Tell me your OOS public colleges you truly liked

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for all of these valuable insights. My child is having a closer look at some of these institutions mentioned here. Looks like Minnesota and Wisconsin have little merit aid to spare.

My child does like the University of Southern California an awful lot but I confess its location concerns me. The new retail complex is impressive and a great community investment. Can PP speak to the crime and safety situation especially for women?

USC is a private institution, not an OOS public. It's very expensive as in $76K a year, and having taught out there, I would not send a student, especially a female student there due to proximity of Watts. Cars in the parking lots routinely get vandalized. If you want OOS, look to UCLA or Berkeley but with 80% now in-state, it will be more difficult to get in as an out of state student.

[b] There are some 19k undergraduates and 27k graduate students at USC. Hundreds of thousands of students gasp, females! - have attended in the past decade. If it were this dangerous cesspool where no one is making it out unscathed, it wouldn't be as popular as it is.

[/

before snarking and eyerolling why don't you do the most cursory skim of rape and assault at USC on Goggle, where you will find this on page citing a significant rise in rapes at USC 1 - ,https://dailytrojan.com/2017/01/09/rising-sexual-assault-rates-mean-usc/https://dailytrojan.com/2017/01/09/rising-sexual-assault-rates-mean-usc/. My niece transferred after an assault in a parking lot and her car was stolen

[Anonymous]

UConn Storrs.

I didn't think we would like it given its reputation for being in the middle of nowhere. It's a surprisingly nice campus and what struck me the most was that the students all seemed happy. It just had a nice vibe. Very high graduation rates and strong academics. It's been climbing in the rankings and CT has been pumping money into it - especially engineering. It will be curious to see if/how the state budget woes impact it moving forward.

But the real outlier is UConn Stamford. It has the potential to be a game changer as most of the young kids want to be in Stamford not Storrs. It's urban with the train right there to provide NYC access. The foundation is there if Connecticut can afford to continue to make the necessary investments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:University of Wisconsin has an excellent business and engineering school. Campus is situated between two lakes and there are tons of outdoor activities. A lot of east coast kids. Football games are a city wide event. Lots of international restaurants and a political vibe due to the state capital. Lots of international students. Very safe city.

We loved Wisconsin. Price tag is a kicker, though, and merit aid is sparse.

We actually found UW-Mad to be less expensive than many other OOS schools considered --total cost of attendance was around 52/yr and DC was offered 12k in merit which brought it roughly down to the cost of in state at W&M. Didn't opt to attend, but cost seemed reasonable relative to most other OOS flagships.

[Anonymous]

My cousin’s kid wanted a large public university and ended up getting rejected from UVA, WM, and Michigan. She ended up at Wisconsin-Madison and is in her second year there and loves it. She was worried about the cold but she’s adjusted well. She loves the school spirit and has made tons of friends. Overall it’s been a great experience for her and I’m so happy because she was very apprehensive at first, especially about being OOS from Virginia. She got significant merit aid but I don’t know exactly how much (I don’t want to be too nosy but her parents said it was a lot).

[Anonymous]

University of Iowa is another nice often overlooked one--it's not that hard to get into but has some very strong programs. Iowa City has a good college town feel restaurants and cultural events. It's an easy train ride to Chicago if you want a bigger city experience. It's not quite as cold as U Minnesota or Wisconsin which feel fairly similar in overall vibe.

[Anonymous]

Miami University has an excellent business school and very generous merit aid for OOS.
Oxford, Ohio is very safe and caters to the students

[Anonymous]

Re USA: from wikipedia. No way I'm sending my child there. Have you even driven from LAX to the campus recently? Cute statement but I sincerely doubt the rioters had the students' "community service" in mind when they burned down Watts: "Roughly half of the university's students volunteer in community-service programs in neighborhoods around campus and throughout Los Angeles. These outreach programs, as well as previous administrations' commitment to remaining in South Los Angeles amid widespread calls to move the campus following the 1965 Watts Riots, are credited for the safety of the university during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. (That the university emerged from the riots completely unscathed is all the more remarkable in light of the complete destruction of several strip malls in the area, including one just across Vermont Avenue from the campus's western security fence.) The ZIP code for USC is 90089 and the surrounding University Park community is 90007."

USC is only two exits off the freeway from Watts. My car was torched in the parking lot when I taught there. There are many other fine institutions to select from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:University of Wisconsin has an excellent business and engineering school. Campus is situated between two lakes and there are tons of outdoor activities. A lot of east coast kids. Football games are a city wide event. Lots of international restaurants and a political vibe due to the state capital. Lots of international students. Very safe city.

