Oops yes, CU Boulder
Oops, accidentally hit post on an old draft. Deleting!
@twinmom2023 The school did include clarification on the GPA calculation. Since she was accepted ED we will never really know if it mattered or not. My older D was a recruited athlete so we didnāt have to go through the admissions process.
Has anyone on this thread looked at or considered St. Lawrence in upstate NY? Yesterday a coach visited S19 at school. S19 came home and told me, but all he said was āthe coach said if I want to come visit on 12/7 to let him know but itās the day before my all-star game so I canāt anyway.ā Then last night, he went to his first practice for this all-star game (kids from public/private schools from all over the area). The St. Lawrence coach was there as well and came over to S19 afterward and again said he was very interested in having him come for an official visit on 12/7. He also mentioned itās an 8.5 hr drive from here as it is right by the Canadian border. S19 told him he was unable to come b/c of the game the next day. He told S19 he would be in touch to see if he can come in January.
Iāve heard of St. Lawrence but know nothing about it. The location alone makes it not very desirable to me - a long drive, or a flight to Syracuse then still a 3 hr drive north (dh said, I didnāt even realize you could drive 3hrs north of Syracuse and still be in NY!). I checked out its website but if not for its location, Iād tell him it canāt hurt to look. Unfortunately, Iām not sure we could even get up there in January-weather might make it hard to get there. But rather than immediately cross it off, I thought Iād ask here to see if anyone has been there and has any insight. There is not a lot of recent info on CC.
I have been to St Lawrence and my neighbors kid plays a sport there. It is a nice school, named after a river, not an actual St, lol. It is truly in the boonies. It is far from everywhere and not easy to get to. But the campus is very nice and it is has a good rep. Itās really cold there, a lot of the time. Playing sports up there is tough. At some point in your season you will be dealing with brutal weather. Also, traveling to other schools for games is a pain, long commutes.
My son looked into playing a sport at Clarkson which is a few miles down the road from St L. and decided it was just not going to be the right fit for him for many of those reasons, and turned down a nice merit package and chance to play. Tough choice, but probably the smart move for him.
Touching on Fairfield U again - I love the Jesuit tradition and it is an excellent education. My daughter liked Fairfield and had no concerns about not being Catholic. It is her 2nd choice behind HWS. Husband thought it was too business school oriented for her. 
My bossās daughter graduated from there a couple of years ago and our high school typically sends a handful of kids. Everyone I spoke to loves it. It is VERY in the booniesā¦so you have to be comfortable with that. Here in suburban Boston it has a very solid reputation.
Manhattan College is Catholic and has a business school - nice campus and great location for internships!
@4kids4us Itās a pretty campus and a good school, but it does have a party reputation. Maybe thatās due to the super rural location. It might be something to check out further if that matters to your child.
My D19 hopes to study criminology in major and study in NY area. We would like to seek advice on U at Albany and St Johnās University at Queen. As she is OOS, the COA is roughly the same for both colleges. She would like to study in urban and is not yet sure about her future career that she might pursue master program. UAblany has good ranking for postgraduate, but number 1 party school, while St Johnās offer 5 years MA program of criminology with psychology. In comparing these two colleges on the internet, it shows similar stats and GPA of acceptance. We are a bit worry that my D will change her mind in her career path afterward! Welcome for any advice.
St. Lawrence is a very pretty campus, fairly compact. Canton really is the boonies, you will be closer to Ottawa, Canada as a major city than anything in the US. Definitely a party school, good athletic facilities, great location if you like skiing in the Adirondacks during the winter and outdoor activities in general. You are fairly close to SUNY Potsdam and Clarkson (about 20 minute car ride) if you have a car, you can pretty easily get to Potsdam as well as Ogdensburg (30-40 min drive depending on weather) where you can cross into Canada.
It gets bitter cold in the North Country. When I lived there, you needed an engine block heater for your car as the temperatures easily reach -20 without windchill during the winter. There is also a wicked black fly seasoning late April/early May.
For those whose children were accepted ED to Tulane, would you mind sharing GPA/ACT and whether or not they received any merit aid? (really curious about how the ED scholarship thing is playing out) Mine applied EA and it is her first choice, so we are hoping for good news next month. @temperantia @Momof3kidz 
@elcs76 , sonās school does not grade on a conventional system and does not rank but by my estimation heās a solid B+ student. His HS is recognized as one of the more rigorous schools in the country though so maybe that helped. His SAT single score was 1400. He is an athlete but not recruitable. He is pointy in music but for practical purposes, unhooked. We did not apply for financial aid and did not receive merit so I canāt really help you out there.
