That can be anywhere - great teachers abound as do stinky ones. Kids click with others or don’t.
She can likely succeed or fail anywhere.
Look at St Johns College and its Great Books curriculum.
Lots of reading and in class discussion.
When you say “ So she needs a spark-great teacher, great classmates, great book. ” this might be the school.
Has your daughter seen a doctor/therapist ? In some ways she sounds like mine - who ended up on medication to help with motivation and help keep more on an even keel in that regard. Not trying to infer anything and it’s hard to tell from what you write but wondering if something may be there related to motivation.
I think that St. John’s is a great recommendation, particularly if a school like U. of Chicago appeals.
This site is marketing material, but I think that the Colleges That Change Lives profiles do a good job of getting a good sense of the ethos of a school. @randommom1’s kid committed to attend this upcoming year and might have additional insight if your D is interested.
If your daughter is at all open to a LAC, I’m going to suggest you look into St Olaf, especially since you are from the Midwest originally. I know personally one very smart, accomplished young woman who is very happy there. It’s known to have friendly, bright students. Although it’s affiliated with the Lutheran Church it’s not really religious, per se, and students come from all religions or none. I would have been interested for my D, but it’s further from home than she wanted to be. I think your daughter would get strong merit aid.
I’d suggest my D’s alma mater, W&M, as several have mentioned ( it checks many boxes) except that merit aid is nearly nonexistent, especially for OOS students.
Not sure about merit aid but your D’s interest in languages made me think of Middlebury College, which is large for a LAC. It’s known for outdoorsy, sporty students as well, but surely the school has some diversity in that regard?
My D was a Monroe scholar and it wasn’t anything like $10 k. More like 4k total that could be applied to summer research. It was a nice add-on designation and got her into an honors freshman dorm where she met her best friends, but not a significant financial help.
I’m struggling with the idea that state flagships should be “ruled out” when the school that comes up repeatedly in this thread is W&M.
Many of the honors colleges and particularly the cohort scholarships like Stamps (https://www.stampsscholars.org/) offer a great low cost experience, regardless of the number of students in the university as a whole. My D had a wonderful experience in a cohort of very smart kids (all 4.0/34+ ACT) at a T100 state flagship that was just as stimulating as her brother at a much higher ranked (T20) school and cost almost nothing. Her freshman year roommate went on to win a Rhodes scholarship. Maybe this student won’t get one of those cohort scholarships, but it seems strange to not even try, if the hope is to qualify for a Monroe scholarship at W&M.
I am pretty sure this was mentioned above but not sure in detail. SUNY Binghamton definitely is where these kids go. NYS kids who are top of their class wind up there and there are a variety of scholarships for OOS kids that makes it under 50K. It is near a medium sized city, tons of outdoor activities and a very competitive honors college. We live in NJ an many kids from our highly ranked public school go there each year.
You may have misunderstood my post with respect to state flagship honors colleges.
My point is that state flagship honors colleges is probably the best avenue for OP’s daughter to pursue, but for the requirement of a small to medium sized student body.
As other have posted, I, too, thought of William & Mary, but the scholarships may not be adequate to meet a $50,000 budget.
I also thought of Middlebury College, but, again, will be beyond OP’s preferred price point.
Totally disagree with suggestions of the University of Chicago and of St. John’s College as OP’s parent has shared that her daughter is not the right type of student for these deeply analytical, philosophical type of schools.
In short, OP’s daughter needs to focus on state flagship honors colleges to meet her desires except regarding size of the student body. However, honors colleges do foster a sense of a small community within the setting of a large public university. Plenty of merit scholarship grants available to meet any budgetary concerns.
If OP’s D is open to colleges of any size so long as there’s a good honors college option within it, that opens up a number of options for schools that offer both anthropology and linguistics.
San Diego State: About 34k undergrads and it actually has a major that is linguistics & anthropology, as well as separate majors in linguistics and anthropology that both seem pretty popular. So if your D is interested in the intersection of the two fields, the fact that there’s a combined major option for those seems promising for their particular programs. The sticker price falls within budget.
U. of Arizona: About 42k undergrads at this school with a very well-reputed honors college (ETA: Franke, not Barrett). It, too, has popular anthro and linguistics majors, but it also has a combined PhD available in anthropology & linguistics, which makes me suspect that those respective departments might have a lot of overlaps that could be of interest to your D.
