eastcoast101 that would be fine except academically TCNJ is more challenging than Rutgers and ranked higher in NJ.
No if a family is interested in a greater teacher to student ratio , and more challenging academics(barrons ranks it in the top 75 most competitive schools in the nation) ,a great reputation and the feel of a NESCAC school without the price tag , TCNJ fits. For undergraduate degree its an extremely smart choice.
DD visited 11. 7 were in-state and we did 6 of those in one week-long spring break trip/vacation when she was a sophomore. 3 on the East Coast were done when she attended a 3-week summer program at UPenn between junior and senior year.
Thanks for your more sophisticated posting, @eastcoast101 . There are numerous ‘rankings’ with all kinds of subsets. I’ll personally stick with USNWR as a baseline. For 2018, Rutgers is ranked #69 Nationally. Binghamton #87. TCNJ has no National rank, zero. It is ranked Top 5 in the North Region. There is no basis for claiming TCNJ is “more challenging” than Rutgers. Whether or not TCNJ is ranked higher in NJ is kind of silly. Rutgers is a nationally ranked university. Sorry it is underappreciated in its own State. TCNJ economics have been discussed. It is nowhere near the ‘deal’ that has been claimed here or on prior threads. TCNJ has a fit, but it means nothing on a national level and it’s place is entirely local/regional, based on certain niche fields such as accounting. For those, particularly Jersyites, taking advantage of what TCNJ has to offer and parlaying that into worthwhile internships and post-graduate careers, kudos! Nothing wrong with that.
@KLSD I totally agree. I set up visits with the specific department at all of the schools we visited and it made a huge difference. Also, look at the catalogues to see what classes are offered. Just because a school is seen as “competitive” it doesn’t mean it’s the best school for your major.
@stones3 saying that TCNJ is more challenging than Rutgers is a very broad statement and you really can’t compare a large flagship research university with TCNJ. Most majors are ranked much higher at Rutgers than at TCNJ, such as anything STEM related. And the tcnj business school is ranked higher, lower, or not at all depending on where you look. Rutgers offers many more majors and classes and has both a national and international standing and TCNJ is generally unknown outside of NJ. I’m not saying TCNJ isn’t a good school, it’s a great school, but the schools are not comparable - it depends on what you are looking for.
My daughter visited
NC:
UNC-Wilmington
UNC-Chapel Hill *favorite public in-state
Wake Forest *least favorite
Duke *favorite in-state
Elon
NC State
VA/DC:…DC area is her ideal location
U Mary Washington
George Mason
Marymount
Georgetown *her dream school
American
George Washington
NY/NJ:
Fordham *her favorite up north
Hofstra
Syracuse *family & loved the school, but not sure she could handle a ‘Cuse winter
Seton Hall
@liska21 - your number 1’s list is almost exactly the one my daughter had with the exception of the fact that she only did the New England schools. As a legacy, she had been going to Yale’s campus since she was a baby but she had to have a strong list. While she ended up at Yale (as a Literature major), Wesleyan, Brown, Tufts, Amherst, Vassar were all strong contenders too.
@BrooklynRye I agree with you (as a fellow New Jerseyian) that TCNJ is no deal. My youngest cracks me up because she thumbs up her nose at Rutgers and was all ga ga over UConn. We CAME from CT before she was a HS student and I am sure it would have been just the opposite had we not moved to NJ.
I still wish she would be wise enough to go to Rutgers Camden nursing and get the degree from a nationally ranked University but alas at 17 she doesn’t ‘get it’
@eastcoast101 I agree with you on the cost of a NJ instate education. It is a real shame.
All my kids got much more favorable merit aid from out of state schools including some of the state of PA system schools.
My son visited seven schools and applied to four (one was a feebee). He had a basic idea of what he wanted. Small, private, business school not too far from home.
i think you have oversimplified TCNJ undergraduate rankings which remain the highest in the state of NJ other than the obvious Princeton. USNWR ranked #4 regionally in the north and is the highest ranked public. I have had this discussion many times in the past. Feel free to view the TCNJ homepage for all the accolades like -#75th most academically competitive as per Barrons, #35 business undergraduate in the NATION as per Bloomberg, top regional public (top , not #60whatever but top)as per USNWR. #2 ranked ED degree in the Nation. As far as being “known” seems all the top grad schools “know” their students as do many many top corporations such as JPM, PWC, Deloitte all of which have offered ours a top internship .
Never know to whom you are addressing your responses (to me?) or even what you are necessarily talking about. If to me, I don’t think I have oversimplified anything about TCNJ. The school is a top ranked regional college. It is highly ranked in the State of New Jersey where it will forever cede ground to Princeton, and where it struggles to compete with a national research university in Rutgers. Cited the #4 North Regional commendation from USNWR. The Bloomberg ranking has long been discredited, is from several years ago, and is wholly ridiculous. Don’t even know what Barron’s means or is talking about. TCNJ appears to have a niche providing accounting services to the NY metro area. This is great. It is not necessarily affordable or even economically competitive with out of state schools, but in cases where it is, it is a great option for both in-State and possibly OOS applicants. There is no reason, your child notwithstanding, to inflate the value of TCNJ. It is what it is, and that’s fine.
@BrooklynRye I agree with you 100% and add that you can go to the homepage of any college and read the “accolades” which are meaningless and often from obscure surveys chosen to make a school look good. But It seems Stones’ only purpose on this forum is to promote TCNJ and try to make it out to be more than what it is. Seems to be a pattern in her other postings, too.
