In general, for your best chance at merit aid you need to hit the EA deadlines. Missing the EA deadline can mean you aren’t considered for the biggest awards. For example, Banner/Key at UMD.
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By the way, the reason for Pitt’s growing prominence as a research universities, particularly in Life Sciences, is not a mystery–it is money:
Pitt now sits at #16 (out of 900 institutions) . . . . Pitt ranks #12 in expenditures from federal sources and #27 in expenditures from non-federal sources. Within the Federal realm, Pitt ranks #5 in spending from the Department of Health and Human Services funding and #23 in spending from the Department of Defense funding.
Looking at specific research areas, Pitt ranks in the Top 10 in three life sciences categories: life sciences, all (#7); life sciences biological and biomedical sciences (#10), and life sciences, health sciences (#9).
Again, only one of many considerations, but I thought it worth pointing out it is very unlikely the research opportunities in Life Sciences at Pitt are going anywhere.
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I’m pretty sure people can get a lower tuition after a year or two. Its already cheaper first year than most schools in the us by 10k.
Nah, Quebec province is going to be charging high tuition for students from the US.
You’ve come to the right place! There is a string (like pearls) of SLACs in the upper corner of the Northeast with ties to each other that date back to the 19th century. They are formally known as the New England Small College Athletic Conference, or simply NESCAC. About the NESCAC - New England Small College Athletic Conference
Most people west of the Mississippi have never heard of them, and they tend not to do very well in @NiceUnparticularMan 's PhD production list because their STEM majors tend to self-select for med school and maybe even to Wall Street a little bit.
But in return for their 90K price tags you will definitely get the “hot house” academic environment you are looking for. People have the mistaken belief that because they are liberal arts colleges that they are only strong in the humanities. They tend to forget that there’s an implied “and sciences” at the end of that category.
Let’s begin with the basics: the classes are all taught by professors. And because the student bodies tend to be self-selected toward the social sciences and humanities, the STEM student/faculty ratios tend to be tiny. A 50-person Organic Chemistry class would be considered gigantic at a place like Amherst, mostly owing to pre-med students completing their prerequisites.
More typical would be an elective course taught seminar style with the professor knowing everyone’s name within a short time. The reading list would probably include research by the professor themselves. This close relationship with someone working in the field is what gets kids excited about pursuing an academic career.
The other point is that the NESCAC schools tend to be fabulously wealthy (all those Wall Street Masters of the Universe tend to be fairly loyal alum much like Wesleyan’s Josh Boger, Class of 1973, who founded Vertex Pharmaceuticals over thirty years ago and was a Wesleyan trustee for many years.) They have made big capital investments in science facilities over the years.
Again, using Wesleyan University as an example, If your son is a junior, their brand new Life Sciences building will be opening by the Fall of his sophomore year: New Science Building - Wesleyan University
I think Amherst’s is barely six years old:
Amherst College New Science Center by Payette | Architect Magazine
Williams as well:
The Hopper Science Building – Planning Design & Construction (williams.edu)
Fun Fact: all three science buildings were designed by the same architectural firm.
The other good thing is that they are close enough to each other to plan college tours around them for a little comparison shopping. There are subtle differences. Wesleyan and Amherst tend to carry the social justice mantle a little higher than the others. Trinity is widely known for its bro’ culture. Williams and Hamilton have famous alum at Wall Street banks. The Maine Colleges (Bates, Bowdoin and Colby) are known for their food. It’s an interesting bunch.
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So I do think there is an inherent issue in that if a top student chooses med school, law school, a highly selective business or government employer, or so on over graduate school, then they will not show up as a PhD. For that matter, to the extent a SLAC has, say, more recruited athletes who go on to good jobs but not necessarily academia, that could also affect per capita lists, and this very much varies by conference and size of SLAC. And so these per capita lists should not be taken too strictly, because we are not controlling carefully for the number of people who would actually be inclined to do academia.
That said, there are in fact NESCAC colleges that do quite well anyway. On the overall Top 50 list, Williams is #8, Wesleyan #19, Amherst #20, Bowdoin #33, and Middlebury #41. On individual Top 10 lists, Williams is #4 for Economics, #2 for History, #9 for Math, #6 for Poli Sci, #5 for Psych; Middlebury #7 for Languages; Amherst #6 for History; Wesleyan #7 for History, #9 for Poli Sci, #6 for Psych, #4 for Sociology . . . .
As a final thought, this is really all intended to be inclusionary, not exclusionary. If a large university does not make the top 50 total list, or a small college does not make the top 50 per capita list, it might well still be fine at placing top students in PhD programs (the Swarthmore list goes deeper over a longer period and is good for illustrating this). But I think the really helpful thing is to see how the most famous colleges, at universities or SLACs, do not in fact have a stranglehold on academic placement.
Like, the sorts of NESCAC SLACs listed above are fine choices, but that is only a few choices, and they get a lot of applications and are hard admits. So, I think it is good to know that, say, there are SLACs in the Philly area, in the Great Lakes/Upper Midwest, and on the West Coast, that give you more very good options for launching an academic career–not in exclusion to those NESCAC SLACs, but in addition. Also good to know that women’s colleges, and Vassar, are options. And so on.
