Bocky Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 Dd17 is just finishing her junior year abroad. She's been putting together a list of colleges to apply to this fall in the western states. Life just threw us a curve ball, and we may now be relocating to northern Wisconsin, not too far from Minneapolis. Can you help us get started on a new list of north central colleges? There are so many more schools than out here in Oregon! Dd17 is a good student, not extraordinary, but hopefully with a hook from her Rotary exchange. She is interested in majoring in global studies or international relations and Spanish. She has also expressed an interest in learning Korean, so U Wisconsin at Madison with its Korean Critical Language Flagship program is on the list. She has both large state universities and small liberal arts schools on her current interest list. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catz Posted June 1, 2019 Share Posted June 1, 2019 My kid is heading to Madison this fall. Not in anything close to Korean, but we've visited many times now. You're welcome to PM me. If you're going to be WI residents, you'll have reciprocity with Minnesota so the U of MN twin cities is another one to check out. They have a very large Korean program. We live in very close range and both DH and I are alum, happy to answer PMs on that one too. If you dig around in the non-flagship schools, you can find some strong programs. Wisconsin's public college system is pretty great. I know students who've started at those who ended up in great grad programs. Popular LACs/privates are Macalester, Saint Olaf, Carleton, Lawrence University, Grinnell, Gustavus Adolphus , Carthage, Ripon, Beloit, Saint Thomas, Knox, Cornell College, Luther College, etc etc. I could go on! 🙂 You could check out Chicago area schools too. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bocky Posted June 5, 2019 Author Share Posted June 5, 2019 Thank you very much - I really appreciate it. It's exciting to see so many great schools so close - out here in the west everything is so far apart. U of Minn Twin Cities looks very interesting, and perhaps less of a reach than Madison. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bocky Posted June 5, 2019 Author Share Posted June 5, 2019 Also, another question: SAT or ACT for north central LACs/privates? Does it make a difference? I haven't looked at the ACT because everything here is SAT. Dd took the PSAT10 as a sophomore (can't remember actual score, just that it was "on track for college admission", neither awful or stellar), and is registered for the August SAT. I'd love to hear about options for more average stat students too in north central. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catz Posted June 5, 2019 Share Posted June 5, 2019 SAT or ACT are totally fine for any school. Those midwestern schools get apps from everywhere and are used to those conversions! Has she tried both? Some kids have an affinity for one or the other? I think as a Wisconsin resident scores have to be less high than out of state students for sure for UW-Madison. And Madison's latest common data set has SAT 25-75 percentiles as 1330-1480 ACT 27-32. As a Wisconsin resident anywhere in that range with some good supporting homeschool data (AP, CLEP, dual enroll,SAT-2,outside grades) you have a good chance there! The Minnesota/out of state scores to get into Madison this year are nuts from what I've heard, glad my kid got in! Minnesota's test scores vary by school and a few of the colleges tend to bring down overall scores a little. And out of state scores have to be a little higher there too.I think for many programs it's very comparable in quality to UW-Madison. If your daughter might like a busier urban setting, it's such a great campus. Super accessible to urban amenities! Madison is a great little city though too with surprising amenities for a metro of it's size. And it's about an hour from Milwaukee and 2 from Chicago. We've been having a lot of fun exploring Madison! Both Madison and UMN have great honors programs options too. Both can be applied to after enrolling as well. My kid got a nice academic merit package at UMN. He got great MUSIC merit at UW-Madison that made them very similar in price. Had he not applied to music, UMN would have been considerably cheaper (though he did get a music bump at UMN as well). He got very good merit at privates that brought them close to sticker price of these 2 publics, but once they started giving out substantial money, game over. LOL. UW-Madison is notorious for not having a lot of merit money, but they do try and do more for residents than non-residents. https://apir.wisc.edu/institution/common-data-set-and-rankings/ https://admissions.tc.umn.edu/academics/profile.html 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catz Posted June 5, 2019 Share Posted June 5, 2019 I was going to mention, both those schools have great transfer in options as well from CC's and state schools. Korean is such a curveball, you'll need to do some googling there! The first round state schools for Wisconsin I'd check out are UW-La Crosse and UW-Eau Claire. Both in cute decent sized river cities. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeOrchidSong Posted July 15, 2019 Share Posted July 15, 2019 University of Northwestern, Concordia University, both in St. Paul, are good colleges. Northcentral College is at the edge of downtown Minneapolis. St Olaf in Northfield has great liberal arts education with people from many states and countries. We hope our tow boys can go to St, Olaf. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoodGrief Posted July 15, 2019 Share Posted July 15, 2019 (edited) On 5/31/2019 at 2:47 PM, Bocky said: Dd17 is just finishing her junior year abroad. She's been putting together a list of colleges to apply to this fall in the western states. Life just threw us a curve ball, and we may now be relocating to northern Wisconsin, not too far from Minneapolis. Can you help us get started on a new list of north central colleges? There are so many more schools than out here in Oregon! Dd17 is a good student, not extraordinary, but hopefully with a hook from her Rotary exchange. She is interested in majoring in global studies or international relations and Spanish. She has also expressed an interest in learning Korean, so U Wisconsin at Madison with its Korean Critical Language Flagship program is on the list. She has both large state universities and small liberal arts schools on her current interest list. My daughter was a Rotary exchange student to Turkey several years ago. I suspect your daughter may find herself in the situation ours did in that the language she wishes to study significantly limits the available schools. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing! The North Central schools to which my daughter applied were Carleton and Grinnell. Grinnell was very enthusiastic about her and offered her an early acceptance and significant scholarship. Ultimately they did not have the program she wanted though. Carleton rejected her outright. If your daughter is interested in women’s colleges, Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania (more East than Central) was another one with a fair amount of enthusiasm for the exchange element. If religious schools are of interest, Hope College and Calvin College, both in Michigan, are worth considering. In the end she ended up at University of Washington because they had the language she wanted. Our experience (and my observation of the college journeys of other post-exchange students) is that Rotary exchange is not a big advantage on its own as far as admissions though it certainly provides material for essays. Edited July 15, 2019 by GoodGrief 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanny Posted July 15, 2019 Share Posted July 15, 2019 No idea about schools in that area but in the OP you report about her interest in Korean. She may want to look into applying for the NSLI-Y program. Korean is a critical language for the USA. Also, there's apparently a program after that, for university students, and I believe Korean is on the short-list of languages that are considered strategic. If she should become proficient in Korean and also go into the U.S. Military they might give her a monthly salary bonus if she maintains her proficiency in the language. Good luck to her! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bocky Posted July 19, 2019 Author Share Posted July 19, 2019 On 6/5/2019 at 9:48 AM, FuzzyCatz said: I was going to mention, both those schools have great transfer in options as well from CC's and state schools. Korean is such a curveball, you'll need to do some googling there! The first round state schools for Wisconsin I'd check out are UW-La Crosse and UW-Eau Claire. Both in cute decent sized river cities. I really love UW-Madison, the more I look at it. BUT it will now be a long way away and out of state, as our move to Eau Claire fell apart at the last minute. Everyone is spot on in your advice about unusual languages, though. Korean is rare, and DD's other Asian language interest, Thai, is extremely rare. It looks like U Hawaii-Manoa and U Washington will be on the list along with UW-Madison. Cornell, Berkeley and UCLA are out of reach. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bocky Posted July 19, 2019 Author Share Posted July 19, 2019 On 7/15/2019 at 11:33 AM, GoodGrief1 said: My daughter was a Rotary exchange student to Turkey several years ago. I suspect your daughter may find herself in the situation ours did in that the language she wishes to study significantly limits the available schools. