He also likes NAU…so we’ll see!
@natty1988
I think you can fly to Paine Field/Everett from John Wayne. The last half hour or so if that drive is really nice. A longer but even prettier drive involves going to Bellingham via Chuckanut Drive.
@JBSeattle sounds good! If the costs between Paine and SeaTac are very similar then that would be great!
Does anyone have any sense of what kind of school (generally) works better for students in this range. We haven’t made a final decision between a couple of larger state schools and a couple of smaller LACs
I’ve flown DEN to SNA (or LAX, or San Diego) many times. It is often $100 each way.
Congrats @cinn124 !!!
@seabay I cant speak generally but for my kids, we believe that the smaller LAC’s are a better fit. Both my kids like having relationships with their professors and I like knowing that they are not falling through the cracks. I also know my daughter in particular excels in seminars with lots of class participation, writing papers, etc and less with lectures and tests.
We recently attended an accepted students day at Puget Sound and my daughter said the professor in the class she visited knew each student by name and even knew what their academic interests were, if they played on a sports team, etc. The professors also spoke of noticing when a student was struggling or not in class and actively reaching out to them or their advisors, RA’s etc. My kids seem to appreciate that more personal feel you can get at a small school and I think their grades tend to reflect that. Also, big time sports and other big state school stuff doesn’t rank high for them, so they don’t feel like they are missing out.
If you want more info on this particular topic, I like the Colleges That Change Lives book and website. It speaks to the strengths of small LAC’s for some students and what types of students might be better suited to that sort of environment.
Thanks @rfm512. That’s kind of what I was thinking but wasn’t sure. I was considering the larger size of a flagship might offer additional resources but it appears that the personal touch works best. BTW, UPS is on the shortlist.
@seabay We also favored the small LAC’s for D19. It was what she always said she wanted, but full disclosure: she has chosen a mid-sized college (6000 students). The LAC’s were hard to give up for all the reasons @rfm512 stated, but I think within her school at her college she will get the attention and help not “falling through the cracks”.
We considered UPS but D didn’t like the emphasis on Socratic seminars (possibility of too bright spotlight), though Willamette and Ursinus (both CTCL) were favorites until the end.
@Acersaccharum Yes, that is a good alternative scenario I think as well. I have a nephew at an Honors College within a larger school. He is more the small school type but and he is thriving in that environment.
@seabay Maybe one of the larger state schools your kid is considering may have a situation like @Acersaccharum described? If so, that might provide some of the same positives as the LACs?? Yes, my daughter really likes UPS and it is in her final two favorites. I think she will end up there but is she is taking her time in making her final decision.
I think it depends a lot on the kid. We showed our S all kinds of schools and he almost instinctively whittled the list down from big to small. Schools like Cornell and UCLA came off first, then somewhat smaller schools like Rice and Tufts, until we ended up with a list of LACs in the 1800-2300 range. We agree this is the right approach for him, as he has been in small schools all his life and he is used to/likes people knowing who he is and treating him as an individual. He could get lost in a big-school environment. Maybe it’s possible to achieve the same thing in a particular department or Honors College within a big school, but that wasn’t something we pursued. In many cases, I don’t think a big research university is the best place for an undergraduate. My husband has taught at a number of these schools, and the priority tends to be research and graduate teaching. I do hope our S will have the chance to study at one of these schools at the graduate level, when he will be able to take full advantage of the resources they offer.
@seabay I think it really depends on the kid.
@tkoparent said…
For my D19, these were exactly the reasons she wanted a big school. She has been in small schools all her life and wants to get lost in a big-school environment. She does not like teachers expecting her to have an individual relationship with them in order to improve her score, especially in humanities classes where the grading is so subjective. She also wants the sports teams and school spirit of a Division 1 school. In her case, I think a large state school is the right choice for her.
(D20 will be looking for a small to mid-size school, but she is a higher stats student, not in this range.)
