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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In the interests of sharing the good and bad, I posted earlier that my DD is happy at Juniata (and I'm not an admissions rep LOL). After one semester, these are her complaints... She ended up in what has the reputation as the crappiest dorm and although she is very happy with her room, says the showers are gross. The dining hall doesn't know how to make rice properly, in her opinion (and she usually eats a lot of rice). It was hard to set up a schedule she liked because the introductory environmental science class series is a 3-hour block once a week, limiting the ability to schedule Tu/Th classes or M/Wed classes around that. That won't be an issue after this semester. She had to take intro biology and ES despite strong IB scores in those since they are foundational major classes. So, 1st semester was not very challenging (but she was also sick a lot at the start of the year so I'm glad she had a fairly easy intro). I think bio did improve as the semester went on because by winter break she was saying she wanted to add more biology classes to her program. Also, at least in the 1st semester, there was a lack of good group lounge places for hanging out away from your room. Her dorm lounge is on the guys floor so she said none of the girls used it. But part of that was that the library/learning commons was under construction. It just opened and does have a "living room" area that she likes.

All in all, I don't think she has any more complaints than my son had at a big school and she's happy with her choice and seemed to make friends and get involved more quickly than son did at big school. Things I thought were potential cons -- very small, middle-of-nowhere town, lack of public transit (she doesn't have a car), basement gym that was not as nice as others we toured -- are not issues for her at all. She says the town has everything she needs and can walk or easily get a ride to anything. The gym just got all new equipment and she never has trouble getting to use a treadmill when she wants to.
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^^ all correct but IMHE the merit offers from expensive slacs like my own don't bring the costs down to match instate.  People here want to believe that but as a donut hole family (zero from FAFSA), the merit offers didn't come near to in-state so both kids went Virginia.  Apply only to what you can afford or what the NPC says you can afford (take a screenshot of that!).  Sure throw in a few slacs for fun but in the end most of us reading this forum will not get big merit aid packages from slacs[/quote]

You have to purposefully target SLACs that regularly offer merit aid of this size--which often means SLACs "lower" than your kids can get into.  Many of the ones discussed on this thread do for a lot of kids.  Many ranked just slightly higher do not.  DC had multiple options that put it 5k below to 5k above  UVA and W&M. Also, there are a lot of people who are not quite donut hole families--e.g. they are expected to pay about 40k/yr which means they will get no aid in-state, but they qualify for significant financial aid at the privates and then merit aid brings it down further. [/quote]

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