Looking for College Ideas/Suggestions
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Anonymous
| OP here - Well- since you asked - DC is leaning towards business (entrepreneurship) or law with some sort of tech focus. Would like to be close to internship opportunities so he can get some real world experience before he graduates. Suburban setting with access to city/town would be a plus. Looking for a place that is intellectual yet active/outdoorsy/sporty. 2,000-12,000 students. He is a pretty easy going kid and gets along with all kinds of people, so in that sense he is open to checking out a range of places to see what clicks. |
Anonymous
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http://www.unf.edu
Located in a "suburby" type area in Jacksonville. It's very close to an upscale mall (St Johns Town Center) with restaurants, bars, stores..... It's in a very safe part of Jax. About 15 minutes from the beach. 15 minutes from the river. The kids can grab a kayak (no charge) and paddle all over everywhere. It's built on a nature preserve. It's not usual to see gators, deer, pelicans, bobcats, .... And of course, Osprey! Lots of trails and outdoor stuff to do. A beautiful new athletic facility with a huge climbing wall. Gorgeous dorms! It's a fairly liberal campus despite being in Jacksonvillie. It's woth looking at! We were really surprised when we visited. My daughter graduates this year and has loved the school, especially the honors college. |
Anonymous
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I'm trying to understand why you're feeling overwhelmed. I understand that you might have been disappointed in your counselor's advice, and while I agree that s/he could have been more helpful by providing suggestions for schools to consider, the advice that your son focus on bringing his grades up this semester is spot-on. Moreover, the counselor's suggestion that you start by thinking about safeties/likelies is also prudent.
That said, you still have to figure out where to visit, and I know that can be the hardest part. This is true regardless of your child's GPA and scores. Many of the suggestions that PPs have made sound right to me, but my baseline could be very different from yours -- so much depends on which school your son attends and where he is in terms of class rank. Yes, I know most schools, including my kids' school don't publicize class rank, but admissions officers care very much where a student falls in the class and they ask counselors for this information. Counselors may try to fudge it, but they have to be pretty honest or risk alienating the admissions rep. OK, so where should you look? At my kids' school (a DC independent), I'd say that a student with a 3.1 GPA and SATs in the mid-600s would be looking at Bucknell or Gettysburg or University of Miami or Brandeis as likelies and maybe Michigan or Lehigh or Colgate or maybe, maybe Emory as reaches. I realize these schools vary considerably in terms of locations, size, and academic and social culture, but perhaps they're helpful as a starting point. Maybe take a look at the Fiske Guide (the section on application overlaps for each school can be helpful), then sit down with your DS and look at websites, and then go back to the counselor with a tentative list and ask if you're in the right ball park. |
Anonymous
These schools will give a kid from a good DC private a break. If he was from NY, NJ, PA., or Conn., no break. |
Anonymous
| University of Miami might be a good fit. Many, many internships available because it is one of the only good schools in southern Florida and many companies have offices there. Campus has a good feel. Not just football. |
Anonymous
This was my first thought, too. I'd also check out Tulane, Marquette, the University of Richmond, Franklin & Marshall, Rhodes College, and the University of Puget Sound. |
Anonymous
That's not Dickinson or Gettysburg. We ran into the same problem with DC who wanted computer science and game design. The smaller SLACs usually don't offer a computer science degree. DC wound up at a university to get the majors he wanted. Dickinson also wants to see a 4.0 GPA. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
| This is an interesting thread for me to read. My kids are middle school aged not high school so I am sure I have a lot to learn, but I went to high school in the northeast and many of the colleges named on this thread had a different reputation back in my day - part of that of course is that reputations change, but I do believe that part of that is that in this area some of the SLACs are not as well regarded as they are in the northeast. For example, you would never name F&M, Colgate, Bucknell and Tulane, on the one hand, with U of Miami, Northeastern or even Boston U, on the other. And Lehigh/Lafayette would be lumped with the first group, but no better than them. OP, there are a lot of SLACs in the northeast that could fit the bill for how you describe your son - Boston College, Fairfield, Tufts, Holy Cross - he should check out UMass and Clark, too. |
Anonymous
| ^^yes, things really do change over 25 years. Well except for the dorms -- those are exactly the same, at least for our kids. |
Anonymous
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OP, don't forget there are a boatload of schools that do not require the SAT or ACT.
http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional |
Anonymous
I don't think OP's kid could get into Tuft's based on the information given. But I'm not on the admissions board so I wouldn't bet the farm. Profile of the Class of 2018 At Tufts, we have a student body made up of more than numbers. Our students have good grades and test scores, but we look for more than that when making a class. We admit students who are well rounded in all areas of their lives – academic, social, and extracurricular. Tuft's Profile of the Class of 2018 APPLICATION INFORMATION Applications 19,074 Acceptances 3,288 Acceptance Rate 17% ACADEMIC PROFILE Mean Rank in Class (when available) Top 5% TEST SCORE RANGES Mid 50% Range for SAT I Critical Reading 680-760 Mid 50% Range for SAT I Math 680-760 Mid 50% Range for SAT I Writing 690-760 Mean ACT Composite 32 |
Anonymous
UMiami is very very competitive, though. UNF mentioned by a PP would be a better match. |
Anonymous
You're absolutely correct - when your children become old enough to start looking at schools you will quickly learn that things are vastly different now then they were back in the day. Trust me, when my DD started looking at schools I realized that I had to re-organize my thinking. I was dismissing certain schools that didn't have high rankings back when I was going to school in favor of ones I thought were good. Turns out I was wrong in many cases - the school I thought was great was actually ranked much lower than the ones that I dismissed. And the schools that were not considered great when I was looking at college are now significantly better, more selective and much harder to get into (both Northeastern and Boston Univ. come to mind for me). Schools change over time - both positively and negatively. All of the schools you listed above are actually good schools and rather competitive to get into. The ones on your list that I would say don't belong are Fairfield, Clark and UMass. Not to say they are not good schools, but they are ranked lower or in the regional category (Fairfield) and have acceptance rates in the 60-70% range - not schools I would put with Boston College or Tufts. Bottom line…getting our kids into college is a different ballgame for all of us now. (Paying for college is also a different ballgame altogether, but that's for another thread!) |
Anonymous
Of course, as the article below indicates, one must take these changes in ranking with a very large grain of salt. Moving up in the rankings, attracting more applicants, even becoming "more selective" may be all about better marketing and increasing the "brand" value and not at all about a better educational experience. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/education/edlife/how-to-raise-a-universitys-profile-pricing-and-packaging.html?_r=0 |