@momzilla2d That makes perfect sense. We didn’t know ex ante what type of school would work best, and I think it was good that we showed him lots of different types of schools at the outset (sometimes it’s tempting to think it was a waste of time and money visiting schools that turned out to be non-starters, but I try to think of it as an investment). We were also able to watch him transition from a very small school to a slightly larger school as a sophomore and saw that it took him a full year to get his mojo back in that situation. Sports was also an issue for our S, but as an athlete rather than a participant. We looked at a couple of smaller D1 schools like Davidson and Rice and that helped him clarify that he would be more comfortable with a D3 level commitment to his sport.
We live in Asia and one of the things we are seeing with my S’s international school classmates is an unholy focus on big “name” schools, particularly the UCs. There is only one other student applying to LACs as far as we can tell. For some of these kids, the big schools are the right choice, but a lot of this seems to come from people focusing on names they know and associate with prestige. It’s kind of a shame. They have a very good GC at his school, so I am sure she is doing her best to make the kids aware of the broader range of choices they have.
@tkoparent I agree. We visited all sorts of schools, and that really helped her clarify in her own mind, what sort of school she wanted. Many were ruled out almost immediately. And she wound up choosing a school she had not even visited before applying. It looked good on paper (or online) and, once she was accepted, she went for the visit and loved it.
@seabay It really depends on the kid. Our D went to a medium sized state school and thrived…she was glad to be somewhere that was bigger then the small private school she attended for high school…
Bigger schools do have the advantage of having a wider range and choice of majors…
Neither of my kids was interested in small schools. I tried to talk them into the benefits of small classes at small schools but it didn’t work. My kids were both attracted to large schools in cities. D16 is currently at Pitt. i have since talked to her about the size of her classes and she feels that her classes are small when it matters, even at a large school. S19 is still deciding but the two contenders are both large publics.
Both kids did end up including include one small urban school on their list (Loyola New Orleans for D, Duquesne for S) but neither really considered it after they had other acceptances in hand.
With both my kids we didn’t push any one type of school. We knew they would do fine at a large school or at a small school. If we felt that they would’ve benefited from a smaller school, then we would’ve guided them towards smaller schools…
Both H and I went to large state schools and did fine…
I think many kids can do well at all sorts of colleges. That said it does depend on the kid. Some kids may need that smaller more hands-on environment…
@seabay - welcome - - as you’ve seen, school size is really a kid-specific situation.
I also thought my D19 — a homebody, lived in the same house all her life, hates change, goes to tiny schools with class of 75 seniors — would gravitate toward the small LACs, so that’s where we started.
But when I took her to UF, really just on a nostalgia tour for me (nobody in this thread has the stats for UF anymore, and I would never get in these days, sigh) – she loved it. She was bursting with enthusiasm and our focus changed immediately to bigger schools.
In addition to kid-specific, it can also be major-specific. D is in theater tech, which is going to be a tiny specialty at any school, so you immediately claw back some of the big-school anonymity. And big schools sometimes offer more opportunities, again, depending on the major, and have better networks with major-specific employers.
All things to consider beyond class size.
My Daughter is not all in on Manhattan College anymore. We had a discussion about costs and about how she could go without loans but would need 10 hour per week work study, no extra money from us etc.
Yesterday she said she was going to Western Washington (giving her $40k if she graduates due to price difference) plus less stressful cost wise.
I think Manhattan might be a better opportunity though. I really wish she would reconsider Ohio Wesleyan as it has the small class sizes and lots of other great reasons to attend. She just hates the location though. It would be best of both worlds though.
Anyways, making her call Professors, Admissions etc at these schools before she makes a final decision. She has been to Western a year ago and attended an event in Seattle a few months ago. I think she needs to make sure she is making the right decision.
@seabay , add me to those who think small vs large depends on the kid (and the school). My son is the type of guy who can kind of float along…very smart, and achieves what is asked of him, but not super high on initiative. For him, a smaller class size where the professors will know him, and he will have to step up, and also a school with strong advising, seemed like the ways to go for his personality. He ended up choosing a mid size LAC over a larger school that yes, seemed to have more resources, but I know that at the bigger schools, the student has to reach out and go GET those resources, whereas in the smaller schools, the one we picked anyway, they were more integrated in to each student’s experience. Also, he is just slightly decided on his major, and doesn’t have a strong career path in mind, if that makes sense, so I also liked the LAC approach more so that he could explore.