Favorite College that changes lives?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:60 percent of the entering class at Juniata comes from Pennsylvania. It’s no more diverse geographically than a state school. Its SAT average is only a 1220, which is also lower than half the state schools in VA.

I don’t get the appeal.

We know, but you're a joyless middle manager in a boring, over employee IT consulting government job. Odds are, you're not going back to undergrad anytime soon.

Nope. That’s another poster. I’m a parent of UVA and top ten liberal arts grads. Had my kids not made the cut for those, they’d have gone to any one of the VA state schools I just listed instead of a Juniata type school, where they would have paid less money for an equal if not greater amount of geographic, economic and racial diversity, and would have attend school with classmates who are at least equally capable and graduating at at least as high if not higher rates. Nice try though.

Then you would not have done your research. I have a kid who is not competitive for those schools (UVA, W&M, T10 LACs) but likes a smaller environment. Her best match in VA was UMW and also looked at SMCM, the public option in MD. These schools are pretty comparable with CTCLs mentioned here when it comes to SAT scores but the private schools tend to do a bit better in retention and graduation and are less exclusively in-state students and generally end up in the same price range.

UMW=87% in-state
Kalamazoo=65%
Ursinus=63%
Juniata=56% (and 11% international)

UMW's 4 yr graduation rate = 59%. The others are a bit higher, 66-71%
Net prices for a family with a $110K+ HHI is about $30k for all these schools.

Or I could ignore her desire for a small school and insist on JMU. 73% in-state students, similar average net price, grad rate in the same range as the listed CTCLs, similar SATs to Juniata, both of them a little lower than Kalamazoo and Ursinus.

So, on the stats and cost, the in-state schools you think are superior are pretty much the same as the LACs you denigrate. Obviously, no school is good for everyone and different schools have different strengths and unique resources so you need to do the research to find a good fit.

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=james+madison&s=all&fv=213251+216524+170532+232681+232423&cp=1&sl=213251+170532+216524+232681

This is 100% accurate.

IMO, the data is skewed. Typically, those who dropout are lower income students. What is the rate of lower income students among those schools?

I would venture to guess that JMU has proportionally more lower income students than these pricey SLACs because lower income students typically tend to commute rather than stay on campus. SLACs are usually not in heavily populated areas, so you have less commuters.

You would be wrong. That data was also already shared -- JMU's Pell share is the lowest of this particular set being discussed:

Pell %
JMU 15%
Ursinus 18%
UMW 17%
Kalamazoo 25%
Juniata 26%

And these LACs aren't "pricey" they all give merit aid and need aid and the average net price is on par with JMU. JMU is actually one of the worst among VA public Us in meeting financial need.

I'm not putting down JMU. I know a lot of kids who go there, love it, do well after graduation. Which also speaks to the reality that being a B student in HS doesn't mean you won't be successful.

Pell grant would be proportional to cost of attendance. Those LACs are more pricier than JMU. Hence, the reason why more qualify for those pell grants at the pricier LACs. They give merit aid because they are pricey; JMU doesn't have to do that.

You really would have to look at income level of the students who go there, not necessarily how many get pell grants, to understand the numbers.

Like I said, typically, lower income students drop out at a higher rate compared to others. You aren't getting a lot of low income students who need to commute in those LACs compared to schools like JMU.

Have you been to JMU? It's not a commuter school with a lot of low-income students. You are really stretching. Fortunately, there is data on this and in the set of the set of schools being discussed, JMU has the wealthiest families https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/

College Median HH income % in the top 20% income bracket
JMU $147,000 70%
UMW $139,300 63%
Kalamazoo $136,600 59%
Ursinus $120,500 55%
Juniata $107,000 45%

Also, that analysis shows the % of students graduating from these schools who started out poor and became rich (moved from bottom to top quintile). They are all 1% except Juniata which is 2.2%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:60 percent of the entering class at Juniata comes from Pennsylvania. It’s no more diverse geographically than a state school. Its SAT average is only a 1220, which is also lower than half the state schools in VA.

I don’t get the appeal.

We know, but you're a joyless middle manager in a boring, over employee IT consulting government job. Odds are, you're not going back to undergrad anytime soon.

Nope. That’s another poster. I’m a parent of UVA and top ten liberal arts grads. Had my kids not made the cut for those, they’d have gone to any one of the VA state schools I just listed instead of a Juniata type school, where they would have paid less money for an equal if not greater amount of geographic, economic and racial diversity, and would have attend school with classmates who are at least equally capable and graduating at at least as high if not higher rates. Nice try though.

Then you would not have done your research. I have a kid who is not competitive for those schools (UVA, W&M, T10 LACs) but likes a smaller environment. Her best match in VA was UMW and also looked at SMCM, the public option in MD. These schools are pretty comparable with CTCLs mentioned here when it comes to SAT scores but the private schools tend to do a bit better in retention and graduation and are less exclusively in-state students and generally end up in the same price range.