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing! The North Central schools to which my daughter applied were Carleton and Grinnell. Grinnell was very enthusiastic about her and offered her an early acceptance and significant scholarship. Ultimately they did not have the program she wanted though. Carleton rejected her outright. If your daughter is interested in women’s colleges, Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania (more East than Central) was another one with a fair amount of enthusiasm for the exchange element. If religious schools are of interest, Hope College and Calvin College, both in Michigan, are worth considering. In the end she ended up at University of Washington because they had the language she wanted. Our experience (and my observation of the college journeys of other post-exchange students) is that Rotary exchange is not a big advantage on its own as far as admissions though it certainly provides material for essays. Thanks - I am finding that these less commonly taught languages are a big limiter, and that is not necessarily bad 😄. I appreciate hearing about your post-exchange experience too. Do you have any advice about representing the exchange on the transcript? Dd's exchange country does not do high school transcripts at all - everybody at the school just takes the same course of study, and for them university entrance is based on external exams - so there will be no outside validation available. Maybe DD writes a special circumstances letter to go with her apps? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoodGrief Posted July 19, 2019 Share Posted July 19, 2019 41 minutes ago, Bocky said: Thanks - I am finding that these less commonly taught languages are a big limiter, and that is not necessarily bad 😄. I appreciate hearing about your post-exchange experience too. Do you have any advice about representing the exchange on the transcript? Dd's exchange country does not do high school transcripts at all - everybody at the school just takes the same course of study, and for them university entrance is based on external exams - so there will be no outside validation available. Maybe DD writes a special circumstances letter to go with her apps? For my daughter, despite the fact that the exchange occurred during junior year, it was presented as an extracurricular for the most part. I did create some homeschool courses that related to her experience and were completed during that time, and those were placed on the transcript (there was a literature course and a history course focusing on the region.) She had to do extra academics before and after the exchange to graduate on time (some students involved in Rotary opt to take an extra year of high school.) There was not a transcript from her exchange schools either (she rotated among a few areas so she was not at the same school all year.) Certainly the "Additional Information" portion of the Common App would be one place to provide additional clarification as to how the year played out that is not covered in essays. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catz Posted July 19, 2019 Share Posted July 19, 2019 Did you check out u of Minnesota? https://cla.umn.edu/asian-middle-eastern-studies/languages/korean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janeway Posted July 19, 2019 Share Posted July 19, 2019 Whenever I think of MPLS, I think of so many schools, with the tops being Carleton, Macalester, and St Olaf. U of M is good too if you need a non-liberal arts school. Of course, there are way way more schools than just this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catz Posted July 20, 2019 Share Posted July 20, 2019 But the choices are limited for Korean which is what the OP student is interested in. U of MN has a large Korean program and has a strong liberal arts school (CLA) too. I am actually an alum (not of CLA, but know plenty of successful CLA grads) and live quite close to campus. I am not the rah rah my alma mater is the best type by any stretch. But I do think the U of MN is a bit academically underrated and has many strong departments and excellent faculty. There are a couple schools within the U of MN that bring overall stats down a bit . All those other schools are great of course. My kid looked at all 3 of them and probably would have chosen Saint Olaf if they would have come through with a bit more merit money and a more welcoming music department. Other two were going to be too expensive for us and not a great fit for his interests. Actually, when I dug through accomplishments, reviews, and accolades individual faculty members for U of MN vs some more remote well regarded liberal arts schools I thought the U of MN had stronger faculty and opportunities for my kid's situation. My kid is not going to the U of MN FTR. We know a few faculty members and they've said it is harder to get those teaching position at large urban research universities and positions are extremely competitive. Positions are extremely competitive everywhere now of course but particularly in colleges that are desirable places to live. Now that we've been through the process, I feel lucky there are so many great high quality choices in the upper Midwest that don't get as much attention as coastal schools. Anyway - it pays to do your homework with your financial situation and your kid's interests and goals in mind. Korean is really difficult to get in any quantity at many smaller schools. They may just have an "Asian studies" department. Maybe a Korean culture club. It depends on your kid's commitment level to a deep study of a particular language. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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