Please help me decide - International student.
Intended major: CS + Bio
Intended career: Tech or IB (willing to work and network super hard, I understand it’s extremely difficult to break into BBs from non recruiting LACs)
Oberlin college
Pros:
Close to Cleveland
Good CS program (14% grads get into Google)
Love the culture and people I’ve met online in '24 groups
Active alum network (contacted few on Linkedin working at BBs asking about Oberlin and all had a lot of praise)
Good financial aid relatively (18k/year + 4k in loans/year by Oberlin = 22k/year COA before loans)
Typical liberal arts college experience
Still well known and ranked ~30ish in LACs even though has been falling in rankings
Ohio 5
Close to Canada
Love the architecture
Excellent summer funding program for unpaid internships/volunteering
Politically active
Cons:
Still pretty expensive for my parents and family
Recent Gibson’s bakery fiasco and relative fall in rankings/prestige
Student body bubble
Small town and weather
Will have to travel for hackathons and interviews regularly
- Trinity University (TX)
Pros:
San Antonio, amazing city with lots of opportunities. No need to travel far. Austin is 90mins away if needed too.
BEST fin aid package making it more affordable than public unis.
Lots of opportunities during summer (also free housing during summer if you work/research on campus)
Best weather for me
Strong alumni network in San Antonio
Affordable LAC experience
Better sports scene than Oberlin
Cons:
Got fixed amount scholarship not aid and the tuition rises around 4.5% per year so that’s also a factor since that means an increase in COA of $2.5k per year
Relatively unknown outside of San Antonio/Texas
Smaller alumni network
Less active student body and '24 groups. No one seems excited to come and mentions this was not their first choice so a buzzkill.
Apparently not great food according to online reviews
Oberlin has been my dream school for a while but the aid appeal was unsuccessful so now I’m looking for some external loans/scholarships as family can only give 14-15k/year max.
Apart from these I’m still considering UTD (COA: $9.5k/year but low diversity and commuter school), UC Berkeley (TOO EXPENSIVE as an Intl student). Full ttn scholarships also at RMU, Uarizona, Bama, Westminster.
Waitlists: Dartmouth, Denison, Kenyon, Grinnell, UCLA and Washington&Lee. Out of these I feel I could get in W&L waitlist because it was probably due to missing docs as I asked for permission to use ISFAA instead of CSS and never received a reply.
Please let me know if I’ve overlooked any factors and I apologize in advance if I’m wrong about something.