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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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]

This is 100% accurate.[/quote]
IMO, the data is skewed.  Typically, those who dropout are lower income students.  What is the rate of lower income students among those schools?

[b]I would venture to guess that JMU has proportionally more lower income students [/b]than these pricey SLACs because lower income students typically tend to commute rather than stay on campus.  SLACs are usually not in heavily populated areas, so you have less commuters.[/quote]

You would be wrong. That data was also already shared -- JMU's Pell share is the lowest of this particular set being discussed:

Pell %
JMU 15%
Ursinus 18%
UMW 17%
Kalamazoo 25%
Juniata 26%

And these LACs aren't "pricey" they all give merit aid and need aid and the average net price is on par with JMU. JMU is actually one of the worst among VA public Us in meeting financial need.

I'm not putting down JMU. I know a lot of kids who go there, love it, do well after graduation. Which also speaks to the reality that being a B student in HS doesn't mean you won't be successful.[/quote]

Not to mention, that many of these schools have kids who are well above "B" students--they are just not the A+ in test scores, grades, ECs and the je ne sais quoi that gets you into the top schools--even top in-state publics.  My eldest was a 'target' for in-state W&M admission (4.25/1430SAT/Well-regarded national award in area of interest), but if she hadn't gotten in ED--several of the LACs on this list were her choice above any other in-state public.  [b]We couldn't afford the more selective LACs that she could get into, but were less likely to offer her significant merit aid[/b].[/quote]

Our CTCL DC was a high performer in HS (4.0UW, 1580 SAT) and chose the CTCL school because of the merit aid and undergrad research opportunities, as well as the club sports and small class sizes.  DC graduated a few years ago and is doing a PhD at a well-regarded (T10 in the field) university now.[/quote]

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