My junior needs ideas for schools to research. Probably a CS or applied math major, but into molecular biology as well and wants the school to be good in all 3. She is interested in applying data skills to science stuff – likes probability math and data analysis/visualization type projects.
Her top criteria is interaction with professors: small class sizes and hopefully opportunities to do research projects with them.
Schools need to be in blue states or friendly countries (kid is trans, so this is a non-negotiable safety thing), but doesn’t care about location otherwise.
We’re low income and would qualify for a lot of need-based aid, so schools that give it would be great. Also has a grandparent college fund that could pay maybe up to $40K per year.
Shy quirky geek who likes board games and role playing and wilderness stuff, and who will have a very different background than most kids (rural AK), so it’d be nice if the culture was friendly and welcoming.
The small class size criteria make me think liberal arts school, but kid isn’t super into the humanities (dislikes writing and lit analysis, though enjoys most social sciences), and would take all STEM classes if she could.
A small tech school might be a good option too, but she’d want to be sure they were still good for pure sciences, and she’s not an engineering build-physical-stuff type kid.
Admissions wise, she hasn’t taken the SAT yet, but has gotten 4s and a 5 on her AP tests and has done a lot of advanced course work (on her 3rd post-calculus math class, took all the AP sciences and is now doing a DE class, a lot of self-led CS classes)