OP: Among the current options, U Delaware is arguably the best for Marine Biology/Marine Science.
Surprised that the University of North Carolina at Wilmington is not on the list of one intending to study Marine Biology.
Also, The University of Washington at Seattle and the University of California at San Diego are very strong in this field of study.
It is well past the application deadlines for these schools.
OP is not asking for comments on the application list. That ship has sailed. When all is said and done the student has multiple excellent acceptances – many with merit money. The task now is to choose from these acceptances.
Yes, I know. My comment was that I was surprised that these schools were not on OP’s child’s list of schools if interested in Marine Biology.
With respect to the options presented, U Delaware deserves serious consideration.
You are likely to get some more acceptances with merit, so this conversation could shift. However, if I were in your shoes, I would not pay another $30-40K per year for NEU for perceived prestige/ranking. I would only do that if your student loves being in Boston, is very into the co-op program, and is actually excited about spending the first semester in a foreign country.
We were in a very similar situation a number of years ago. Our older daughter was accepted to NEU out of high school, but it would have been full pay. She was accepted to UVM with a significant merit scholarship, and was also accepted to multiple other schools with merit aid, most of which were ranked very close to some of the other schools that have offered you merit aid (and they would have been very similar in cost if you adjust for inflation).
We decided that NEU was not worth the extra money. She went to UVM instead. She did very well and found a very good fit for her. Several years later she was applying to graduate programs (specifically for a DVM in her case). The fact that she had chosen an affordable university for her bachelor’s degree, plus some good fortune in terms of the behavior of the stock market, meant that we could help her with the cost of the DVM. This turned out to be VERY important (“CRITICAL” might be the right term). This is helping her a lot right now as she is working and earning a living.
The difference in ranking of the undergraduate schools did not matter at all. She still did very well in admissions to graduate programs. What school she went to for her bachelor’s really did not impact graduate school admissions. What she did while she was an undergraduate student did matter, but she could have done something similar at most of the schools on her list.
My understanding is that marine biology is a field where some form of graduate study is likely. I expect that your daughter’s experience will be similar.
If your daughter is reasonably sure that she wants to stick with marine biology then I would probably rule out UVM just because it doesn’t have the major. In this case U.Del and URI and UNH are very good. If she wants biology without the “marine” part, or some other major, then these schools are still very good as are UVM and Rutgers and Pitt.
Let’s suppose that your daughter goes straight from a bachelor’s degree, to a short bit of work experience, to a PhD. Suppose that the PhD is fully funded. In this case you do not need to help the daughter with the cost of the PhD because it is fully funded. However, even in this case being able to give your daughter a small financial boost for her graduate studies will help her. The PhD stipend is typically quite minimal. Having a small amount of additional funds can help with things like eating out a couple of times per month plus allowing her to fund her IRA and therefore avoid a six or seven year delay in contributing to retirement funds. Also you really cannot count on being accepted directly to a PhD since admissions is so highly competitive.
In your situation I would save some $$ for graduate school. This is NOT an example of being cheap. Instead, it is an example of paying attention to fiscal reality while looking out for a daughter’s future (which is very likely to include graduate school). We did this, and at this point our daughters are both glad that we did (even if one was not as happy about this way back when she was a senior in high school).
Congratulations to your amazing child.
But if you have to question paying more you’re trying to justify the obvious. Have a serious financial talk with your child and map our grad school if you’re able to pay or help with it.
For my son it was totally worth it to us to pay around $25,000/year more for the college he went to. For my daughter paying extra to go to Emerson didn’t make sense since her #2 gave her tons of merit. Looking back she realizes she made a great decision. Some schools are just sexier to get into but that in itself doesn’t make it the better school to go to. I would see which school give more /better real world experience and which internships the students actually do once at the schools. What connections do they have etc.
I wonder about this. When you look at career outcomes for Bachelor, they don’t show any.
So I would confirm the program has heft. If it doesn’t (quantity wise), how many classes will be offered - are there variety ? How often will they be offered ?
On the other hand, if you’re the only student or there’s just a few someone may like the intimacy of that.
