Correct guarantee to meet.
We don’t know OPs budget anymore.
Michigan is one of the most, if not the most, expensive public .
Op can apply but it’s a wasted app 99.9% unless their budget has multiplied multiple times.
That’s all.
Moving on. OP has heard a lot
Perhaps it is a bit impractical to send a young prospective student off to read a book about a college that is one among many he/she may be considering. Since you seem to have read it, it would be more helpful for you to summarize what he has to say. That the book is written by a guy who left almost 30 years ago after a rough tenure calls into question its relevance today.
As to ad hominem re Chace, it’s generous to say it’s at least debatable. His time at Emory alone calls into serious question his integrity. He’s been shown to be a petty man willing to destroy careers and reputations for vengeance. The End Of The Affair Jeffrey Sonnenfeld's battle with Emory University is finally over, but the question remains: Why on earth did Emory's president accuse Sonnenfeld of vandalism? - September 4, 2000 And we both know he had a rough time at Wes.
This is like me telling the OP to learn about Hamilton by recommending Limited Engagement in which Samuel Fisher Babbitt’s telling of the Hamilton/Kirkland “merger” puts the then-Trustees and alumni of Hamilton in a somewhat negative light. Similar to your comment about Wesleyan, I haven’t heard that Hamilton has changed since that time either, but I think it’s reasonable to assume it has. Tales from that long ago will give a fairly narrow picture of the place.
For the OP, if you want the POV of a parent who doesn’t have to hear about updates from 30 years ago, I’ll offer that tales of Wesleyan’s crazy radical culture is fairly overblown. The students there are passionate as they are at a great many colleges, and there is no shortage of opinions. On a day to day basis, however, Wesleyan is as calm and normal as most college campuses.
Nicely put. And Wes-- like every other college campus- has kids who are passionate but the passion is jazz music, or pre-Raphaelite art, or post-modern poetry, or historical fiction and Ren-Fairs.
@angel737 How to Apply | UCSB College of Creative Studies
Writing & Literature | UCSB College of Creative Studies
I’ll assume further posts will address the OP and provide guidance. The sidebar conversations are more appropriate for PM’s
The general comment of “Run the NPC” is more productive than debating whether UC’s are affordable.
With a student at Brown, I agree with this. I would also add that while there are some sketchy parts of Providence, we have found most of it to be clean and charming. We love Providence and we love Brown. I would score Providence above New Haven as an opinion.
It is. West Hartford is a short drive away (about 15 minutes or so - make it 20+) and has a fair amount to offer, while New Haven is a little further (around 30 + minutes). And as I’ve written in several other threads, Middletown has a criminally underrated food scene. The quality and variety of restaurants on Main Street in Middletown are as good or better as any I’ve seen in similarly sized towns. Wesleyan doesn’t get enough pub for this. As a comparison, Northampton, another place (and nearby school) we love, gets a fair amount of play for its food choices. For us and others we know who have experienced both, Northampton isn’t close to what Middletown offers in that regard (though Northampton is lovely and more bucolic).
Not to be a downer but with a tight budget, was $15k, now we don’t know - is it wise to send someone to a UC that was more than $50k more this year and is an area with outrageously priced off campus housing.
I keep seeing a lot of high priced schools thrown out.
Yes we don’t know the budget but if it was $15k, how high can it be ?
And yes, I’ll say it, for a degree in creative writing.
The discussion of finances and college needs to be done with the OP and their parents. The OP has said they won’t apply ED2 because they want to be able to compare financial aid offers…and I will suggest…really compare their net costs.
To @angel737 please make sure you have a couple of affordable colleges on your application list. As noted, run the Net price calculators for an estimate of your net costs. There is a huge amount of variability even between colleges that say they meet full need for all.
I think you are on the right track. I would suggest you look at at least one instate public option…you very well could find a wonderful program
This!
Of course you would choose Princeton over Iowa if Princeton is cheaper. But first you need to get into Princeton!
Schools that offer merit scholarships on top of need based aid MAY work out. Merit scholarships are great but they’re difficult to predict. What you need now is a short list of schools that guarantee to meet full NEED, without merit (as indicated on the NCPs) and that you’d be willing to attend.
Use that list as your base and build from there.
Agreed but my post was referencing the UC CCS. And that’s with on campus housing. Off campus housing is - crazy. Far surpasses what I pay in Charleston which is a lot.