And for high-enough numbers kids, I think some of those can be a little more reliable in terms of admissions, such that they can be more targets than reaches. Indeed, some can be likelies for high numbers kids. In that sense, observing that, say, Middlebury (13% acceptance rate) and St Olaf (56% acceptance rate) are #41 and #42 on the per capita total PhD is not intended to discourage academicky kids from being interested in Middlebury, but instead to help them understand that St Olaf is an option too.
And once you really grasp that, it becomes very easy, and very fun, to put together a robust list of academicky SLACs where you really will have no bad options.
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Correction, All good options if one is willing to pay full cost in this case
There are a couple of Liberal Arts Colleges in Texas you could take a look at. Even if he wants out of Texas, it might be easier to visit some close by to see if he likes that size/type of school. Austin College (outside of Dallas in Sherman), Southwestern (outside of Austin in Georgetown) would be the ones to look at. Slightly bigger is Trinity University (in San Antonio). Trinity seems like a good in state option for your student (just in case he decides a year from now that maybe he doesn’t want to go too far). All three of those are highly likely to give a lot of merit aid.
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Also, The University of Dallas.
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Thank you @NiceUnparticularMan and @circuitrider - I had seen that NESCAC acronym and all the info on SLACs and I kind of glazed over. You are right, not very much interest is paid to schools like that. I only heard of Amherst recently because 2 of my fellow HS alumni just sent their kids there.
Literally everybody on both sides of our family have gone to larger state schools in the area.
We should totally scout these the next time we are in the area.
Boston (and all the schools there) is a big contender because of how strong biotech is there. I have a lot of research to do for an itinerary once we can take a trip. Our spring break seems to be everybody else’s spring break. The best I can hope for is the summer or take one of those approved absences in early fall for a trip.
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Yes, I was only addressing academics. Cost is an independent factor that absolutely should be considered as appropriate for the kid and family.
@goldbug - we visited Brandeis and I was very very impressed. Undergrads get excellent research opportunities and the quality of the education is outstanding. My daughter was underwhelmed by the architecture and the student “vibe.”
Bates also has a brand new science building - supplementing the “older” building which was brand new when I arrived in 1990! Ouch.
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A suggestion. Particularly at competitive SLACs, an early decision application can be essential, as much of the class is filled that way
I first thought of Trinity until you said no Texas.
San Antonio is its own world.
The issue with the Texas LACs is that they are very “Texas” in their demographics. Of course, it’s a big state - so Beaumont doesn’t = Midland. They seem to draw some from CA too - but you’re looking for bigger geographic diversity (and politics and weather)…was why not mentioned. Trinity is fantastic - but you’re not getting a melting pot. Last I saw it was over 2/3 Texas. So you may check those by geographic diversity.
Good to know. But like I tell my kids, seeing what you don’t like is sometimes as helpful as seeing what you do. (which is what happened when we toured SMU)
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100% - we experienced this with several schools on the list!! It helps you narrow.
I note this is also a complicated topic because the degree to which a SLAC can enroll a lot of ED admits obviously depends on how many ED applications it gets, and how many of those it likes as well or better than what it can likely yield out of RD. In certain markets, there are a lot of ED applicants floating around, and so in those markets the SLACs tend to enroll more ED admits. In other markets, ED applicants are less common, and so SLACs in those markets tend to enroll fewer ED admits.
And then how many applicants the SLAC needs to admit RD to fill each remaining enrollment slot is a function of its RD yield, and RD yields can actually be pretty low even for very good SLACs in competitive markets. Indeed, when you think about it, the more applicants in a market are going ED, likely the lower the RD yield (all else equal), because the people who particularly liked your SLAC already applied ED. Anyway, as a result, usually many more people are actually admitted RD than ED, even when more people enroll ED than RD.
My point to the OP is just that in the end, it really pays to investigate the actual details of how ED and RD are working for colleges of interest. Obviously if you have a top choice which you know would be affordable and you don’t want to compare offers, great. But often if you are sufficiently open minded about in which markets you would be willing to attend college, and/or if you are interested in comparing financial offers, then you might find ED is not necessary for you.
And a lot of people will then still get admitted RD even to the most competitive tier of SLACs. But there will be a lot of overlapping offers, and so they will only become an RD enrollee at one (at most, they may also be cross-shopping other types of colleges).
I think we can stipulate to that without getting too deep into the weeds. The threshold question, obviously, is going to be how much they are willing to pay toward the cost of attendance and the point there is that the Midwestern SLACs need to offer upper middle-class families significant discounts in order to attract students away from NESCAC and the California Claremont Colleges.
Indeed. And I think their competitors also include private universities and various top publics like Michigan and such. In fact, a lot of the bigger offers seem scaled to around market rate for top OOS universities.
Also each other. Carleton still doesn’t do merit. Grinnell and Macalester are probably offering merit as much to woo kids from Carleton as anywhere.
Anyway, hopefully the OP is getting a sense of all the angles here, which opens up some interesting possible strategies.
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