Favorite College that changes lives?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think that the main attraction for many to CTCL schools may be merit scholarship awards for above average--as opposed to superior--students.

A concern might be internship & employment opportunities.

The low interest rates of a couple of years ago helped some of these schools to raise their financial ratings along with cost-cutting of low enrollment majors & streamlining administrative payrolls.

Again, would be wise to check retention rates (percent of students who return for the sophomore year) and 6 year graduation rates for any school--not just CTCL schools--of interest.

Superior students may also fall into the "donut hole" category. Simply because they are superior doesn't mean the $ spigots open at non-merit schools.

You misunderstood my point & I was not as clear as I should have been. Superior students can get merit scholarships at better schools and can automatically qualify for substantial merit scholarship awards at several state flagship universities and their respective honors colleges.

Schools like Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, etc do not give merit scholarships. Period. You get need based aid, or pay full price. If a superior student can't afford 80k/year, they go down the list and find the best schools that will give them merit aid such as Denison and some of the other CTCL schools mentioned here. You will find superior students at that level.

Williams, Amherst, & Bowdoin are a totally different class of schools than those written about in CTCL.

That is my point. The poster I was responding to was saying that the superior students could get merit at better schools than CTLCs. The better schools don't actually give merit aid.

You are confusing the word "better" with "best". The best schools may not award merit scholarships, but many better schools do.

Alas, you do not seem to be able to identify what are these "better" schools other than they exist. Without cites, this reference means nothing.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Evergreen State College is the poster child for what’s wrong with the CTCL list. It accepts virtually everyone who applies, a full one-third of its students are gone after freshman year, and only 1/3 of an entering class graduates in four years. Why on earth would that school be selected out of hundreds if not thousands of no name state colleges as being a college that “changes lives?” It’s just nuts, and it calls into question the entire list.

Every one of these schools needs to be judged on its own merits, and the list as a whole or as an aggregate needs to be thrown out the window.

This may come as a shock to PP, but some in higher education believe in offering opportunity to as many students as possible. By definition, that means that many won’t make it. Complaining about this makes PP seem really bad at math.

I don’t disagree with any of that, my point is that none of that makes this particular school special enough to be included in any book about colleges that “change lives.” It is no different than hundreds of other schools in exactly the same category.

Sigh… except that the NYT editor that wrote the book looked into it and felt it was special, for reasons that I suspect both of us are entirely ignorant of.

If you want to denigrate its inclusion, you need to do better than pointing to its retention rate, because casting a wide net and trying to support kids who would be rejected elsewhere — some of whom won’t make it — is a reasonable and arguably admirable strategy (and one also pursued by many state university systems at many of their campuses).

Did the author visit the other couple hundred if not thousands of state schools? Somehow I doubt it

The author deliberately included only schools whose focus was 100% on undergraduate teaching. So most wouldn't have qualified by those standards.

Bro, it’s not the Bible. Really, it’s ok to be a skeptic.

Oh, I don't think it's the bible at all. I think there are a lot of great schools not on the list, for example. But you posed a question, and there's actually an answer to it.

PP, if this were social media, I would totally be following you!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We visited Kalamazoo a year ago because a coach there was heavily recruiting my son and they offered him enough merit aid to make the cost less than attending our state flagship.

While he liked the academic side of it, after spending a few days with the boys on the team he would be playing with he absolutely did not want to attend. While they do have a long list of impressive alumni, the students he met did not seem particularly motivated compared to his friends at home and found the landscape to be dreary. Most of the former team players the coach mentioned as successful were working at large corporations which was kind of a turnoff.

FWIW, that's not unusual for alums of sports team. Businesses love athletes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that the main attraction for many to CTCL schools may be merit scholarship awards for above average--as opposed to superior--students.

A concern might be internship & employment opportunities.

The low interest rates of a couple of years ago helped some of these schools to raise their financial ratings along with cost-cutting of low enrollment majors & streamlining administrative payrolls.

Again, would be wise to check retention rates (percent of students who return for the sophomore year) and 6 year graduation rates for any school--not just CTCL schools--of interest.

Superior students may also fall into the "donut hole" category. Simply because they are superior doesn't mean the $ spigots open at non-merit schools.

You misunderstood my point & I was not as clear as I should have been. Superior students can get merit scholarships at better schools and can automatically qualify for substantial merit scholarship awards at several state flagship universities and their respective honors colleges.

