And Williamsburg does have mild and sunnier weather. It’s horrible in the summer, but most undergrad students aren’t there then.
Is this student a national merit finalist?
Too soon to know. She’s a junior.
Agreed. And the mid Atlantic region is even sunnier.
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Upstate NY can be very gloomy.
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Depending on what the OP’s daughter is willing to compromise, if she really doesn’t want small classes, many of these excellent schools will not be of interest to her. There is an excellent (though a few years old) book describing the honors programs at public universities. That may be a direction to explore.
But she should have her PSAT score from this year, and should have some idea whether she is in the ballpark for her state, right?
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So while I would also caution about Case being in the SAD zone, I thought I might address this since this is something we specifically looked into.
Case does have humanities majors, but it is also more STEM focused than some notable alternatives.
I think the NCES College Navigator tool, which can tell you how many recent graduates actually had various primary majors, is handy to at least get some idea of how robust an offered major really might be.
OK, so we can start by calibrating with Brown, and we can use English and History to simplify. Brown has 1677 total primary majors in the latest data set, of which 70 were English (4.2%) and 60 were History (3.6%). Pretty good for these days.
Let’s do William & Mary next. 61 (of 1583) English (3.9%), 69 History (4.4%). Very Brown-like.
OK, let’s do Rochester–probably also a SAD scratch, but illustrative. 33 (of 1922) English (1.7%), 17 History (0.9%). This is a big drop.
Now Case. 18 (of 1297) English (1.4%), 15 History (1.2%). Pretty comparable to Rochester.
Finally, just to mix it up, Pitt (main campus): 216 (of 4731) English (4.6%), 75 History (1.6%). English is one of Pitt’s strongest Humanities departments, History is not bad, and these numbers reflect that.
OK, so what to make of all this? Well, Rochester and Case type schools are not necessarily bad for Humanities, but at least some might wonder if they are really better than a public university with strong departments in humanities of interests, in this case including both William & Mary and Pitt. And I don’t mean to suggest you cannot decide that question in their favor, I just think it is a real question.
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While sunny days are nice, the issue with seasonal affective disorder is circadian rhythm in response to length of daylight hours.
The treatment for it is 20-30 minutes of early AM (like 6 am or earlier) intense full-spectrum light exposure, to fool the pineal gland into thinking that it’s May. But whoever heard of a college student who was willing and able to get up to sit directly in front of a full-spectrum light box for half an hour every morning at 6 am?
Assuming that is not an option, then staying in the south, way south, is the best option. South with dry climate and hence lots of sunny days is even better, so southwest and southern CA are a great idea.
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I know what SAD is. I’m simply trying to work within the parameters set out by the OP themselves:
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I was hoping the map I linked above would really make this easy!
The tricky thing is there is a relatively quick transition between the Bay Area and the Pacific Northwest in terms of moving through the different zones. In the East, some of the zones are much bigger. In fact, Miami to the Connecticut Shore (about 1150 miles as the crow flies) covers the same range as just San Francisco to Eureka (230 miles).
And in fact, that same zone in the Connecticut Shore extends all the way down through North Carolina. Obviously for SAD purposes latitude matters too. But what is basically happening here is the Appalachian mountains are scraping off most of the Great Lakes moisture before it can hit the East Coast.
So it is up to the OP, but if a place like Eureka would be OK, then probably so would pretty much the whole region up to at least Connecticut, and maybe Providence and Boston too.
But once you start heading toward the Great Lakes off the East Coast, it is very much like the quick transition between Eureka and the core Pacific Northwest. So, northwest beyond Concord in New Hampshire, the Hudson River Valley in New York State, Harrisburg in PA, the VA/WVA border–this is getting into the serious SAD danger zone in my view.
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What does Egghead Eight mean?
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Ivy League
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Did the OP say the Bay Area was too far north?
I ask because it is around the same latitude as Virginia–or for that matter, Portugal. And in fact, even Boston is like the same latitude as Spain, with France further north.
In general, my understanding of the science of SAD is that latitude per se is not a big factor within these ranges. Specifically, climate is by far the bigger factor, and once you control for climate there is some, but not much, relationship to latitude (again within these ranges).
I thought it might have been Rice, WUSTL, Emory, UT-Austin, W&M, UVA, UNC, and Vanderbilt.
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Reading quickly through this thread, I see that George Washington was mentioned once or twice but quickly disregarded and I wonder why. My son looked at it (psych major - not poli sci) and really loved it.
The acceptance rate (mid-40s) is a little higher than OP is looking for, but given that acceptance rates are declining for many schools, it might fall this year and get closer to a target/safety.
City vibrancy is great and frats are there but not a huge presence. Might be worth a consideration at least.
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This probably refers to the eight schools that compose the University Athletic Association.
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I think U of Miami seems like a good addition to the list. Wellesley too.
I live in the PNW in a town full of Californians. They have a hard time in the winter. But I grew up near the Great Lakes and have lived in New England and both are also very gray in the winter, and much colder than the PNW.
I’ve also lived in Texas and Tennessee and there are a lot more sunny days. OP may want to concentrate their search in the west and SE if the gray days are a big factor.
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I’ve never heard the Ivy League referred to as the Egghead Eight.
An online search indicates that moniker likely refers to: Brandeis, CMU, Case Western, Emory, NYU, UChicago, URochester and WUStL
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Now that OP acknowledged ASU is on their list, I think we can get past the selectivity from being a deal breaker for them.
ASU is very non selective and Barrett is not a difficult admit relative to other Honors Colleges, likely why it’s so large.
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