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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.  [/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.  [/quote]

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[/quote]

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.[/quote]

DP. Weak rebuttal. [/quote]

And ignores the data.  From the same website:
Freshman pell share -
JMU 15%
Ursinus 18%
UMW 17%
Kalamazoo 25%
Juniata 26%

I think PP just has a problem with the existence of B students. Her kids are fortunate they never needed any support. I know the big schools can be fun and have the name recognition but I think most B students would probably get a better education at a smaller school that, yes, does some hand-holding and personal encouragement.

FWIW, I have one kid at Virginia Tech. He's having fun and getting a great education in his STEM major but I don't think he's learning to write well or learn much else about the world. He's able to take most of his general eds online and skate by. By the end of sophomore year he didn't know any professor enough to feel comfortable listing them as an academic reference. Obviously, that's on him. A student who takes the initiative can certainly be challenged, know professors, etc. He did eventually learn his lesson, now (a senior) has a job as a TA and last semester was able to pick a gen ed class that was somewhat related to his major and finally was excited by something other than math/data/programming. [/quote]

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