UMW=87% in-state
Kalamazoo=65%
Ursinus=63%
Juniata=56% (and 11% international)

UMW's 4 yr graduation rate = 59%. The others are a bit higher, 66-71%
Net prices for a family with a $110K+ HHI is about $30k for all these schools.

Or I could ignore her desire for a small school and insist on JMU. 73% in-state students, similar average net price, grad rate in the same range as the listed CTCLs, similar SATs to Juniata, both of them a little lower than Kalamazoo and Ursinus.

So, on the stats and cost, the in-state schools you think are superior are pretty much the same as the LACs you denigrate. Obviously, no school is good for everyone and different schools have different strengths and unique resources so you need to do the research to find a good fit.

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=james+madison&s=all&fv=213251+216524+170532+232681+232423&cp=1&sl=213251+170532+216524+232681

This is 100% accurate.

IMO, the data is skewed. Typically, those who dropout are lower income students. What is the rate of lower income students among those schools?

I would venture to guess that JMU has proportionally more lower income students than these pricey SLACs because lower income students typically tend to commute rather than stay on campus. SLACs are usually not in heavily populated areas, so you have less commuters.

You would be wrong. That data was also already shared -- JMU's Pell share is the lowest of this particular set being discussed:

Pell %
JMU 15%
Ursinus 18%
UMW 17%
Kalamazoo 25%
Juniata 26%

And these LACs aren't "pricey" they all give merit aid and need aid and the average net price is on par with JMU. JMU is actually one of the worst among VA public Us in meeting financial need.

I'm not putting down JMU. I know a lot of kids who go there, love it, do well after graduation. Which also speaks to the reality that being a B student in HS doesn't mean you won't be successful.

Pell grant would be proportional to cost of attendance. Those LACs are more pricier than JMU. Hence, the reason why more qualify for those pell grants at the pricier LACs. They give merit aid because they are pricey; JMU doesn't have to do that.

You really would have to look at income level of the students who go there, not necessarily how many get pell grants, to understand the numbers.

Like I said, typically, lower income students drop out at a higher rate compared to others. You aren't getting a lot of low income students who need to commute in those LACs compared to schools like JMU.

Have you been to JMU? It's not a commuter school with a lot of low-income students. You are really stretching. Fortunately, there is data on this and in the set of the set of schools being discussed, JMU has the wealthiest families https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/

College Median HH income % in the top 20% income bracket
JMU $147,000 70%
UMW $139,300 63%
Kalamazoo $136,600 59%
Ursinus $120,500 55%
Juniata $107,000 45%

Also, that analysis shows the % of students graduating from these schools who started out poor and became rich (moved from bottom to top quintile). They are all 1% except Juniata which is 2.2%.

pay wall

Where are they getting the data from? Self reported? FAFSA?

Also, JMU is in the middle of NOVA, a hcol area. $147K around NoVA is middle class. Most of the students at JMU are local.

I have no idea where the students of those SLACs are from.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:60 percent of the entering class at Juniata comes from Pennsylvania. It’s no more diverse geographically than a state school. Its SAT average is only a 1220, which is also lower than half the state schools in VA.

I don’t get the appeal.

We know, but you're a joyless middle manager in a boring, over employee IT consulting government job. Odds are, you're not going back to undergrad anytime soon.

Nope. That’s another poster. I’m a parent of UVA and top ten liberal arts grads. Had my kids not made the cut for those, they’d have gone to any one of the VA state schools I just listed instead of a Juniata type school, where they would have paid less money for an equal if not greater amount of geographic, economic and racial diversity, and would have attend school with classmates who are at least equally capable and graduating at at least as high if not higher rates. Nice try though.

Then you would not have done your research. I have a kid who is not competitive for those schools (UVA, W&M, T10 LACs) but likes a smaller environment. Her best match in VA was UMW and also looked at SMCM, the public option in MD. These schools are pretty comparable with CTCLs mentioned here when it comes to SAT scores but the private schools tend to do a bit better in retention and graduation and are less exclusively in-state students and generally end up in the same price range.

UMW=87% in-state
Kalamazoo=65%
Ursinus=63%
Juniata=56% (and 11% international)

UMW's 4 yr graduation rate = 59%. The others are a bit higher, 66-71%
Net prices for a family with a $110K+ HHI is about $30k for all these schools.

Or I could ignore her desire for a small school and insist on JMU. 73% in-state students, similar average net price, grad rate in the same range as the listed CTCLs, similar SATs to Juniata, both of them a little lower than Kalamazoo and Ursinus.

So, on the stats and cost, the in-state schools you think are superior are pretty much the same as the LACs you denigrate. Obviously, no school is good for everyone and different schools have different strengths and unique resources so you need to do the research to find a good fit.

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=james+madison&s=all&fv=213251+216524+170532+232681+232423&cp=1&sl=213251+170532+216524+232681

This is 100% accurate.

IMO, the data is skewed. Typically, those who dropout are lower income students. What is the rate of lower income students among those schools?

