@TheMonaLisa, does your son have a preference between creative writing and history, or are they both pretty equally loved? Additionally, is there a period or region or aspect of history that he’s particularly interested in?
Building a College List for Creative Writing/History Major [VA resident, 3.9 GPA, 1420+? SAT, <$50k]
More in love with creative writing. His interest is in US History, civil war to WW2.
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Just an update. We visited University of Richmond, Susquehanna, Bucknell, UVA, and Kenyon. We didn’t have time for Oberlin or Denison unfortunately, but my son LOVES U of R, Kenyon, and Susquehanna! Kenyon seem to check everything off his list in terms of program and campus vibe. Susquehanna was amazing in regards to their program, but their campus seems so outdated, not as well maintained - it wasn’t as inspiring as Kenyon’s campus.
We are hoping to tour Oberlin, Denison, when we go back up to Ohio to drop him off at Kenyon for their writer’s workshop. We also plan to visit Binghampton in the summer. We see that he’s leaning towards LACs. I am going to go back to everyone’s comments here to check out the other schools you recommended.
If after all this my son feels a strong pull towards one school, I will encourage him to ED (after we run the NPC AND if it meets our budget).
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Don’t hesitate to ask the LACs for a financial preread / merit estimate. Some may accommodate and that could be helpful if trying to decide about ED.
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@coffeeat3 In addition to using their NPC? How do we go about doing a preread? TIA!
Whitman does - and maybe it’s a good barometer although all schools are different. A Susquehanna is likely to dig deeper than a Kenyon and no one has to ED. That’s a choice.
Once you do that, you risk the low cost in state schools that we know will make your budget - like Mary Washington.
Good luck.
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I see what you mean. Thanks! My son is not interested in Mary Washington unfortunately.
Maybe not there but in the end, don’t risk finding something affordable - that’s first and foremost (no matter the school name).
Best of luck.
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She did make a point of saying that an ED application would be contingent on the school’s meeting budget. So I don’t think they’re risking finding something affordable. They might risk an even bigger bargain, but many people do that for a first choice school, and it’s their decision to make.
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With all due respect to @tsbna44, I would recommend that you research the percentage of students who live on campus at each school yourself. As a lifelong New Yorker, I was surprised by their assertion that Stony Brook is a commuter school, and then suggested Hofstra. As long as I can remember, Hofstra has had the reputation as a commuter school, and still does AFAIK. While this was probably the case for Stony Brook in the past, Stony Brook has climbed up the ranks in the SUNY system thanks to its outstanding STEM programs. Among the many NYC public school grads I’ve known who’ve attended, none have commuted. (I don’t know any students who’ve attended Hofstra.)
I found these stats on SB’s site: Stony Brook University, New York | Fast Facts
33 Residence halls
27 Apartment-style buildings
10,514 Students live on campus (9,597 undergraduate • 917 graduate)
78% of first-year students live on campus
Hofstra doesn’t break percentages on its overview page (and I’m bad at math, LOL).
I also found this piece in the student paper from last year that you might find interesting. The residential side of campus isn’t up to snuff – The Hofstra Chronicle
Best of luck on your search.
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If you do not qualify for FA and are trying to understand merit aid, it is okay to ask admission’s to provide a review. It is also okay to ask for a FA pre-read too, if you need to double check prior to applying - especially in the case of ED, but it looks like you already know that you don’t qualify for FA.
Not all schools will agree to do this and it seems like more of the merit providing LACs are open to this request. Obviously, it should be an ask for only your top schools. For example: X school is my top choice and we understand you provide some students merit aid. I am interested in applying ED (or RD) and is there a way for my family to understand if I would qualify for merit aid and at what amount if I was to be accepted? It is important for us to understand an estimated cost of attendance and weigh that against my in state options.
Always worth an ask 
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Thank you. I appreciate the explanation. For some reason the NPC via College Board is not working, but I was able to run Kenyon’s NPC using MyIntuition App and we were able to qualify for a need-based scholarship. So does this mean we can request a pre-read to see if my son may qualify for merit-based scholarships?
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Yes !!! IMO Website states $15-$35k per year are the ranges for merit at Kenyon.
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Just note that at most schools (but not all) the need and merit aid is substitutional, not stackable - so one may replace the other. In other words, if you are getting $40K of one and $20K of another…you’ll simply get the $40K of one - or $20K and $20K.
You can ask each school if they stack need and merit or not.
If you get local scholarships and have need aid, those will also, at most schools, reduce the need aid given.
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I think it is better to run the NPC on each school’s website.
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From our experience with Kenyon and other similar schools, merit aid didn’t cancel need-based aid but it didn’t stack either. Not sure how they calculated it, but basically, merit aid (in the range of $20-32K at the time, 5 years ago) made the COA about $10-$12K less per year than what the NPC originally showed.
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I reread your comment above and agree with you about wanting engaged peers especially in writing workshops not peers who are just taking the class for credit and will just skate by. It’s easy to stereotype and say that you find this most at colleges with high acceptance rates. But there are some exceptions like VCUarts, a school within Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), which is highly rated and quite selective for Art, but VCU has a high acceptance rate. I may do a search for that kind of scenario but for Creative Writing and seek out colleges where my son will be right around the middle based on his stats. I’m finding that Niche is a good guide, a starting point, for determining the overall college’s “grade.”
Thanks again for your insight.
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@coffeeat3 Thank you so much! Worth a try!
@tsbna44 Good point to check on need and merit being substitutional or stackable.
@randommom1 Oh I didn’t know that the school’s own NPC is better than the College Board (CB) NPC. At Kenyon, they stated on their website that a more accurate NPC will be on CB. Their school’s NPC (via MyInTuition app) is approximately 90%accurate according to their website. I guess I can contact each financial aid office. Thank you!
@Motherprof Good to know, thank you! I will private message you later about Kenyon. Thanks!
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Many school NPCs link to the CB’s site (which hosts individual college NPCs), so those should be accurate. One issue is that many NPCs do not include an estimate of merit aid, the results often just show need based aid (institutional and federal.) Other situations that can lead to inaccurate NPC results include when there are divorced parents, or if the parents (or student) owns a business and/or real estate beyond a primary home.
MyIntuition tends to be less accurate because it asks fewer questions. Some MyIntuition results may be large estimated ranges, which might be less than helpful. Generally, if there is an NPC, use that and not MyIntuition.
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Thank you! Good to know about MyIntuition. For some reason when we go to CB’s site (by clicking the link on the school website OR going directly to CB) and fill in all the info, it gives us a message saying the site is not responding. They provide a link that they say saved all the info we put in but when we copy and paste that link, it gives us a message saying, the info was not saved. So I don’t know what’s going on with CB’s NPC. We may try later this summer.