@elcs76 , a friend of D19ās got an ED admit from Tulane. High B+ from a rigorous public HS, ACT high 20s (D not sure exactly what but itās under 30). Donāt know about any aid though.
@4kids4us Ooh - me!! DH and I both went to St.Lawrence and we absolutely loved it there. We brought the kids up to see it last fall unfortunately none will consider it because it is too hard to get there from FL and I donāt think they could handle that winter anyway! DH lived in FL when he went there and he really only went home for christmas and summer breaks.
It is definitely in the boonies, but that is one thing I loved about it. (I had gone to boarding school in the boonies of CT so I was used to it.) I loved that so many people stayed on campus on the weekends since there was nowhere else to go- I felt like it made for such a tight community. The downside of that is that since there was not much else to do it definitely did (and Iām guessing still does?) have a party school reputation. However most everyone I knew was able to balance the partying and academics just fine. I will also say it is a typical NE liberal arts school with a very preppy/sporty vibe.
8 1/2 hours is far but we got used to being far away and long drives didnāt feel like such a big deal when we were there. We thought nothing of driving 6 1/2 hours home to MA or down to NYC for a weekend once in a while. I probably went home for a weekend at least 2-3 times a year and we went to NYC to watch a friend run the marathon every year. Shorter drives started to feel like nothing. I remember days where my roommate would wake up and ask if I wanted to skip class for the day to āgo to the mallā - that usually meant going to Syracusse which was 3 hours away just for the day! We also spent some weekends visiting friends at UVM which was about 3 hours away or at other schools like Colgate & Hobart.
The small size is great, obviously you get to know almost everybody and the classes are tiny. You got the typical small school āprofessors asking you over for dinnerā situations all the time. The campus is big yet the buildings are compact enough that you are never walking too far in the cold. Campus is all beautiful with a mix of building types and an amazing chapel right in the middle that plays bells every night at 5. D19 knows when we visit a school with bells (donāt care if they are form a chapel of bell tower, just love hearing them) it goes up a notch in my book!
I canāt say much about sports because I was not an athlete. I will say that you will not have a ton of spectators unless you are on the hockey team. When I moved to FL and met all these southerner who love college football they couldnāt believe when I told them that our local high school has more bleachers then SLU did when I was there!
SLU has a super strong alumni base. You meet people who have connections to SLU everywhere you go. Our good friend who did not go there likes to say we sure have a lot of alumni for such a small school! I graduated 25 years ago and I still get excited when I meet SLU people. My kids get embarrassed because I seem to find them everywhere and they know I am saying hi no matter what. I wear my SLU shirt all the time just hoping someone will come say hi. DH got his first big job here in FL because it turned out one of the law firm partners was a SLU alum. They met for an informal interview and ended up talking for 3 hours.
OK - so that is my love letter to SLU, good luck with the coach and I hope you get a chance to visit!
edited to add - I did not need an engine block for my car, but I did once have an entire case of Coke explode when I left it in the car overnight!! 24 sodas burst and such covered every inch of that little Honda!! 
@elcs76 I mentioned a few days ago that our GPA calculation is very harsh. Her unweighted GPA would be around be a 3.42 but her school stopped calculating unweighted starting last year. They now report weighted and percentages. If I were to use the college board 10 point scale then it would have been around a 3.85 unweighted. This is at a strong private school with 100% college attendance. The school does not rank.
D has many honors and AP classes including 4 APs this year. She had a ton of community service, excellent recommendations, varsity sport and a strong essay. SAT is 1370 (720 math, 650 verbal) applying as Math with 2nd choice of Physics. She did not receive merit aid.
@2019hope, how about Franciscan University in Steubenville Ohio? They are homeschool friendly. My son, who was homeschooled, loves the seasons, the snow, etc. itās small and conservative Catholic.
Thank you everybody for the excellent recommendations! Yāall have given me a great list to work with. I guess she can add one or two more schools by Saturday.
This is a tough process!
Yes, hopefully she will not feel rushed.
Thank you for your responses and congratulations to your children on receiving their ED acceptances! So many people talk about ED applicants not receiving any aid and I am trying to figure out if that is the case, just out of curiosity. My D applied EA because we can not pay the full amount, though are in that space where we make too much to qualify for aid, most likely. We did apply for it, so we will see. She also applied for the DHS and Paul Tulane - though with a 31 ACT in the EA round, Iām not even sure she will be admitted with the current average stats of admitted applicants. She does have tons of volunteering and quirky ECās, VP of NHS and Science NHS, graduating top 16% in an IB program, but unhooked. This process IS brutal but am just glad we are almost at the end of this road. She will be fine wherever she ends up, as will most.