I would venture to guess that JMU has proportionally more lower income students than these pricey SLACs because lower income students typically tend to commute rather than stay on campus. SLACs are usually not in heavily populated areas, so you have less commuters.

You would be wrong. That data was also already shared -- JMU's Pell share is the lowest of this particular set being discussed:

Pell %
JMU 15%
Ursinus 18%
UMW 17%
Kalamazoo 25%
Juniata 26%

And these LACs aren't "pricey" they all give merit aid and need aid and the average net price is on par with JMU. JMU is actually one of the worst among VA public Us in meeting financial need.

I'm not putting down JMU. I know a lot of kids who go there, love it, do well after graduation. Which also speaks to the reality that being a B student in HS doesn't mean you won't be successful.

Pell grant would be proportional to cost of attendance. Those LACs are more pricier than JMU. Hence, the reason why more qualify for those pell grants at the pricier LACs. They give merit aid because they are pricey; JMU doesn't have to do that.

You really would have to look at income level of the students who go there, not necessarily how many get pell grants, to understand the numbers.

Like I said, typically, lower income students drop out at a higher rate compared to others. You aren't getting a lot of low income students who need to commute in those LACs compared to schools like JMU.

Have you been to JMU? It's not a commuter school with a lot of low-income students. You are really stretching. Fortunately, there is data on this and in the set of the set of schools being discussed, JMU has the wealthiest families https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/

College Median HH income % in the top 20% income bracket
JMU $147,000 70%
UMW $139,300 63%
Kalamazoo $136,600 59%
Ursinus $120,500 55%
Juniata $107,000 45%

Also, that analysis shows the % of students graduating from these schools who started out poor and became rich (moved from bottom to top quintile). They are all 1% except Juniata which is 2.2%.

"These estimates are for the 1991 cohort (approximately the class of 2013). Rankings are shown for colleges with at least 200 students in this cohort,"

Data here comes from the 1980-82 cohort, roughly the college classes of 2002-4

From that site. That data is 10+ years old. Do you have more recent numbers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:60 percent of the entering class at Juniata comes from Pennsylvania. It’s no more diverse geographically than a state school. Its SAT average is only a 1220, which is also lower than half the state schools in VA.

I don’t get the appeal.

We know, but you're a joyless middle manager in a boring, over employee IT consulting government job. Odds are, you're not going back to undergrad anytime soon.

Nope. That’s another poster. I’m a parent of UVA and top ten liberal arts grads. Had my kids not made the cut for those, they’d have gone to any one of the VA state schools I just listed instead of a Juniata type school, where they would have paid less money for an equal if not greater amount of geographic, economic and racial diversity, and would have attend school with classmates who are at least equally capable and graduating at at least as high if not higher rates. Nice try though.

Then you would not have done your research. I have a kid who is not competitive for those schools (UVA, W&M, T10 LACs) but likes a smaller environment. Her best match in VA was UMW and also looked at SMCM, the public option in MD. These schools are pretty comparable with CTCLs mentioned here when it comes to SAT scores but the private schools tend to do a bit better in retention and graduation and are less exclusively in-state students and generally end up in the same price range.

UMW=87% in-state
Kalamazoo=65%
Ursinus=63%
Juniata=56% (and 11% international)

UMW's 4 yr graduation rate = 59%. The others are a bit higher, 66-71%
Net prices for a family with a $110K+ HHI is about $30k for all these schools.

Or I could ignore her desire for a small school and insist on JMU. 73% in-state students, similar average net price, grad rate in the same range as the listed CTCLs, similar SATs to Juniata, both of them a little lower than Kalamazoo and Ursinus.

So, on the stats and cost, the in-state schools you think are superior are pretty much the same as the LACs you denigrate. Obviously, no school is good for everyone and different schools have different strengths and unique resources so you need to do the research to find a good fit.

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=james+madison&s=all&fv=213251+216524+170532+232681+232423&cp=1&sl=213251+170532+216524+232681

This is 100% accurate.

IMO, the data is skewed. Typically, those who dropout are lower income students. What is the rate of lower income students among those schools?

I would venture to guess that JMU has proportionally more lower income students than these pricey SLACs because lower income students typically tend to commute rather than stay on campus. SLACs are usually not in heavily populated areas, so you have less commuters.

You would be wrong. That data was also already shared -- JMU's Pell share is the lowest of this particular set being discussed:

Pell %
JMU 15%
Ursinus 18%
UMW 17%
Kalamazoo 25%
Juniata 26%

And these LACs aren't "pricey" they all give merit aid and need aid and the average net price is on par with JMU. JMU is actually one of the worst among VA public Us in meeting financial need.

I'm not putting down JMU. I know a lot of kids who go there, love it, do well after graduation. Which also speaks to the reality that being a B student in HS doesn't mean you won't be successful.

