What are your favorite CTCLs (and similar) and why?
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Anonymous
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Here are two of mine.
Lawrence: amazing arts and music, interesting town (small city), fairly rigorous, nice students, nice campus Beloit: super nice students and faculty, one of the prettiest campuses, very intellectual, amazing dorms, not too far from Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago. Reasonably qualified applicants from the Coasts usually get in to these. |
Anonymous
| My junior DD likes Juniata. Strong in sciences, especially environmental science and has the option to spend a semester living/studying/researching at their field station. |
Anonymous
How are these two schools for conservative students? |
Anonymous
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Washington College in Chestertown.
Very small but very nurturing, with great hands-on opportunities for students interested in history, the environment, or English. That said, it has very little diversity. |
Anonymous
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Do these schools give merit aid?
They’re far from name brand schools, so the price tags seem high. |
Anonymous
Some of the CTCL do give significant merit aid. And not everyone cares about a “brand name.” They are more interested in fit. |
Anonymous
Yes, they give a lot. DS applied to a couple that would have been comparable to our in-state public cost. |
Anonymous
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McDaniel College in MD. Kids of various friends over the years have gone and all rave about how much they loved it. There is a very large, engaged alumni network in the area, so good connection opportunities in the Baltimore and DC metro region.
Regarding the $$ - for McDaniel, they have deep pockets and offered a large amount of aid to top students. One friend said the student body is half strong academic students with merit aid, and the other half less focused students whose parents paid full price and are hoping something clicks. |
Anonymous
| Woo-hop College of Wooster...couldn’t get my child to apply☹️ |
Anonymous
| Woo-hoo |
Anonymous
Okay I agree with you - but fit for $70+K for a no-name school? That's why I'm asking about merit aid. |
Anonymous
+1 It is a hidden gem. The degree to which faculty members are available to students is remarkable. They also have the stated goal of instilling certain prosocial values in their students/community, which I really appreciate (since it complements that way I raised my child before handing her off to them). They are really strong in science. Lots of traditions. The setting is pretty. The town, not much at all. They have handled COVID extremely well. It is a little oasis in rural PA that has served my DC well. She has regained her confidence there, which was shaken more than I realized from the experience of attending a rather cutthroat high school in the DMV. She has been awarded two national awards while there and seems well on her way to continued success. |
Anonymous
I think a high schooler who identifies as conservative would be miserable at Beloit. |
Anonymous
Mine is there. Great professors - lots of individual attention if you want it (which mine does). She is remote this semester so she will announce when she has meetings with professors etc. She was not a joiner in high school but she is an officer of a club for next year and is forming a new club with some other friends. She played a sporting activity regularly when she was on campus for fun with other kids until they had to stop due to Covid. Next year is supposed to be back to “normal” so she is excited to see what a normal social experience is. But academically, she’s happy. She especially feels her writing has improved. Freshmen take one class wholly devoted to writing and then there has been a lot of writing assignments in her other classes. |
Anonymous
| My 2 kids received merit aid offers from several CTCL schools. One kid had a 4.0 wGPA, 31 ACT and excellent ECs and awards. The other had a 4.2 wGPA, a 1450 SAT, and ok ECs. They got merit awards ranging from $20k to $36k at Clark, Denison, Earlham, Eckerd, Kalamazoo, Lawrence, and Wooster. |