I did see NU high in a ranking (Syracuse too and they don’t even have the major) but given no bachelor career data, I do wonder about the size of the program at the undergraduate level level.
A lot of thoughtful feedback here – thank you. I know plenty of people that don’t end up with their initially intended majors (including myself), so the goal was to maximize my kid’s options. Although we applied to several schools with strong marine science (such as UNH, UDel, URI, UConn, and Rutgers), we also applied to schools without marine science but with other strengths (like UVM for environmental science). We omitted some very strong marine bio schools because either (a) we felt that the marine science program was the school’s main/only strength and (b) we ruled out the geographic location.
We have heard good things about NEU’s marine science program, like their three seas program and the coop opportunities at their marine science center. However, we will take a deeper dive (no pun intended) to be sure they have what we think they have at the undergraduate level.
Agreed that we need to assume that our kid will pursue a master’s for our analysis.
(@DadTwoGirls It recently occurred to me that pre-vet might be an alternative path of interest to my kid, so I appreciated the commentary there)
This is an area where I know more, since one daughter graduated with her DVM just this past May. She is now working as a veterinarian.
One thing that helped her DVM applications quite a bit was having a LOT of experience with animals, some of which was in a veterinary situation, and a small amount of which was in an emergency veterinary situation. Some other experience was rather ordinary barnyard experience. This included both large and small animals.
In this regard UVM or UNH could have significant advantages over NEU. For example both UVM and UNH have a CREAM program, in which students help to take care of a dairy herd. This involves cleaning up after the animals. However, this also includes drawing blood, helping a cow give birth, and administering medication. Apparently cows cannot swallow pills, so “administering medication” can in some cases involve putting the pill inside the cow in whatever location is appropriate. Before my daughter applied to DVM programs I told her that I was impressed that she had reached inside a cow three ways. She gave me a very funny look, paused, and said “Dad, which way don’t you know about”). Regardless this sort of experience can be very helpful in applying to DVM programs. This is also an example of how a highly ranked university such as NEU, or even Harvard or MIT, might not be the best fit for any one particular student. I have been on all three campuses multiple times, and have never seen cows or horses on any of them (in contrast with UVM or UNH, which will have cows and horses either on campus or nearby; I think U.Conn probably does also but I am not sure since I have not been there).
But veterinary medicine is a tough path to take, that requires a great deal of determination. I do not think that my daughter was completely sure that she wanted to take this path until after she already had her bachelor’s degree.
Yes, this is a very good program.
I’m just stuck on this. If she wants to be in the big city, UNH affords this on occasion with ease.
if that’s what they want, UConn is definitely not the school for them. It’s in the middle of nowhere.
We don’t plan to apply to the no-aid schools. But we plan to explain why. We talk about money upfront. Did the same with my son.
Location location location. It was not a top destination when I went to school, but they are in a great spot and the buildings are beautiful. It was discovered.
Please get back to the OP!
I think the URI Marine Bio program might be a good match. It was high on my daughter’s list but although she got in - it wasn’t affordable.
One thing to note -the Northeastern Marine Bio “Three Seas” program is also available in their Masters program (but that is a ‘self-pay’ Masters I think)
U Del also has a farm. I know someone in their PreVet program there.
NEU’s Marine Science Center is in a gorgeous location in Nahant, but it’s a minimum 35-minute drive from the main campus, and that’s best-case - can take much longer with traffic. There’s something to be said for the schools where the main campus is in a more coastal location.
My kid liked Northeastern too, and got in, and considered it. But we ended up deciding the additional cost wasn’t worth it. And my sense is that this may be the case here, too. NUin, especially, is a nice experience but super-pricey for what you get. The marine bio students I know who have studied abroad have gone to Australia and had amazing experiences there. Something like that might be a higher priority than paying Northeastern top dollar to be in an entertaining overseas holding pattern while waiting for space in Boston.
It’ll be interesting to see what you hear from Conn College. This is an outlier on your list but a lovely coastal location, and marine bio students can take advantage of cross-registration at the Coast Guard Academy for additional course offerings. If a LAC experience appeals, this could be a great school to consider, particularly if they offer decent merit.