Pell grant would be proportional to cost of attendance. Those LACs are more pricier than JMU. Hence, the reason why more qualify for those pell grants at the pricier LACs. They give merit aid because they are pricey; JMU doesn't have to do that.

You really would have to look at income level of the students who go there, not necessarily how many get pell grants, to understand the numbers.

Like I said, typically, lower income students drop out at a higher rate compared to others. You aren't getting a lot of low income students who need to commute in those LACs compared to schools like JMU.

Have you been to JMU? It's not a commuter school with a lot of low-income students. You are really stretching. Fortunately, there is data on this and in the set of the set of schools being discussed, JMU has the wealthiest families https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/

College Median HH income % in the top 20% income bracket
JMU $147,000 70%
UMW $139,300 63%
Kalamazoo $136,600 59%
Ursinus $120,500 55%
Juniata $107,000 45%

Also, that analysis shows the % of students graduating from these schools who started out poor and became rich (moved from bottom to top quintile). They are all 1% except Juniata which is 2.2%.

"These estimates are for the 1991 cohort (approximately the class of 2013). Rankings are shown for colleges with at least 200 students in this cohort,"

Data here comes from the 1980-82 cohort, roughly the college classes of 2002-4

From that site. That data is 10+ years old. Do you have more recent numbers?

The analysis is based on tax records and showing where kids start out vs. where they end up so that's why the data is older. I don't know where you would get such detailed income data otherwise. College Scorecard does have an "economic diversity" indicator which is the % of students receiving Pell grant. I don't know what the PP was talking about with Pell "scaled to cost". The max Pell grant is only about $7K so low income students at JMU ($30k sticker price) are going to get their maximum Pell. And JMU does not do much towards meeting need so no, they are not full of low-income students.

College scorecard economic diversity:
JMU 14%
Ursinus 18%
UMW 19%
Juniata 28%
Kalamazoo 28%

And, from common data sets, JMU only averages meeting 35% of need. vs. Kalamazoo meeting 95% of need (I'm not going to go look up all of them).

Any way you look at it JMU is a pretty affluent school that is on par with a lot of these CTCL schools in terms of test scores, retention, and graduation. But it doesn't get as many top-of-the-class kids. I would guess the top-of-the-class kids who don't get into UVA/W&M/VT have other OOS flagships w/ merit to choose from and go there vs. JMU.

Not knocking JMU, one of my kids had it as their 2nd choice after VT and several of his friends have had a great experience. I've also had one kid and several friends' kids who've done well at CTCL/CTCL-similar schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:60 percent of the entering class at Juniata comes from Pennsylvania. It’s no more diverse geographically than a state school. Its SAT average is only a 1220, which is also lower than half the state schools in VA.

I don’t get the appeal.

We know, but you're a joyless middle manager in a boring, over employee IT consulting government job. Odds are, you're not going back to undergrad anytime soon.

Nope. That’s another poster. I’m a parent of UVA and top ten liberal arts grads. Had my kids not made the cut for those, they’d have gone to any one of the VA state schools I just listed instead of a Juniata type school, where they would have paid less money for an equal if not greater amount of geographic, economic and racial diversity, and would have attend school with classmates who are at least equally capable and graduating at at least as high if not higher rates. Nice try though.

Then you would not have done your research. I have a kid who is not competitive for those schools (UVA, W&M, T10 LACs) but likes a smaller environment. Her best match in VA was UMW and also looked at SMCM, the public option in MD. These schools are pretty comparable with CTCLs mentioned here when it comes to SAT scores but the private schools tend to do a bit better in retention and graduation and are less exclusively in-state students and generally end up in the same price range.

UMW=87% in-state
Kalamazoo=65%
Ursinus=63%
Juniata=56% (and 11% international)

UMW's 4 yr graduation rate = 59%. The others are a bit higher, 66-71%
Net prices for a family with a $110K+ HHI is about $30k for all these schools.

Or I could ignore her desire for a small school and insist on JMU. 73% in-state students, similar average net price, grad rate in the same range as the listed CTCLs, similar SATs to Juniata, both of them a little lower than Kalamazoo and Ursinus.

So, on the stats and cost, the in-state schools you think are superior are pretty much the same as the LACs you denigrate. Obviously, no school is good for everyone and different schools have different strengths and unique resources so you need to do the research to find a good fit.

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=james+madison&s=all&fv=213251+216524+170532+232681+232423&cp=1&sl=213251+170532+216524+232681

This is 100% accurate.

IMO, the data is skewed. Typically, those who dropout are lower income students. What is the rate of lower income students among those schools?

I would venture to guess that JMU has proportionally more lower income students than these pricey SLACs because lower income students typically tend to commute rather than stay on campus. SLACs are usually not in heavily populated areas, so you have less commuters.

You would be wrong. That data was also already shared -- JMU's Pell share is the lowest of this particular set being discussed:

Pell %
JMU 15%
Ursinus 18%
UMW 17%
Kalamazoo 25%
Juniata 26%

And these LACs aren't "pricey" they all give merit aid and need aid and the average net price is on par with JMU. JMU is actually one of the worst among VA public Us in meeting financial need.

