanderblit’s COE. You’re interested in their superb college of education, which not too many typical Vandy applicants look into. Education will be less competitive so you do have a shot, combining that fact with ED and hoping you’ll your best on everything else, I definitely think you should try. It doesn’t mean you will definitely get in, but that you definitely should try because you do have a shot. 
That’s a very good list.
Now, run the NPCs on all of them and show the results to your parents. Can they pay the net cost from savings and income (do they have a college fund for you, for instance?)
Thanks! My parents say that the npcs wouldn’t work because they claim that we don’t have all of the tax information we’d need from 2017 yet and the 2016 information would be wrong, but they still say we can afford it.
Can they make a reasonably good estimate their 2017 tax information for NPC purposes now?
Also, assuming that they filed for an extension on the US income taxes (to make the due date 10/15 instead of 4/15), they should be done with that by later this year, so they can run the NPCs with the final tax numbers then.
I asked them if they could make estimates, but they said that they didn’t know and that I should just wait until we have the actual information.
Not having estimates suggests that they are disorganized financially or have complicated finances (e.g. small business, real estate, weird investments, etc.).
Either type of situation suggests that you have a high risk of an unpleasant surprise in financial aid and affordability.
Ask your parents if Alabama with the merit scholarship you will get is affordable. If not, you need another safety with an assured merit scholarship that is within the price limit (or a full ride if they will not give a firm price limit).
The finances might be complicated since my parents are divorced and my mom is remarried and my family recently moved but they’re not disorganized.
Alabama with the merit scholarship is affordable.