<p>Someone recommended Lindenwood outside of St. Louis. Anyone know anything about this university? Does it have a reputation, good or bad? Thanks!</p>
<p>I have a son attending LU. I’ll be honest about it - Its reputation is kind of regional at best - Most St. Louis people know the school and a lot of grads go into business and teaching in the area. It is well regarded in the state of Missouri. That said, it is not a national level school and does not submit itself for US News rankings. Best guess is that it is in the bottom half to 3rd of Liberal Arts colleges nationally although a case could be made that it is moving up. It is moderately selective with about 55 percent of applicants getting in. I think you asked about Bradley once and I’d put it in the same basic category in terms of reputation.</p>
<p>Now - that said, I love this school. It is growing like wildfire and it is truly focused on the students. There are virtually no academic classes larger than 30 students - Indeed there are only a couple of rooms capable of holding more than 30 and those are things like Marching Band, Theater, and the like where you need more than 30. </p>
<p>Their business department has a nice new facility and regularly gets interesting speakers from St. Louis and national companies to come by and talk to their classes. If you have some specific questions I’ll be happy to give you honest answers as I’m pretty objective about the school even though I like it. </p>
<p>Thanks! Appreciate the insight. I had just never heard of the college before. Why did your son choose LU? Are you from the St. Louis area?</p>
<p>If you are interested in LU, then St.Louis University might be worth looking at.
LU’s campus is nice, reputation…so-so in the area, but academically, some just see it as an extension of the greater S.L. Community College in a private system, compared to U.M S.L. or Webster U.
The best schools in the area are Washington U S.L and S.L University.</p>
<p>My son was probably more average in some cases than many students here, but he did well on the ACT. So he had about a 3.4 GPA and an ACT score of 32. He got scholarship offers from several schools…some better than others, but none came close to what LU offered him. I believe any student getting a 30 or more on the ACT automatically gets a scholarship roughly equal to tuition. They also allow students to do Work and Learn if they live in the dorms and it knocks another 2400 off the cost of room and board. Because he also got some money from the State of Missouri, his total cost at LU each year including room and board is about $3,000. That was part of the attraction…He will graduate with zero in student loans. The other was that he had no clue what he wanted to study. In high school he bounced around several ideas, but his motivation about any of them would wane and when the time came to make a choice, he felt like spending an arm and leg to go to Mizzou (Which was going to be a net price of over $12,000/year) was foolish given that he was basically going to go in undecided major wise. Going to any other school other than the Community College here in the county was going to cost triple or usually even more than triple the cost of LU for him. I am a college-junkie who researched hundreds of colleges with him over a two year period and we visited 5 or 6 but he felt at home at LU and knew he could do well there and again - that idea of getting his Bachelor’s degree without any debt was exciting because he thinks he will want to go on to do a Master’s degree after the B.S.</p>
<p>There were a couple other things in play as well. He loves playing percussion in the marching band and jazz band - LU has a marching band that is quite a bit of fun and his percussion director in high school went to LU. He loved the newer dorms which are really quite nice. He also loved that teachers would know if he was in class or not. He looked at numerous classrooms and most held 25-30 max. He was kind of thinking about majoring in Computer Science and he met one of the teachers and that was also a selling point because they were very personable. Most of the faculty there try pretty hard to help the students who want to do well. </p>
<p>We live within 20 miles of the campus in St. Charles County, and it is kind of nice because we go up to see him play in the band on football game days and root for the team. I’m not sure it is just an extension of the community college any longer. The last 5-10 years, my firm has been hiring more and more from LU and UMSL. Wash U was never an interest to him and he didn’t have the grades anyway. SLU doesn’t have much of a music department so it was never on his list either.</p>
<p>So - long story short…No, it is not the most prestigious institution even in the St. Louis area by a long shot, but it is a place where almost 14,000 students now attend and it continues to grow both in size and respectability. </p>
<p>^The description is accurate, and the COA will vary with instate student vs oust of state, due to the MO grants.</p>
<p>An average admitted student @ Washington U. S. L student has HIGH SCHOOL GPA of 3.5 and 30 on the ACT. So, good thing your son was not interested in W.U.S.L… cos I would have said he missed out on a great school with great financial award.
Well, he will have various choices for grad school as long as grades are great at LU.</p>