Schools like Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, etc do not give merit scholarships. Period. You get need based aid, or pay full price. If a superior student can't afford 80k/year, they go down the list and find the best schools that will give them merit aid such as Denison and some of the other CTCL schools mentioned here. You will find superior students at that level.

Williams, Amherst, & Bowdoin are a totally different class of schools than those written about in CTCL.

That is my point. The poster I was responding to was saying that the superior students could get merit at better schools than CTLCs. The better schools don't actually give merit aid.

You are confusing the word "better" with "best". The best schools may not award merit scholarships, but many better schools do.

Genuine question: what small schools do people recommend that offer merit scholarships of 25-45K? That's what many people are looking for (and finding) from the CTCL list: small school, low student-faculty ratio, good merit.

Posters are 100% correct that some of the CTCLs have low graduation rates (Evergreen State, Guilford for example), and/or very worrisome financial resources (Antioch, Birmingham Southern, for example). So CTCL-curious folks will be wise to do their homework. That said, many of the CTCLs do quite well on these metrics, while offering substantial merit. For example, Whitman, St. Olaf, Denison, Centre, Rhodes, all have higher graduation rates than several DCUM favorites (I won't name them, bc people seem to find comparisons triggering -- even as they make them! -- but you can find a list here: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/highest-grad-rate)...and these schools so do while getting A or A+ ratings from Forbes and while offering incredible merit aid.

I don't think anyone here is married to CTCL as a concept -- we're looking for decent, affordable, small-school options. It is very nice that one can attend one fair and see a bunch of such schools in person, even if it means walking past a few tables.

So what do people actually recommend in this category?

A lot really is particular to your DC, but here are my suggestions based on visits/friends' DCs' experiences:

Bard
Beloit
Denison
Earlham
Kalamazoo
Kenyon
Lawrence
Reed
St Olaf
Puget Sound
Whitman
Willamette

Friends liked when their kids got merit, but that was not the decisive factor in their DC choosing the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Evergreen State College is the poster child for what’s wrong with the CTCL list. It accepts virtually everyone who applies, a full one-third of its students are gone after freshman year, and only 1/3 of an entering class graduates in four years. Why on earth would that school be selected out of hundreds if not thousands of no name state colleges as being a college that “changes lives?” It’s just nuts, and it calls into question the entire list.

Every one of these schools needs to be judged on its own merits, and the list as a whole or as an aggregate needs to be thrown out the window.

This may come as a shock to PP, but some in higher education believe in offering opportunity to as many students as possible. By definition, that means that many won’t make it. Complaining about this makes PP seem really bad at math.

I don’t disagree with any of that, my point is that none of that makes this particular school special enough to be included in any book about colleges that “change lives.” It is no different than hundreds of other schools in exactly the same category.

Sigh… except that the NYT editor that wrote the book looked into it and felt it was special, for reasons that I suspect both of us are entirely ignorant of.

If you want to denigrate its inclusion, you need to do better than pointing to its retention rate, because casting a wide net and trying to support kids who would be rejected elsewhere — some of whom won’t make it — is a reasonable and arguably admirable strategy (and one also pursued by many state university systems at many of their campuses).

Did the author visit the other couple hundred if not thousands of state schools? Somehow I doubt it

The author deliberately included only schools whose focus was 100% on undergraduate teaching. So most wouldn't have qualified by those standards.

Pope did actually visit tons of public universities over his career, though. And Ivies, NESCACs, and other uber-selective schools. And he ultimately concluded that high levels of selectivity was a bug, not a feature, when it came to providing high-quality undergraduate education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We visited Kalamazoo a year ago because a coach there was heavily recruiting my son and they offered him enough merit aid to make the cost less than attending our state flagship.

While he liked the academic side of it, after spending a few days with the boys on the team he would be playing with he absolutely did not want to attend. While they do have a long list of impressive alumni, the students he met did not seem particularly motivated compared to his friends at home and found the landscape to be dreary. Most of the former team players the coach mentioned as successful were working at large corporations which was kind of a turnoff.

See, now here is a skeptical post that is actually useful -- discerning, specific, and (most important) based on first-hand experience. Thank you, PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We visited Kalamazoo a year ago because a coach there was heavily recruiting my son and they offered him enough merit aid to make the cost less than attending our state flagship.

While he liked the academic side of it, after spending a few days with the boys on the team he would be playing with he absolutely did not want to attend. While they do have a long list of impressive alumni, the students he met did not seem particularly motivated compared to his friends at home and found the landscape to be dreary. Most of the former team players the coach mentioned as successful were working at large corporations which was kind of a turnoff.