I'm not putting down JMU. I know a lot of kids who go there, love it, do well after graduation. Which also speaks to the reality that being a B student in HS doesn't mean you won't be successful.

Pell grant would be proportional to cost of attendance. Those LACs are more pricier than JMU. Hence, the reason why more qualify for those pell grants at the pricier LACs. They give merit aid because they are pricey; JMU doesn't have to do that.

You really would have to look at income level of the students who go there, not necessarily how many get pell grants, to understand the numbers.

Like I said, typically, lower income students drop out at a higher rate compared to others. You aren't getting a lot of low income students who need to commute in those LACs compared to schools like JMU.

Have you been to JMU? It's not a commuter school with a lot of low-income students. You are really stretching. Fortunately, there is data on this and in the set of the set of schools being discussed, JMU has the wealthiest families https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobility/

College Median HH income % in the top 20% income bracket
JMU $147,000 70%
UMW $139,300 63%
Kalamazoo $136,600 59%
Ursinus $120,500 55%
Juniata $107,000 45%

Also, that analysis shows the % of students graduating from these schools who started out poor and became rich (moved from bottom to top quintile). They are all 1% except Juniata which is 2.2%.

"These estimates are for the 1991 cohort (approximately the class of 2013). Rankings are shown for colleges with at least 200 students in this cohort,"

Data here comes from the 1980-82 cohort, roughly the college classes of 2002-4

From that site. That data is 10+ years old. Do you have more recent numbers?

The analysis is based on tax records and showing where kids start out vs. where they end up so that's why the data is older. I don't know where you would get such detailed income data otherwise. College Scorecard does have an "economic diversity" indicator which is the % of students receiving Pell grant. I don't know what the PP was talking about with Pell "scaled to cost". The max Pell grant is only about $7K so low income students at JMU ($30k sticker price) are going to get their maximum Pell. And JMU does not do much towards meeting need so no, they are not full of low-income students.

College scorecard economic diversity:
JMU 14%
Ursinus 18%
UMW 19%
Juniata 28%
Kalamazoo 28%

And, from common data sets, JMU only averages meeting 35% of need. vs. Kalamazoo meeting 95% of need (I'm not going to go look up all of them).

Any way you look at it JMU is a pretty affluent school that is on par with a lot of these CTCL schools in terms of test scores, retention, and graduation. But it doesn't get as many top-of-the-class kids. I would guess the top-of-the-class kids who don't get into UVA/W&M/VT have other OOS flagships w/ merit to choose from and go there vs. JMU.

Not knocking JMU, one of my kids had it as their 2nd choice after VT and several of his friends have had a great experience. I've also had one kid and several friends' kids who've done well at CTCL/CTCL-similar schools.

I work with low income kids on college apps and they generally don't go to JMU. It's too expensive. If they can get in, UVA/W&M meet 100% of need. Otherwise, GMU is popular because they can save money by commuting and they are more generous with aid (avg. need met is 65%). I do encourage considering smaller schools that may be more supportive (although GMU does do well by low-income students) and generous with aid.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:My nephew attends College of Wooster and loves it. They have a cool thesis programs for
seniors.

This is one of ours. I honestly wasn't sure dc would get accepted, they're more selective than some others and I know they're popular. I have a friend who went there about fifteen years ago and loved it and has done quite well in a very tough and very popular field. Wooster's even moved to the top of my list, but they're farther away than I'd like and there are some closer options that also do capstone projects and offer many things that seem similar.

Wooster does seem like it's in good financial shape, and the merit was good.

My dd attended Wooster for 3 semesters and then transferred. Granted, she was there during the height of Covid so she did not have a traditional experience. But the reality for her was very different based upon what she expected from several visits.

Dorms: Research this. You can’t choose (understandable) as a freshman but some dorms are fairly new with A/C and some are literally falling apart. The dorm sophomore year was so bad that dh was worried about leaving her there. Read articles about the bats, etc. in the dorms.

Finances: Check our recent issues of the school newspaper (dd occasionally still reads it and mentioned it). They are making some changes to reduce expenses. I’m not saying they are close to closing but some of the changes may affect the school going forward.

The school has a new president since dd was there. The former president is now at Whitman…

The dumpiest dorm I've seen is at Williams College and the second dumpiest right next to that one, so go figure.

That is great, except we know that anyone on this thread - including you - doesn’t have a kid in the running for Williams.

IKR, with it's 9% acceptance rate. and 3.5B endowment.

Yet that's not the case with oldest now in sophomore year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:60 percent of the entering class at Juniata comes from Pennsylvania. It’s no more diverse geographically than a state school. Its SAT average is only a 1220, which is also lower than half the state schools in VA.

I don’t get the appeal.

We know, but you're a joyless middle manager in a boring, over employee IT consulting government job. Odds are, you're not going back to undergrad anytime soon.

