Need help narrowing down the choices

College Search & Lists
1

First time posting here. Have been reading posts here for the last year and found very helpful information, so hoping to get some for our situation too.
DS wants to major in Geography.
So far has acceptances from (per year scholarship amounts in parenthesis where received):

  • U Minnesota, U Oregon (9K), U Georgia (~9.2K), Ohio State(15K), Michigan State(8K + one time 2.5K travel abroad), U Mass Amherst (14 K) and Texas A&M.
    Got deferred from
    U Wisconsin.
    Still waiting for
  • Penn State (though have seen a lot of acceptances coming out for that, we are still waiting, but very very likely will get accepted), U Maryland, U Florida and UCSB (in state).

We have already received invitations for Admitted Student Days. But visiting so many is out of question. What we want to do is narrow down the accepted list to 2, visit them during February break, and then if there are more acceptances from colleges for which we are still waiting, visit them during April break, and then decide between all of them.
The problem in narrowing down is that I don’t know how to figure out which of these colleges have a better Geography program. I have looked at topuniversity rankings and college factual rankings for Geography, but the results are vastly different between them. Also, for some reason U Mass does not even figure in these rankings. So kind of confused. Another problem with these rankings is that they are for graduate programs, not undergraduate.I see a lot of ranking websites for more ‘popular’ programs like Computer Science, Business, Engineering, Nursing etc, but not many for Geography.
DS likes U Mass Amherst, Michigan State, and U Minnesota in that order (on paper- have not visited any of these). But those are lower ranked than say Ohio State and U Georgia. So how to narrow down this list? How much weight to attach to overall University ranking? Are there any websites which are more reliable than others (e.g. one other website mentioned U Oregon Geography is top notch)? DS says he is more interested in physical Geography than the one with GIS focus.
Finances are not too much of a concern. but things being similar would prefer to keep the cost down. Also, DS’s current plan is to look for a job after undergrad - i.e. not planning for graduate studies.
Any advice will be appreciated!

2

Forgot to mention: he did not apply to any honors colleges because he did not want to write extra essays etc. + wants to keep his first year load light/manageable as far as possible. Neither does he want to move to honors track if there is still a chance of doing that, at least not for the first year.

3

Net price at each? Is there a hard limit of cost to avoid debt beyond the federal direct loans ($5,500 frosh year, increasing some in later years) and ensure enough money for parental retirement and younger kids’ college? If merit scholarships are involved, how high are the renewal GPAs he needs to earn in college? Be aware that a 3.5 GPA is typically harder to earn in college than in high school.

Perhaps he can look at the course offerings in the geography departments of each school to see which offers the best coverage of the subject, including the subareas that he is more interested in.

4

In addition to looking up course offerings in geography, maybe look up several faculty members in each department to see what kind of research they are doing and what interests your son. I would also try to research some about how each school/department helps students find jobs with an undergraduate degree in geography. I don’t know much about what kinds of jobs are available but if the schools have information and examples, that might sway me to visit.Does he have any preference regarding climate, part of the country, or college town?

5

http://www.finaid.org/calculators/awardletteradvanced.phtml

Once you have figured out more about the departments, you can swap out some of the other variables, and include that information instead.