See, now here is a skeptical post that is actually useful -- discerning, specific, and (most important) based on first-hand experience. Thank you, PP.

I'm so confused. Some poster cries out, consistently, that CTCL grads don't land jobs or need to go to grad school to do so. Then someone points out that a lot of players on one sports team now work at large corporations - what many parents would say is a good ROI - and that's damning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that the main attraction for many to CTCL schools may be merit scholarship awards for above average--as opposed to superior--students.

A concern might be internship & employment opportunities.

The low interest rates of a couple of years ago helped some of these schools to raise their financial ratings along with cost-cutting of low enrollment majors & streamlining administrative payrolls.

Again, would be wise to check retention rates (percent of students who return for the sophomore year) and 6 year graduation rates for any school--not just CTCL schools--of interest.

Superior students may also fall into the "donut hole" category. Simply because they are superior doesn't mean the $ spigots open at non-merit schools.

You misunderstood my point & I was not as clear as I should have been. Superior students can get merit scholarships at better schools and can automatically qualify for substantial merit scholarship awards at several state flagship universities and their respective honors colleges.

Schools like Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, etc do not give merit scholarships. Period. You get need based aid, or pay full price. If a superior student can't afford 80k/year, they go down the list and find the best schools that will give them merit aid such as Denison and some of the other CTCL schools mentioned here. You will find superior students at that level.

Williams, Amherst, & Bowdoin are a totally different class of schools than those written about in CTCL.

That is my point. The poster I was responding to was saying that the superior students could get merit at better schools than CTLCs. The better schools don't actually give merit aid.

You are confusing the word "better" with "best". The best schools may not award merit scholarships, but many better schools do.

What schools are you referring to?

My superior student goes to Denison with $$$ merit aid. 1580 SAT, 4.0 UW GPA. 9 APs, varsity sport. There are lots of similarly qualified students there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Evergreen State College is the poster child for what’s wrong with the CTCL list. It accepts virtually everyone who applies, a full one-third of its students are gone after freshman year, and only 1/3 of an entering class graduates in four years. Why on earth would that school be selected out of hundreds if not thousands of no name state colleges as being a college that “changes lives?” It’s just nuts, and it calls into question the entire list.

Every one of these schools needs to be judged on its own merits, and the list as a whole or as an aggregate needs to be thrown out the window.

This may come as a shock to PP, but some in higher education believe in offering opportunity to as many students as possible. By definition, that means that many won’t make it. Complaining about this makes PP seem really bad at math.

I don’t disagree with any of that, my point is that none of that makes this particular school special enough to be included in any book about colleges that “change lives.” It is no different than hundreds of other schools in exactly the same category.

Sigh… except that the NYT editor that wrote the book looked into it and felt it was special, for reasons that I suspect both of us are entirely ignorant of.

If you want to denigrate its inclusion, you need to do better than pointing to its retention rate, because casting a wide net and trying to support kids who would be rejected elsewhere — some of whom won’t make it — is a reasonable and arguably admirable strategy (and one also pursued by many state university systems at many of their campuses).

Did the author visit the other couple hundred if not thousands of state schools? Somehow I doubt it

The author deliberately included only schools whose focus was 100% on undergraduate teaching. So most wouldn't have qualified by those standards.

Pope did actually visit tons of public universities over his career, though. And Ivies, NESCACs, and other uber-selective schools. And he ultimately concluded that high levels of selectivity was a bug, not a feature, when it came to providing high-quality undergraduate education.

Correct

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We visited Kalamazoo a year ago because a coach there was heavily recruiting my son and they offered him enough merit aid to make the cost less than attending our state flagship.

While he liked the academic side of it, after spending a few days with the boys on the team he would be playing with he absolutely did not want to attend. While they do have a long list of impressive alumni, the students he met did not seem particularly motivated compared to his friends at home and found the landscape to be dreary. Most of the former team players the coach mentioned as successful were working at large corporations which was kind of a turnoff.

See, now here is a skeptical post that is actually useful -- discerning, specific, and (most important) based on first-hand experience. Thank you, PP.

I'm so confused. Some poster cries out, consistently, that CTCL grads don't land jobs or need to go to grad school to do so. Then someone points out that a lot of players on one sports team now work at large corporations - what many parents would say is a good ROI - and that's damning.

