Hello everyone. I was wondering if you could help me narrow down these colleges, in terms of their prestige, and if they have god programs for history, english, or political science (possibly even physics as well, although I know most of these schools are centered more on the humanities)
Villanova
Gettysburg
Lafayette
Case Western
Dickinson
Kenyon
Colgate
the gw
american
muhlenburg
brandeis
colby
lehigh
university of rochester
skidmore
trinity (hartford ct)
Thanks!
What’s your budget?
These subjects are staples at just about every college there is. So you need to focus on cost and likelihood of admission.
Do you need FA? Estimate your cost at each school using that school’s Net Price Calculator.
Get a rough sense of your competitive for admission by comparing your stats vs the school’s 25th-74th percentile stats. You can find those by googling: Common Data Set <>
The Common Data Set info will also give you lots of other useful info about the school, e.g , racial diversity, % students on FA or merit aid, # students in different majors, etc, etc.
If you solely want to compare the school on the relative strength of specific academic disciplines, you may want to create a spreadsheet and compare information like:
Number of courses in their Catalog for each subject
Number of faculty for each subject
Average number of courses offered in the subject for each term
How many graduates in the past year in the discipline
Degree requirements
So for example, for Lafayette College, for History, there are 81 different courses offered in their catalog. There are 11 faculty listed on their website. For Spring 2016, there are 24 sections of history classes offered representing 23 distinct courses.
From their Common Data Set, 2.68% of students completing degrees in 2014-2015 graduated with a degree in history.
They have a Common Course of Study which includes a First-Year Seminar, Distribution Requirements with one course in Humanities, one course with a Natural Science with lab designation, one course with a Social Sciences designation, and two additional courses in two different divisions outside the student’s home division. There is a Quantitative Reasoning Requirement (one course), a Writing Requirement (First-Year Seminar and three additional courses, at least one in the major and one outside the major), a Global and Multiculturalism requirement (2 courses), a Values Requirement, and elementary proficiency in a second language (can be exempted through testing).
In comparison, Kenyon College has 104 different history courses offered in their catalog. There are 18 faculty listed on their website. For spring 2016 there are 34 sections offered. 4.95% of students completing degrees in 2014-2015 graduated with a degree in history.
Their degree requirements include a second language requirement, Quantitative Reasoning, and 9 or more units outside of the major department (16 units required for graduation). One unit within at least one department in each of the four divisions (Fine Arts, Humanities, Natural Science, and Social Science) is required.
I would say 40,000 at most newjerseygirl
If the budget is $40K, then your first criteria should be the availability of financial aid. Which you will need. (As GMTplus7 noted upthread, all these schools will have fine departments in your prospective majors.)
Take Skidmore off your list. It is the most expensive LAC in the US and they are known to be stingy with financial aid.
from your list these would be my tier 1
Lafayette
Case Western
Dickinson
Muhlenberg
not based on prestige (prestige is all smoke and mirrors and personal opinion)
In terms of history/English/government, maybe Kenyon. If physics were added in, maybe Colgate or the University of Rochester. For government alone, maybe GW or Villanova.
Ok thanks everyone
As of now I would say Dickinson is my number one.
Dickinson is potentially excellent for political science / government.
Do you think I would have a decent chance at some financial aid?
If your family would be in need of it, then yes.
Did you run the net price calculator for these schools to see which seem affordable? That is job #1 before you start worrying about “prestige”
Every college has their own net price calculator on their website, usually on the “affording” or financial aid page. Work with your parents to run this on all the colleges you are considering.
Regarding evaluating departments by the number of courses in the catalog- I agree that having a very small number of courses would indicate a likely sparse set of offerings, but beyond that one should be aware that some courses listed there might not have been taught for a while. Some departments are better at pruning the catalog of old not-likely-to be-offered-with-current-faculty courses, while others keep the catalog language intact perhaps hoping that the courses might be offered again someday.
What we found useful was to (1) look at the catalog (which has all offerings listed usually). Then to also look at the actual offerings over the past year – you can often do that online as well. So if there is something that seems important, see if it was offered in the last 12 months.
Here’s what worked well for my kids. It’s a lot of work, but it did give my kids a really clear idea of what their best matches were.
Get on each school’s website with a list of questions in mind. For each school create a sheet with 3 columns or sections- 1. Plusses, 2. Minuses, 3. Questions.
Put everything you like in the first, what you don’t like in the second, and remaining questions to be researched further in the third. Don’t worry about whether your responses seem shallow. You can sort all that out in the end. You may find that things like “Doesn’t have a football team” or “Great food” seem silly, but it’s all a part of creating a sense of the school and what matters to you.
A list of possible questions to keep in mind as you go through websites:
-The basics-weather, proximity to a city or outdoor opportunities, school size, male/female ratio, distance from home.
-Does the school offer merit money, or only need based? What is the average debt with which students graduate?
How much can you afford? Do you need merit money? If so, how likely is it you’ll get it at the schools on your list?
This is a really great resource for assessing student debt levels at various schools.
http://ticas.org/posd/map-state-data-2015#
-Are there certain EC’s you’d like to pursue? Are they readily available? Can anyone be involved? For instance, if you like to play lacrosse but won’t be competitive as a varsity player does the school have club lacrosse?
-What does this school’s marketing say about how they see themselves? What buzz words do they use repeatedly? I would be careful not to read too much into this but it can be a jumping off point for more investigation. For instance, we found that the website for one of the schools one of my kids investigated had a lot of information on the areas around the school and how much fun they were, but had very little on the front pages about academics. When she looked further she found the school had a bit of a party reputation and many students weren’t as serious about academics as she would have liked.
-Do you want to be in a frat or sorority? Would you prefer a campus with an active Greek presence? With no Greek life at all?
-How do you feel about having to take courses outside your discipline? One of my kids nixed a school because it required students to take a foreign language whereas the school he’s attending does not. What are the school’s distribution requirements if any?
-What kinds of summer research or internships does the school offer to humanities students? How well does the career counseling office seem to do in helping students find jobs?
-Your chances of getting in. Ideally you’ll end up with a mixture of reaches matches and likelies.
-Do you want to write a senior thesis? Some schools require it, some offer it to honors students, some don’t have it at all.
-4 and 6 year graduation rates. Low grad rates can indicate a lack of support and/or difficulty getting into required classes or it can be because of co-op programs or other innocuous factors.
-The strength of offerings in your area, in particular your sub-specialty, if you have one in mind (e.g., Pre-modern history, creative writing, or European politics). It sounds like you haven’t quite closed in on what you want to study, so you may want to look at schools that allow you to declare your major in your sophomore year and/or schools that make it easy to switch majors.
-Special programs. Be aware that just about every school out there will tout their study abroad opportunities, commitment to sustainability and close community. Look for thing that distinguish the schools. A special research program, cool January term offerings, an unusual school calendar, unusual academic offerings or graduate programs.
I’m sure there are more questions you’d want to research, but hopefully this list will get your juices flowing.
Where have you visited? and what was you thoughts about those places? I assume you visited Dickinson.
and visit before classes end those schools will overlap somewhat without students on campus
Run the calculators and decide how far from home you want to be and if a rural or city place feels better - then work from there