Some other schools that your D may want to consider that are in/near big cities include:
Ohio State: About 46k undergrads
Rutgers - New Brunswick: About 37k undergrads
U. of Florida: About 35k undergrads
U. of Maryland - College Park: About 31k undergrads
U. of Minnesota - Twin Cities: About 40k undergrads
U. of Pittsburgh (PA ): About 25k undergrads
U. of Utah: About 27k undergrads
U. of Wisconsin - Madison: About 37k undergrads
And if your D opens up to college towns, some other options could be added in as well. Also, I’m going to page @dfbdfb as he is our resident linguistics expert and can provide additional insight. If your D can indicate where her interests lie in linguistics, that would be helpful for him (as I just assumed that because she was interested in anthropology and linguistics that she was interested in their intersection, but that could easily not be the case, and I don’t know the specialties of various departments).
I would also recommend she consider UVM—about 11,000 students, in a great college town, & with her stats she should qualify for $25k in merit which will bring it to around 40k (they let you calculate your merit award on their fin aid website—calculator said my kid would get $20k & he got $25k).
UVM has an honors program with its own housing, study space, advising, & special classes. They also have something called the Liberal Arts Scholars program which is similar to honors & allows students to live & study together based on chosen academic interests (social sciences, languages, etc). Admission to the honors program seems to be quite selective—my unhooked S25 with v similar stats to your D got into some highly selective schools (including Bowdoin), but was waitlisted for UVM’s honors program. I think your D would be surrounded by students with very strong high school records in that program.
If she decides to look at small liberal arts schools, St. Olaf & Dickinson were about $40k after merit scholarships for my S25; Oberlin & Connecticut College were in the mid-50s after merit.
I agree. For us the NPC predicted merit aid and was spot on.
The UVM honors dorm IMHO is the nicest dorm that I have ever seen.
After two years my daughter dropped out of the honors program because it did not offer anything that she wanted (she moved off campus at the same time). At that point she was mostly moving to more specialized classes, which is common for an upper year student. She did get a great education at UVM and did very well in terms of both admissions to graduate programs, including some highly ranked ones for her major, and doing well in her graduate program. She now has her doctorate and is working at a job that she likes quite a bit.
In terms of “where do the smart kids go” our daughter had one boyfriend (former boyfriend at this point) who was a UVM student who had never had a B in his life. Now he is an MD. A female friend had only had one or two B’s in her life, and I think that she too is now an MD.
I think that UVM is one example of very smart kids going “all over the place”, but a good one to consider for someone from Maine.
Maybe worth mentioning a friend’s daughter who graduated UVM a couple of years ago got admitted to some great grad schools, including Berkeley and Harvard.
Haven’t read every post, but I thought I’d throw out Occidental, which is often overlooked here. Excellent small LAC, motivated students (9 fullbrights this year), near urban area (Los Angeles), provides merit aid.
Others have mentioned state flagships, honors colleges, etc, and those are all good choices in addition to the various privates that offer incentive pricing disguised as “merit”.
Most of these kids will find an appropriate intellectual cohort, although the odds are better at larger schools just due to the numbers (if we’re talking less selective schools).
I haven’t seen this raised and apologies if it’s inappropriate to ask, but how did you come up with the $50k constraint and is it indexed to inflation?
The reason I ask is that from your description it sounds like a self-imposed financial constraint. You seem to indicate that you could fund $80-90k/year but would prefer not to, or would prefer to be reimbursed for part of that.
I just wonder what that number is anchored to? Is that actually your ability to pay or is that what you think a good OOS flagship would cost?
Honestly, I think the concept of “unhooked” is overused on CC. There are a lot of students at highly selective schools with no “hooks”. A student with stats like you list would be a competitive applicant at many very selective schools and honestly wouldn’t be average at very many. I wouldn’t ignore those based on the assumption that one needs to be an athlete or someone’s nephew.
My D27 sounds similar to your in STATS and what she is looking for, but no hook. We are also fortunate enough to have a decent family income and a few high assets that will rule out need based aid. These are the schools she is currently considering/researching and hopefully we will have a chance to visit. All either give some merit aid to high stats students or are less expensive overall without any merit aid.
Small to mid sized:
St. Olaf
Macalester
William and Mary (Monroe Scholar does come with 10k/yr of OSS starting this year)
College of The Holy Cross
U Rochester
Denison
Kenyon
Lafayette
Dickinson
Santa Clara
Loyola U Maryland
U Denver
Williams (extreme reach but also extremely generous with aid to higher income families than most)
Larger schools:
U Mass Amherst
Virginia Tech
UW Madison
U of Oregon
Oregon State
Montana State
UVM
you could also consider:
St. Lawrence
Hamilton (also very generous with aid like Williams)
Hobart and William Smith
Clark
Elon
Whitman
Gonzaga
Conn College
Union
Smith
Bryn Marr
Syracuse