I'm the PP who said it's useful. It's useful not because it's damning. It's useful because PP shared their specific perspective, based on their/their kid's values/likes/dislikes which they made clear. From what they posted, I can discern things. Their kid found the landscape "dreary." Interesting. My kid, who is oddly drawn to gritty, post-industrial places (especially if there are good thrift stores and dusty antique stores and funky, mostly-empty coffee shops with macrame plant hangers in the window), might not feel the same way. On the other hand, my kid will probably feel similarly about success being defined as large corporations. And although PP's kid didn't want to attend, he liked the academic program -- that's good to know, too.

PP's post is, of course, anecdotal -- one person's subjective experience based on one visit with a specific and finite group of kids. I wouldn't encourage or discourage my kid based on one post alone. But a whole lot of specific posts based on first hand experience might begin, collectively, to paint a useful picture.

Unfortunately, most of the skeptical posts in this thread seem based on zero first-hand experience, and in fact many of the skeptics have demonstrated a lack of even basic knowledge about these schools. And those posts are totally useless.

[Anonymous]

TLDR: give me any/all feedback, but only if you have actual first-hand experience. Which PP did.

[Anonymous]

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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.

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.

For those who like UPS (and other PNW schools), Lewis & Clark might be worth a look too. It's not on the CTCL list, but it probably could be. The campus is gorgeous!

Lewis & Clark is somewhat similar to UPS, but it definitely has more of a trustafarian vibe.

If that's a statement about trust fund and not the style in which the trust fund is expressed, in terms of family income, Lewis & Clark and University of the Puget Sound are nearly identical, with UPS slightly higher.
Median family income Lewis & Clark: 130,900 UPS:138,500.
60% of students at Lewis & Clark come from the top 20% income, 61% at UPS.
7.7% of students at Lewis & Clark are from the top 1%, 7.6% at UPS.
4.4% at L&C are from the bottom 20%, 3.1% at UPS.

I love this NYTimes upshot tool! I hope they continue to update it with new data.

The NYT tool is great but it doesn't capture generation-skipping trusts or other tax-avoidance tools of the truly wealthy, more of whom end up at L&C than UPS.

NP. How do you know that? That’s not consistent with my impression of the two schools FWIW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the main attraction for CTCL schools is parents and kids who do not have the goods for the top goals, but somehow think they are too good for state schools, so they fall for the hype that the book generates.

I honestly hope I never, ever become the kind of person who would feel good posting something like this, and I have no CTCL connection whatsoever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very sad and telling that the CTCL supporter has had to resort to personal attacks.

We might actually need a psych grad student to come in here and code posts in this thread then provide us with an independent analysis of where the majority of attacks are coming from, as there have been a lot of attacks, and they're bi-directional. (It's actually very weird. Like, why is this so personal to people?)

(Personally, I have long hoped that researchers are reading, coding, and analyzing the conversations in this forum, because there's some amazing psychology on display here).

Off topic but when Brookings did what you suggest, they did an exceptionally bad job at it. Their data analysis was embarrassingly bad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think that the main attraction for many to CTCL schools may be merit scholarship awards for above average--as opposed to superior--students.

A concern might be internship & employment opportunities.

The low interest rates of a couple of years ago helped some of these schools to raise their financial ratings along with cost-cutting of low enrollment majors & streamlining administrative payrolls.

Again, would be wise to check retention rates (percent of students who return for the sophomore year) and 6 year graduation rates for any school--not just CTCL schools--of interest.

Superior students may also fall into the "donut hole" category. Simply because they are superior doesn't mean the $ spigots open at non-merit schools.

You misunderstood my point & I was not as clear as I should have been. Superior students can get merit scholarships at better schools and can automatically qualify for substantial merit scholarship awards at several state flagship universities and their respective honors colleges.

Schools like Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin, etc do not give merit scholarships. Period. You get need based aid, or pay full price. If a superior student can't afford 80k/year, they go down the list and find the best schools that will give them merit aid such as Denison and some of the other CTCL schools mentioned here. You will find superior students at that level.

Williams, Amherst, & Bowdoin are a totally different class of schools than those written about in CTCL.

That is my point. The poster I was responding to was saying that the superior students could get merit at better schools than CTLCs. The better schools don't actually give merit aid.

You are confusing the word "better" with "best". The best schools may not award merit scholarships, but many better schools do.

What schools are you referring to?

My superior student goes to Denison with $$$ merit aid. 1580 SAT, 4.0 UW GPA. 9 APs, varsity sport. There are lots of similarly qualified students there.

I suspect that PP will not answer your question. Or will try to move the goal post on what defines a "superior" student.

Hope your DC is enjoying Denison. What do they think of the Greek scene? That was a thumb on the "no" scale for my DC and not much we could do about that.