We loved Wisconsin. Price tag is a kicker, though, and merit aid is sparse.

We actually found UW-Mad to be less expensive than many other OOS schools considered --total cost of attendance was around 52/yr and DC was offered 12k in merit which brought it roughly down to the cost of in state at W&M. Didn't opt to attend, but cost seemed reasonable relative to most other OOS flagships.

The point being is most OOS publics are not in the 50's. Most are in the 30's before aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:University of Iowa is another nice often overlooked one--it's not that hard to get into but has some very strong programs. Iowa City has a good college town feel restaurants and cultural events. It's an easy train ride to Chicago if you want a bigger city experience. It's not quite as cold as U Minnesota or Wisconsin which feel fairly similar in overall vibe.

Yes U of Iowa and Iowa State are both great schools in nice safe college towns. They both offer merit aid as well. U of Iowa I feel is more medical/humanities and Iowa State more engineering/stem. And while it does get cold, it isn't always cloudy and snowy. They have a lot more sunny days and none of the lake snows.

[Anonymous]

no, most are in the 40s and 50s for OOS before aid. UVA, U of Mich and Cal schools in the 60s before dearth of aid

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:University of Wisconsin has an excellent business and engineering school. Campus is situated between two lakes and there are tons of outdoor activities. A lot of east coast kids. Football games are a city wide event. Lots of international restaurants and a political vibe due to the state capital. Lots of international students. Very safe city.

We loved Wisconsin. Price tag is a kicker, though, and merit aid is sparse.

We actually found UW-Mad to be less expensive than many other OOS schools considered --total cost of attendance was around 52/yr and DC was offered 12k in merit which brought it roughly down to the cost of in state at W&M. Didn't opt to attend, but cost seemed reasonable relative to most other OOS flagships.

The point being is most OOS publics are not in the 50's. Most are in the 30's before aid.

Directional state U’s maybe, not the flagships.

[Anonymous]

My daughter applied a bunch of Out of State - State schools. She picked UMASS Amherst. They gave her an academic award to make her tuition same as in-state. She likes it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:University of Wisconsin has an excellent business and engineering school. Campus is situated between two lakes and there are tons of outdoor activities. A lot of east coast kids. Football games are a city wide event. Lots of international restaurants and a political vibe due to the state capital. Lots of international students. Very safe city.

We loved Wisconsin. Price tag is a kicker, though, and merit aid is sparse.

We actually found UW-Mad to be less expensive than many other OOS schools considered --total cost of attendance was around 52/yr and DC was offered 12k in merit which brought it roughly down to the cost of in state at W&M. Didn't opt to attend, but cost seemed reasonable relative to most other OOS flagships.

The point being is most OOS publics are not in the 50's. Most are in the 30's before aid.

I didn't find many well-ranked OOS publics with total cost of attendance in the 30s, Wisconsin was middle of the road and offered some merit aid:
U of M- Ann Arbor: around 63k
U of CA-Berkeley around 63k
U of VM - 60K
U of Texas-Austin 53k
U of MA-Amherst 50k
U of Iowa-- 46K
U of I-Urbana-Champaign--45k
Pitt--45k

Comparison:
In-state total cost of attendance W&M : 40k (no merit aid offered to us)
In-state total cost of attendance UVA : 33k (no merit aid offered to us)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:University of Wisconsin has an excellent business and engineering school. Campus is situated between two lakes and there are tons of outdoor activities. A lot of east coast kids. Football games are a city wide event. Lots of international restaurants and a political vibe due to the state capital. Lots of international students. Very safe city.

We loved Wisconsin. Price tag is a kicker, though, and merit aid is sparse.

We actually found UW-Mad to be less expensive than many other OOS schools considered --total cost of attendance was around 52/yr and DC was offered 12k in merit which brought it roughly down to the cost of in state at W&M. Didn't opt to attend, but cost seemed reasonable relative to most other OOS flagships.

The point being is most OOS publics are not in the 50's. Most are in the 30's before aid.

I didn't find many well-ranked OOS publics with total cost of attendance in the 30s, Wisconsin was middle of the road and offered some merit aid:
U of M- Ann Arbor: around 63k
U of CA-Berkeley around 63k
U of VM - 60K
U of Texas-Austin 53k
U of MA-Amherst 50k
U of Iowa-- 46K
U of I-Urbana-Champaign--45k
Pitt--45k

Comparison:
In-state total cost of attendance W&M : 40k (no merit aid offered to us)
In-state total cost of attendance UVA : 33k (no merit aid offered to us)

the cheaper OOS publics are not the ones that people come to from OOS, like UW - Stevens Point or Bemidji State. We can just drop that from the conversation now.