Nope. That’s another poster. I’m a parent of UVA and top ten liberal arts grads. Had my kids not made the cut for those, they’d have gone to any one of the VA state schools I just listed instead of a Juniata type school, where they would have paid less money for an equal if not greater amount of geographic, economic and racial diversity, and would have attend school with classmates who are at least equally capable and graduating at at least as high if not higher rates. Nice try though.

Then you would not have done your research. I have a kid who is not competitive for those schools (UVA, W&M, T10 LACs) but likes a smaller environment. Her best match in VA was UMW and also looked at SMCM, the public option in MD. These schools are pretty comparable with CTCLs mentioned here when it comes to SAT scores but the private schools tend to do a bit better in retention and graduation and are less exclusively in-state students and generally end up in the same price range.

UMW=87% in-state
Kalamazoo=65%
Ursinus=63%
Juniata=56% (and 11% international)

UMW's 4 yr graduation rate = 59%. The others are a bit higher, 66-71%
Net prices for a family with a $110K+ HHI is about $30k for all these schools.

Or I could ignore her desire for a small school and insist on JMU. 73% in-state students, similar average net price, grad rate in the same range as the listed CTCLs, similar SATs to Juniata, both of them a little lower than Kalamazoo and Ursinus.

So, on the stats and cost, the in-state schools you think are superior are pretty much the same as the LACs you denigrate. Obviously, no school is good for everyone and different schools have different strengths and unique resources so you need to do the research to find a good fit.

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=james+madison&s=all&fv=213251+216524+170532+232681+232423&cp=1&sl=213251+170532+216524+232681

The one distinguishing factor that you appear to have left out is that the typical CTCL school attracts underachieving kids from affluent families who need hand holding, as opposed to hard-working students. That makes a difference.

Have you visited any?

Forget visiting - does the PP have a cite for that?

Sincerely,

Hard-working, first-gen CTCL grad

[Anonymous]

No one who has ever been to Kalamazoo would claim it's a school for the affluent. That's just not its vibe, ethos, or population.

But FYI: While Kalamazoo's percentage of kids from the top 1% is lower -- by a lot! -- than most private colleges, at 5.5%, it is higher than JMU's (which is 2.6%). BUT Kalamazoo also has a higher percentage of kids from the bottom 50% than JMU (16.4% Kalamazoo vs. 12.6% JMU).

For context, on the top 1% metric, a lot of prestigious LACs (Nescacs, Davidson, Carleton, etc.) start at 15% of their student body and go up to 25+%. Which is why the whole conversation feels really weird to me. Both of these schools do better than most schools in this metric, which is great. (Yay, Kalamazoo, yay, JMU. Remind me why we're fighting?)

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I went to Kalamazoo College ("K") and left after a quarter. It's a provincial LAC with a lot of students who aren't all that bright.

I know two very bright students there right now. One who is going on to an excellent grad school. Maybe a quarter wasn't enough for you to get a good sense of it?

I had a good sense of it.

A good sense for you, so good that you were able to pivot. But the outcomes of K grads belie your take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one who has ever been to Kalamazoo would claim it's a school for the affluent. That's just not its vibe, ethos, or population.

But FYI: While Kalamazoo's percentage of kids from the top 1% is lower -- by a lot! -- than most private colleges, at 5.5%, it is higher than JMU's (which is 2.6%). BUT Kalamazoo also has a higher percentage of kids from the bottom 50% than JMU (16.4% Kalamazoo vs. 12.6% JMU).

For context, on the top 1% metric, a lot of prestigious LACs (Nescacs, Davidson, Carleton, etc.) start at 15% of their student body and go up to 25+%. Which is why the whole conversation feels really weird to me. Both of these schools do better than most schools in this metric, which is great. (Yay, Kalamazoo, yay, JMU. Remind me why we're fighting?)

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html

PP, I'm not the one with whom you've been going back and forth, but want to say that I appreciate your posting.

As a K grad from some time ago, the school has changed a lot over the years. When I attended, it was pretty much coasting. The president when I started clearly pined for a position somewhere on the East coast. The president after him was a gentle soul, but perhaps not up for the task of heading up a college in the Reagan years.

But, PP, the student body was a lot more affluent, or maybe aspirational affluent, at that time - preppies who were very pre-professional in focus. Subsequent administrations have worked hard to diverse the student body by economics, geography, and race and have been fairly successful in doing. Good to hear that they are succeeding in some of these areas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one who has ever been to Kalamazoo would claim it's a school for the affluent. That's just not its vibe, ethos, or population.

But FYI: While Kalamazoo's percentage of kids from the top 1% is lower -- by a lot! -- than most private colleges, at 5.5%, it is higher than JMU's (which is 2.6%). BUT Kalamazoo also has a higher percentage of kids from the bottom 50% than JMU (16.4% Kalamazoo vs. 12.6% JMU).

