My S25 is looking for a small liberal arts college with the following qualities:
Friendly, open students–would love a place where people keep their doors open & want to chat. He is queer, not an athlete, and wary of sports-bro culture.
Some economic diversity; he won’t have a lot of spending $ & doesn’t want to be socially marginalized because of it. Or at least a school where much of the social life happens on campus for free.
Robust clubs & extracurriculars, with high participation (he hopes to sing a capella & play frisbee, but won’t make a competitive frisbee team)
Strong career services. He doesn’t know what job he wants, but he will probably be a social sciences major (political science, psychology, maybe a minor in statistics or data science) and will enter the work force right after college (maybe grad school in a couple of years).
He was accepted to some of his reach schools, but they are currently unaffordable for us (financial aid appeals pending). In the meantime, we’re trying to choose from his remaining options: Clark University, Dickinson, Skidmore, Connecticut College. Any experience with these schools to share? Clark, Dickinson, & Skidmore are all about the same price for us; Connecticut is a little more $ but we could make it work.
He’s visited Clark & loved it; was more lukewarm on Conn but recognizes they have a lot to offer. We have a visit to Skidmore scheduled & are trying to figure out if we should get to Dickinson also (it’s by far the furthest away for us).
We went to Clark and loved and was lukewarm on Connecticut. That’s reason enough right there to eliminate Connecticut.
With a social science degree, outcomes will range from difficult to grad school (more money). None of these schools will make a difference in that regard and it’s likely your student’s hustle will be what lands them a job or not.
At Clark, in their last CDS ( a few years old), 443 of 629 were awarded need aid and 178 merit aid. Compare that vs. a Tufts, for example, where far less than half get need aid. When you say socio economic diversity, there you go.
At Connecticut, it’s 255 of 451 get need aid. And 206 merit aid - so obviously some are getting both. But you don’t like the school - so get rid of it.
Skidmore was 406/666 but only two got merit aid.
Dickinson 422/646 and 197 got merit aid.
I’d eliminate CC - but I’ll let others answer but I suspect the student would prefer Dickinson over Skidmore if they liked Clark.
Not sure where you are but Dickinson is not “that far” - it’s 6 hours from Clark.
I am a big Clark fan. If it has what he’s looking for and is affordable- I’d say you have a winner!
Dickenson does appeal to some of the same kids- but if it’s a stretch distance wise, I don’t see it coming in higher/better on any of the dimensions that he cares about.
Clark seems like a very strong front-runner to me. It’s very good in terms of practical internships/experiences to help get kids into viable career tracks. In your son’s situation, I would also be very interested in Clark’s 4+1 masters option with tuition waived for the 5th year. For a social sciences + data science kid, the masters in GIS would be worth a particularly close look - that could really dovetail the social sciences knowledge base with a marketable data science/visualization skillset.
Clark also has the least affluent student body of your four front-runners by a significant margin. (I wish the NYT would update this series, which is a decade old now, but still useful for comparison purposes - you can enter the other schools in the search box and bring up their profiles also: Economic diversity and student outcomes at Clark - The New York Times )
You can’t really go wrong among these four, and I have plugged all of them for particular students; it just seems to me that Clark stands out as a fit, especially given the proof-of-concept that he loved his visit, and thus is the one to beat here.
All great options (congrats!) but he can only attend one. It is time to be a bit ruthless and narrow down the list.
–First thing I’d do is take CC off the table. Fit is very important for LACs and if he wasn’t feeling a school, move on.
–Dickinson is also a wonderful school, but if distance is an issue that may be a reason to cut the school from the final list. If the distance is comfortably doable, I’d say it is worth a visit.
–Clark sounds like a good fit and you should know more about Skidmore after the visit.
Clark is great. We are local to the area so have lots of interactions with Clark students and they are friendly, low key, bright, and involved in the community. Also if considering graduate school Clark offers a 5 year masters program tuition free (Would have to confirm that was the case when D23 was accepted). Also there are many other colleges in Worcester that take a part in a consortium and I believe some of the activities are included as well.
Beyond your son’s specific preferences, which don’t really seem particularly limiting, I’d suggest he consider the attributes of his choices more generally as well. Along these lines, I’d recommend he take a close look at Skidmore.
We are also deciding between Dickinson and Clark and have visited both. Clark has the fifth year master’s tuition free as well as an excellent geography program, which few American colleges have. Dickinson has a farm and integrates sustainability throughout the living spaces as well as the curriculum. Even the Economics Department describes itself in a holistic way “The 11-course economics major explores economics from a variety of traditional and nontraditional theoretical perspectives to address issues of economic efficiency, economic growth, social justice, power, individual freedom, discrimination, cultural values and environmental destruction.” Both schools have their plus points and seem to really take care of students
Well…I know this is kind of an old thread..but it sounds like your son has quiet a few things in common with mine…and after visiting numerous places, Dickinson just felt like the perfect fit for him…basically every bullet point you listed seems to align with what we have seen and experienced there thus far. Admittedly we’ve only been on campus for 3-4 days between various visits…but he has found his place there and I have no doubt at all that he’s going to find his people there from what we have experienced. As someone who has visited enough now to confidently navigate the campus etc…if there’s anything I can answer pls don’t hesitate to ask. We’ve been truly blown away by how friendly every person we have interacted with has been there…and that includes completely non scripted interactions with random students.
Clark University has 22% Pell grant students, while the others have 10-13% Pell grant students. Pell grant eligbility approximates the bottom half of household income.
A good knowledge of statistics / data science will be helpful in the social sciences and in many types of employment.
Thanks, everyone–he ended up eliminating Conn College due to fit & Dickinson due to distance (decides he wants a school within 3 hours of home so he doesn’t have to miss important family events).
We visited Skidmore for admitted students day & I liked it a lot (gorgeous campus, friendly tour guides, very involved & accessible career center, the most generous financial aid he received). He still prefers Clark, but isn’t really explaining why. My take is that Clark does a MUCH better job of providing opportunities to meaningfully connect with current & admitted students, and as a result he’s more able to see himself there. As part of Clark’s admitted students programming, he’s had lunch with a student, attended 2 sample classes, and attended a lunch/social hour for students admitted to the honors program. Skidmore didn’t have any sample classes or real opportunities to connect with students on their visit day. He has been in touch with current Skidmore students, and I know that if we went back to Skidmore they’d let him sit in on a class, but at this point he isn’t interested in going back.
If I were doing it again, I’d take him to visit Skidmore earlier in the process–I didn’t think he’d get enough financial aid there (their offer is MUCH better than the NPC) & so we had focused more on target schools like Clark, where he applied EA. I didn’t want to invest visit time on schools that were unlikely to be real choices, but I think one month just wasn’t enough time for him to get his head around Skidmore, especially since their admitted student day isn’t that immersive.
He did end up successfully appealing his financial aid at one of his reach schools (Bowdoin), so that’s still on the table (see my other thread). Thanks for all of your help–I think any of these 4 schools would have been great outcomes for him.