I wish OP luck and hope they spend their time on realistically affordable schools - and yes they should research cost. While Iowa may work so other apps have little risk, they should still be at schools that are possible financially and not impossible so efforts aren’t wasted.
Short of sharing a new budget, we don’t know but I’ll assume it’s not 5 x the prior.
Thanks
I’m a little confused about this wording and what could have changed. Do you mean that the figures that you are entering into the FAFSA are actually changing from what you orginally thought? Or do you just mean that your family has come into some money that is now available to pay tuition, but you were unaware of those funds a few months ago when you applied to early to Yale? You don’t have to answer this question, but you should be clear about budget your own mind and whether those are temporary funds or you family will be able to manage a higher budget in an ongoing way over the next four years. .
The FAFSA and CSS primarily look at your income from the prior-prior year. So for current seniors, much of the information on those forms is already baked in and unlikely to change now. It comes from your family’s 2022 tax returns (from January sophomore year to December or Junior year). Any changes in your family’s income after Jan 1, 2023 may not impact your initial aid package. However, the forms do ask for your current bank account balances and investments so if those numbers have increased over the last year or so, your increased funds/savings will be reflected in the aid package. On the other hand, hopefully, if your family is making more money now, it will make it easier for them to pay for college going forward even if the package asks for more than 15K (assuming the change will be ongoing and not just this year).
Yes…and these are reported as of the date of filing the financial aid forms. Assets are not prior prior year like income.
There are always family situations that can change a student’s budget and prospected net cost, as well as many other factors. I do know the new budget and NPC outcomes, but I’m choosing not to share that information on the internet.
Yea there are. But it’s rare. But it’s your business, not mine. just know as you look at schools - not just oh it’s a great name - but how much will it cost and can it work for me at that cost (using the NPC as a guide).
In the end FAFSA is just data gathering. CSS matters and if earnings/assets, etc go up, aid could go down in subsequent years.
I hope you find an affordable school where you can excel, whether Iowa, UTC or Tn Tech, Kenyon or wherever.
You’ll have places to pursue your passions. Just don’t let them strangle you or your family financially.
Best of luck.
I second Macalester. Having lived in CT, the student body has Yalie vibes - progressive, engaging, urban intellectual.
It should be underlined here that, as with many fields, the prospect of being a professional “creative” writer typically requires completing a terminal degree in the field. I suppose this can depend on how one defines “professional,” but let’s assume we agree that means the highest level of achievement in the field. So keep that in mind. Some of the best MFA writing programs in the country are often in less obvious places: everyone mentions Iowa, which is a unique situation, but currently I’d say UC Irvine and especially Syracuse are very selective, prestigious programs. What an undergrad context for someone interested in creative writing should be is not necessarily a top program but a place that sends people to those programs. That can be any number of places, but I would suggest a place where this kind of study and activity is encouraged and prized by other students is best. I would agree with many here who say that, given your profile, academic background, early Yale, etc., Wesleyan is an interesting place to consider (more so than a number of other places you are considering). There is an intellectual and artistic culture that there is not always present in many of the “elite” east coast schools, and is less “eccentric” than a place like Bennington, which is an anything-goes place for good and for not good. All this said, you never know where this interest will take you, and Wesleyan is a fantastic school to study the humanities more generally as an undergrad. It is oddly underrated in my opinion, a bid of an oddball relative to the categories we typically use to assess selective colleges?
I don’t disagree with the proposition that Wesleyan is a top LAC, but it is currently in the five-way tie for #11 in the US News rankings (with Barnard, CMC, Grinnell, and Middlebury), which is really #8 if you take out the three service academies. The only LACs ranked ahead are WASP, Wellesley, Bowdoin, and Carleton.
So that is (properly) a very high ranking already for Wesleyan. And frankly, it is really always a matter of personal preference in that range, which I think most people would acknowledge.
The only reason I am pointing this out is that I would not want the OP to get the impression that Wesleyan is not in general a very highly-regarded college.
What about Middlebury? Home to the New England Review and Bread Loaf Writers Conference.
I would have agreed, but having read this recent OpEd piece in the Middlebury student newspaper, I would recommend that the OP do their research on creative writing at Midd (and other potential RD schools). The author, a Midd senior, discusses the precariousness of the creative nonfiction concentration and her concern for the creative writing concentration overall. In defense of the English major - The Middlebury Campus
Even though Rice is in Houston, the area around Rice is utterly charming, walkable, and gives a college town feel. I believe they call it the museum district.