For context, on the top 1% metric, a lot of prestigious LACs (Nescacs, Davidson, Carleton, etc.) start at 15% of their student body and go up to 25+%. Which is why the whole conversation feels really weird to me. Both of these schools do better than most schools in this metric, which is great. (Yay, Kalamazoo, yay, JMU. Remind me why we're fighting?)

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html

PP, I'm not the one with whom you've been going back and forth, but want to say that I appreciate your posting.

As a K grad from some time ago, the school has changed a lot over the years. When I attended, it was pretty much coasting. The president when I started clearly pined for a position somewhere on the East coast. The president after him was a gentle soul, but perhaps not up for the task of heading up a college in the Reagan years.

But, PP, the student body was a lot more affluent, or maybe aspirational affluent, at that time - preppies who were very pre-professional in focus. Subsequent administrations have worked hard to diverse the student body by economics, geography, and race and have been fairly successful in doing. Good to hear that they are succeeding in some of these areas.

I'm not the PP people are going back and forth with, either! I'm a DP (I posted the Forbes list -- I like actual data, especially when conversations start going round and round).

That's really interesting perspective. My kid visited and applied to K -- we did a big, fun midwest road trip, and had a really nice night in the city of Kalamazoo, as well as a great tour. The kids we met were SO down-to-earth, really humble and kind of quietly thoughtful. AO was also a former K student, attended on scholarship. The place clearly meant a lot to him. Campus was charming, but without the flashy $75 million buildings that a lot of schools feel compelled to build. And if I recall, the one supplemental was about giving back to the city of Kalamazoo. So that history is very interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:60 percent of the entering class at Juniata comes from Pennsylvania. It’s no more diverse geographically than a state school. Its SAT average is only a 1220, which is also lower than half the state schools in VA.

I don’t get the appeal.

We know, but you're a joyless middle manager in a boring, over employee IT consulting government job. Odds are, you're not going back to undergrad anytime soon.

Nope. That’s another poster. I’m a parent of UVA and top ten liberal arts grads. Had my kids not made the cut for those, they’d have gone to any one of the VA state schools I just listed instead of a Juniata type school, where they would have paid less money for an equal if not greater amount of geographic, economic and racial diversity, and would have attend school with classmates who are at least equally capable and graduating at at least as high if not higher rates. Nice try though.

Then you would not have done your research. I have a kid who is not competitive for those schools (UVA, W&M, T10 LACs) but likes a smaller environment. Her best match in VA was UMW and also looked at SMCM, the public option in MD. These schools are pretty comparable with CTCLs mentioned here when it comes to SAT scores but the private schools tend to do a bit better in retention and graduation and are less exclusively in-state students and generally end up in the same price range.

UMW=87% in-state
Kalamazoo=65%
Ursinus=63%
Juniata=56% (and 11% international)

UMW's 4 yr graduation rate = 59%. The others are a bit higher, 66-71%
Net prices for a family with a $110K+ HHI is about $30k for all these schools.

Or I could ignore her desire for a small school and insist on JMU. 73% in-state students, similar average net price, grad rate in the same range as the listed CTCLs, similar SATs to Juniata, both of them a little lower than Kalamazoo and Ursinus.

So, on the stats and cost, the in-state schools you think are superior are pretty much the same as the LACs you denigrate. Obviously, no school is good for everyone and different schools have different strengths and unique resources so you need to do the research to find a good fit.

https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=james+madison&s=all&fv=213251+216524+170532+232681+232423&cp=1&sl=213251+170532+216524+232681

The one distinguishing factor that you appear to have left out is that the typical CTCL school attracts underachieving kids from affluent families who need hand holding, as opposed to hard-working students. That makes a difference.

DP: Alright, let's just compare based on the latest CDS. Take Kalamazoo and JMU from the PPs list above. They are two schools in the running for my kid who is a sophomore in HS now.
Kalamazoo has higher SAT scores, with more students reporting: 1200-1370, 43% reported scores (38% SAT, 5% ACT)
JMU: 1180-1310, 26% reported scores (23% SAT, 3% ACT).
39% of students at Kalamazoo were in the top 10% of their class, 67% in the top quarter, and 95% in the top half.
At JMU, 17% are in the top 10%, 29.4% in top quarter, and 88% are in the top half.

So how exactly are these kids less hard-working?

22% of students are first gen at Kalamazoo, 24% receive Pell grants, 31% are domestic students of color. Nearly everyone gets financial assistance to attend. And there's lots of financial assistance for internships and study abroad experiences there too.

I think you're operating with some pretty sloppy biases to say these schools are full of underachieving, affluent kids.

How do the JMU spankers explain this one? These are terrible numbers. Even most directional state unis have more than 3 out of 10 students coming from the top quarter of their class.

Name the schools

I mean shit, the first two no-name directionals I looked up at random had higher percentages in the top quarter of their class than JMU.

