D22 is making her college lists and we’d like to consider a few more schools that may not be as well-known. About her:
Attends a large, highly ranked public school in Northern CA
unweighted GPA is 3.9 (2 B+s in honors math)
Has taken 1 AP—AP Euro (sophomores are only offered 1), taking AP Psych right now over summer, 3 APs next year, 5 planned for senior year)
Theater and music kid, plenty of shows and performances locally but nothing on a state level. Plays 3 instruments, sings, acts
will join school newspaper as copy editor next year
Runs a charity at school, collecting and re-selling clothes for local youth homeless program
tutors under resourced kids once a week
attending School of New York Times journalism program this summer, interning at a local magazine
Her preferences:
Right now she is in love with Yale. She also toured Northwestern, U Chicago, USC and loved them. But these are all highly selective and she knows she needs great target and safety schools to get excited about.
She would like a medium or large university (5000 students or larger) in an area that is “not the middle of nowhere.” I’d like her to be within an hour of an airport.
She prefers a liberal arts vibe over a preprofessional one; she aims to go to law school and sees herself majoring in political science or PPE (philosophy, politics, economics). She doesn’t want a major party school and doesn’t envision herself in a Greek scene—she wouldn’t be happy at a school where she felt pressured to join just to have a social life. She will probably want to keep doing theater or the school paper. She doesn’t care much about sports but would be excited to go to football or basketball games
Since we live in CA, she is excited about UCLA, UCSB, UCD, and UCSC and she will apply to those schools.
We can afford full-pay.
Any schools come to mind for her to research? Thanks!
Safeties/targets that were on my D20’s list (Poli Sci/Public Policy, 3.95 UW/34 ACT):
SDSU, U of A, U of U, Temple U, Simmons U, LMU. She ended up at Cal.
For solidification of your daughter’s reach colleges, you may want to search “Top Lawyer Producer Schools – Infographic” for a list of 20 colleges with good track records of sending their graduates on to highly respected law schools.
Regarding potential majors, your daughter may also want to consider public policy, with relies on the fields of political science, economics and philosophy for its foundation.
Yes, as @KBTDPT noted, Utah is a great safety for CA kids with PAC-12 sports, a convenient airport, and a wonderful outdoor lifestyle. It’s cheap too. They have strong political connections both within the state and in DC and the Honors college has a lot of interesting classes.
Brandeis would be a good target. Also, William & Mary is an excellent school and a good target with her stats. I think they would love to have an out-of-state full-pay student from California. American University would be a nice safety.
These are great—thank you! she is thinking about University of Oregon and we will check out Utah as well. What do you think about University of Washington? It seems huge to me, but then UCLA is that big too.
We’ll look at Brandeis, William and Mary and American, too. I saw that American is Christian—is that in name only? She doesn’t practice a religion.
And I saw that info graphic on law schools, @merc81. All her top picks… but so hard to get into! I like the public policy idea, will pass that along to her. We discuss politics daily these days and I think she will be very happy studying these things in depth with others who are as passionate as she is.
I wanted to comment that all my D20’s safeties (except SDSU) offered an accelerated MPP program. That would look great on law school apps. Also, it’s not well-known that UCI has a 5 year PPE masters. My daughter got the Regents scholarship there but it wasn’t enough to tear her away from Berkeley!!!
U of O is far from the airport and merit aid is not strong. The best you could do would be to get it down to the cost of a UC. U of W is generally not considered a safety…I would put it on par with UCD. It’s also super pricy.
Note that no specific major is required to do pre-law.
Do UCR and UCM interest her? Or UA and ASU in Arizona?
American University does not appear to like being used as a low-choice “safety”. “Level of applicant’s interest” is “very important” in admission there.
Like most/many private colleges, it was started by a religious affiliation. Looks like it still maintains it. But it’s not a “thing.” I’ve never heard of anyone choosing it for that reason. It’s a very popular school.
@ucbalumnus — so far, she has not been interested in UC Merced or Riverside. We have family in San Bernardino county so we have driven through that area a lot and she doesn’t see herself there (she would rather be out of state, experiencing a different place). I think ASU’s honors college would be worth looking at but she has said Arizona isn’t for her. (She just came into the room and said she was looking at U of Colorado Boulder and University of Denver.) I wish she would apply to Berkeley, but it’s just 30 mins from us and it’s too close to home
That is great to know about the MPP programs, @KBTDPT … as well as the public policy major. It sounds tactical from its name, but if the courses are a mix of economics, philosophy and political science, she would be excited. (She is quite jazzed to take AP Economics her senior year).
Good to know about American University. She would not go to church but she would take religion classes as a means to learn the history. We will have to look into it. @brantly
Another comment regarding safety schools: all the ones on our list had an Honors college or program and they were all cheaper with merit than attending a UC (except LMU…she received less merit than we were expecting). We are full pay also but came to the decision as a family that we would not pay beyond the cost of a UC education.
AU is not at all a religious school from a student experience perspective! AU sees itself as having Methodist in ethos: “the Methodist heritage of the university can be found deep within the university’s strong and lasting commitment to openness, compassion, social justice, and public service”.
For all of the DC schools (G’Town, GWU, AU), I would consider them all somewhat preprofessional. This is due to the importance that students put on internships. Especially true for Polly Sci and Econ.
Something to think about if you have not already done so:
Can you comfortably afford to contribute full pay for college and law school? If not, if she goes under-budget for college, would you be willing to offer her the leftover money for law school?
However you answer these questions, be sure that you clearly inform her of your answers, preferably before she makes her application list.
How common is merit aid? How do you estimate what you might get, @KBTDPT? I didn’t really factor this in when considering how much we could pay—just figured we wouldn’t qualify for need-based aid and we have the means to cover 4 years at a private school. However, law school certainly puts things in a different category and we would be less able to foot an expensive law school if she were full pay (no merit) at a private university.
@2plustrio—St. Olaf seems quite charming. It’s a little small for her, but they have a Public Affairs Conversation year, a good music program, and what looks like a lovely campus. We have never been to MN—would be quite a weather shock for her… she wears her UGG boots when it’s 57 degrees. but she is looking forward to that—would be excited to experience 4 proper seasons.
@Wjs1107 Yes, the music department is great. We have had a few from our area go there and they are very talented. Its a very well respected school and while its a bit small, perhaps it could be a good fit with the programs available.
But yes, the weather will likely be a shock. But maybe she would love it.
It varies by college, and colleges are typically not very transparent about how difficult it is to get merit scholarships of a given size, except for less selective colleges that offer merit scholarships based on stats (e.g. University of Arizona: https://financialaid.arizona.edu/types-of-aid/scholarships/incoming-transfer ).
Generally, if a competitive merit scholarship is needed to afford the college, treat it as a “reach”, even if admission appears to be “match”, “likely”, or “safety”.
@Wjs1107 feel free to PM me and I can tell you what our experience was with merit. As @ucbalumnus stated, the only school D20 applied to with known merit aid (formula based on unweighted GPA and SAT/ACT) was U of A.
She also toured Northwestern, U Chicago, USC and loved them. But these are all highly selective and she knows she needs great target and safety schools to get excited about.