And, I have a child at Rutgers and one hoping for TCNJ. They each chose the school that was best suited to them and neither could care less about statistics and rankings. We really need to get away from all these bogus rankings and let our kids go to the school that is best for them. It’s all about what they do when they get there.
My daughter visited a lot of schools, some we did not think she would apply to but were on the way to others and a good representation of a “type” of college that helped her narrow down what she wanted pretty fast. I recommend finding an area with a school that you are interested in and see several others nearby - we did that in Iowa and Ohio and in both cases she ended up applying to the “stop by” school and not the one we went to look at - which I thought was interesting. We also did some of these on family vacation drives or when we were in the area for another reason so the expense was not just the college visit. We started fall of junior year.
Simpson college - wow was it tiny helped her eliminate small fast
Grinnell - did not even get out of the car
Drake - “stop by” school that ended up being applied to
Iowa State - did not have enough in the department she wanted but helped her know she liked big
U of Pittsburgh - I went kicking and screaming and was very happily surprised - ended up applying
Carnegie Mellon - reason we stopped in Pitt she did not like at all
Case Western Reserve - gave a good urban and “nerdy” example, was a front runner did not apply after visit
Carthage College - too small, pretty campus, felt like might be nice for an athlete
Notre Dame - she hated it
Ohio University - reason for visit, department not a fit and felt too isolated in Appalachia made her realize urban
Ohio State - drive by that ended up falling in love with, applied
Purdue - solid visit, solid school, liked other departments better
Indiana University - beautiful campus, visit sold her even with everyone wearing hoosiers gear, applied
U of Illinois Champaign Urbana - loved the campus and diversity, department not a fit
U of MN - home campus, good visit, applied,
Washington St Louis - Entire post on schools that fell after visiting, top choice after visit did not apply
St Louis University - drive by visit - really liked almost applied
Santa Clara - beautiful campus, diverse, great vibe, decided did not want to go to school in California
Stanford - strongly disliked and did not apply
UT Dallas - applied and accepted before visit - she went kicking and screaming and absolutely fell in love with nearly everything
One more left we go visit Michigan State which she has been accepted to and her last school to visit. Already know the department is a great fit (important to her) now we need to see campus feel.
In the end she visited 21 schools which is more than most people can. But we only did 3 intentional college visits everything else was “along the way” and planned as part of other trips. We did not “plan” or think we could afford that many visits. But we went to see family and stopped along the way, and had a spring break trip we chose to drive instead of fly and visited a bunch on the way. The others were done over holiday breaks when we were in an area and we just planned around it. We also knew it was likely an investment as she planned to apply to schools she was likely to receive merit at. Worked well for her.
In addition to these visits, she did “virtual visits” which I highly recommend for a student who knows what they want to study. She came up with a consistent list of 10 questions and sent them to department advisors and based on the response she got (or did not get) she kept them on the list or not. Several schools she thought she wanted left her list after reading the department answers. She knew which questions to ask because she had done several visits already with departments. In the end four of the schools (out of 7) she applied to answered those “virtual visit” questions. Two of which she applied to before visiting. That would only work for a student who really knows what they want and their major.
With kid 1, we visited about 7 different schools. He was not very interested in college process as a junior, and I practically dragged him to visit a small school several hours away so he could start to see what the options might look like. Then we visited our public flagship, which is where he had wanted to go – until he saw how unprofessional and inept the info session was and it really turned him off. The upside of that visit was, he realized he wanted to expand his search so over the next 6 months we visited 2 more LACs, where he did overnights and interviewed, and 3 more public flagships. He liked the small schools well enough but didn’t love them, then fell in love with University of Wisconsin where he was admitted and had a superb experience.
Kid 2 knew he wanted to continue playing his sport in college, and knew (from watching his brother), that he did NOT want big. We started visiting D3 schools in spring of 10th grade, so saw 3 schools over that spring break, then in winter/spring of 11th, visited about 7-8 additional schools, usually single school visits taking advantage of school holidays, then did the monster haul over spring break. He did recruiting camps over the summer which narrowed/expanded list, we visited about 4-5 more schools that were added as part of the recruiting process, in the fall, he got his roster spot offer from preferred D3 school, applied and admitted ED, and loves it. So, total visits around 15 between spring of 10th grade and fall of 12th grade.
D visited one SUNY, hated it but applied anyway. She was then accepted to another SUNY, which we visited after she paid the deposit.
S17 visited 7 schools and is at the one that is furthest away. I visited with him for orientation, which was my first time there.
S made zero visits to colleges prior to applying, i.e., visits to choose where to apply. He had visited quite a few college campuses, including the instate flagships, in connection with being a high-school debater on the national circuit. But he never went to an admissions office or visited any campus concerning admissions. He was too busy, and was willing to leave things to his parents. He got into 5 of the 6 colleges he applied to. Admissions was about his credentials, his application. After staying overnight on admitted student’s day at one of the colleges – one that he’d never seen before that visit – he announced the next morning “This will do.” And it was done.
D made one extended circle trip by car from Michigan to Maine – with a classmate who had different interests – to 10 colleges in 11 days. She actually went to the admissions office at most of them, but in a few cases declined to be interviewed. She only wanted to attend stand-alone art schools, of which on that trip she visited 4 of the 7 she ultimately applied to. She never visited 3 of those 7. She was admitted to all 7. Art school admissions is all about the portfolio. She had a very good one. She chose to attend the college that was her first choice from the beginning, based on program and location.