University of North Texas: 38%
Southeast Missouri State: 43%

I could find many more if I really wanted to, because face it, JMU, at 29%, scores extremely poorly on this metric. Keep spanking, though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the GPNW and know the schools on this list from that region pretty well--have had friends attend all of them. They're all great places for kids who dig their respective ethos. In alpha order:

Evergreen State is super hippie. Like a left coast version of UNC-Asheville only more so. Or a mini UC Santa Cruz. More intellectual than academic, if that makes sense.

Reed is intense. Like a less selective but no less ambitious Swarthmore--but with lots of black eyeliner and hard drugs. If you're not both brilliant and cynical, it's not your spot.

UPS is kind of like a miniaturized flagship. Solid for business, music, and liberal arts and sciences. Wide range of kids there, almost all of them happy.

Whitman is like west coast Middlebury but in a bigger, better town (but also way further from anything else). For kids who check the "intellectual," "outdoorsy," and "at least somewhat preppy" boxes, it's heaven.

Willamette is right next to the state capital and is a school for go-getters, across a decent range of raw intellectual firepower levels.

Which of these schools would work for a moderately conservative student who is interested in that area of the country?

UPS or Willamette for sure. Probably Whitman, too. Definitely not Reed or Evergreen State.

I second UPS for this description. Work in Seattle in non-profit adjacent to people in finance annd investment management work and the its littered with UPS grads who are down to earth, slightly conservative for this area, sporty into adulthood, and a bit more “East Coast” than my other colleagues.

Which one of those schools is UPS? I don't understand the abbreviation.

"UPS" is the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. I had to smile when I read PP's description of a UPS grad ("down to earth, slightly conservative for this area, sporty into adulthood, and a bit more “East Coast” than my other colleagues") as it so perfectly describes the one UPS grad I know. Rather preppy Marin County type. Definitely down to earth. Liberal, but not so much for Seattle. Very hard-working. Extremely polite. LOTS of interests and specific knowledge of a very wide range of subjects, which indicates a broad education. I was impressed with the guy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in the GPNW and know the schools on this list from that region pretty well--have had friends attend all of them. They're all great places for kids who dig their respective ethos. In alpha order:

Evergreen State is super hippie. Like a left coast version of UNC-Asheville only more so. Or a mini UC Santa Cruz. More intellectual than academic, if that makes sense.

Reed is intense. Like a less selective but no less ambitious Swarthmore--but with lots of black eyeliner and hard drugs. If you're not both brilliant and cynical, it's not your spot.

UPS is kind of like a miniaturized flagship. Solid for business, music, and liberal arts and sciences. Wide range of kids there, almost all of them happy.

Whitman is like west coast Middlebury but in a bigger, better town (but also way further from anything else). For kids who check the "intellectual," "outdoorsy," and "at least somewhat preppy" boxes, it's heaven.

Willamette is right next to the state capital and is a school for go-getters, across a decent range of raw intellectual firepower levels.

Which of these schools would work for a moderately conservative student who is interested in that area of the country?

UPS or Willamette for sure. Probably Whitman, too. Definitely not Reed or Evergreen State.

I second UPS for this description. Work in Seattle in non-profit adjacent to people in finance annd investment management work and the its littered with UPS grads who are down to earth, slightly conservative for this area, sporty into adulthood, and a bit more “East Coast” than my other colleagues.

Which one of those schools is UPS? I don't understand the abbreviation.

"UPS" is the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. I had to smile when I read PP's description of a UPS grad ("down to earth, slightly conservative for this area, sporty into adulthood, and a bit more “East Coast” than my other colleagues") as it so perfectly describes the one UPS grad I know. Rather preppy Marin County type. Definitely down to earth. Liberal, but not so much for Seattle. Very hard-working. Extremely polite. LOTS of interests and specific knowledge of a very wide range of subjects, which indicates a broad education. I was impressed with the guy.

University of Puget Sound was on my kid's list last year and it was my favorite tour. The students were friendly, smart and happy. The campus is beautiful. They seemed to have a nice community. I liked Tacoma. They fed us really great ice cream. The financial aid package was good.

Alas, my kid decided to go elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's a list of the schools in question. Which ones do you like? Hate? Have never heard of?

https://ctcl.org/category/college-profiles/

I loved Lawrence University in Appleton, WI when we visited. It is both an LAC and a music conservatory. It had a very pleasant feel and a pretty setting, straddling the Fox River. From Lawrence, we drove out to Björklunden, a 425-acre satellite campus, about 1.5 hours from the main campus on the shores of Lake Michigan in Door County. It was the most heavenly place, and students can go there for seminars and summer classes. Lawrence has a marine program (LUMP, or Lawrence University Marine Program) in which students take three marine biology classes over the same trimester, and a 2-week field trip to the Caribbean is included. Lawrence also offers classes in London and Senegal. Since DC was considering a double degree in marine biology and music performance, it felt like a good fit. We absolutely loved it. DC ended up at a different school, but Lawrence was the one I'd have chosen if it were up to me.