It has been one of the busiest starts to a school year that I can remember in my career. There are a few reasons for this but a big one is that I have double the amount of college visits from college admission representatives that I have ever had in a fall season. I typically schedule 25-30 visits in the fall but this year there are over 50 college admission reps coming to DC! One of the reasons for this is because of the program RepVisits which integrated with Naviance this fall. RepVisits makes it very easy for a high school college counselor to let college admissions counselors know when they can visit their school and the admission reps just sign up online. I am really excited that so many college admission reps want to visit DC!
I have been able to talk to my juniors, who I have in class once a week, about finding the right fit college. One of the phrases I said they may hear in the college planning process is “hidden gems”. What does this phrase mean? What makes a college a “hidden gem”?
1. Hidden gem colleges are not going to have a very high sticker price.
I am particularly impressed when I see colleges or universities keep their tuition down while still maintaining quality academics, excellent facilities and a quality experience for their students. Colleges that have come to mind over the last 5-10 years are SUNY (State University of New York) schools like Stony Brook, Buffalo, Albany and Bingamton and also universities in Virginia like James Madison, Carson Newman and Mary Washington. There are plenty of others but one thing you may need to be open to is going to school further away from home. The further away you go, the more that school may want students from PA and that may impact your scholarship package.
2. Hidden gem colleges often reward high achieving high school students significant merit-based aid
I am a big fan of a college that properly rewards students with merit-based scholarship money for the success they have had academically in high school. I wrote an article a couple years ago (click here to view) titled, “Is High School Really a Job?” In this article I explain that taking rigorous classes and achieving good grades in high school does put students in position to get siginificant scholarship money from colleges. I can’t say this is true of every college. If a school has less than a 30%-40% admission rate, they typically do not offer much merit-based scholarship money and if they do, there are very few and they are ultra competitive. A lot of these colleges are 100% meet need schools which means they don’t give any merit-based scholarships at all. All of their money is given to the financial need of students that they determine based on the FAFSA EFC, CSS Profile results and even tax forms that they ask for. However, there are plenty of great colleges whose admission rate is between 50-80% and they do offer significant merit-based scholarships. It takes time to research these colleges though and scholarship amounts may vary from year to year.
3. Hidden gem colleges could be a great college for a certain student because they have an outstanding program for their intended major.
There are colleges that have outstanding programs but unfortunately, people don’t know about these programs unless they hear about them by word of mouth or they spend the time doing research online. The college that the program/major is in may not be ranked that high, but the program/major within the college can be one of the best because of new state-of-the art equipment and building, the professors who teach the courses within the program and their experience and/or how long that major has been at the college and therefore they have a very strong alumni base. A few examples I have come across in my year’s of college counseling, are Saint Norbert College in Green Bay, WI offering internships with the Green Bay Packers because they are right next to the Packer’s facilities. Also, for students wanting to pursue flight school to be a commercial airline pilot, one of the best programs in the country is at Bowling Green University. Finally, Asbury College, a Christian college in Kentucky, has one of the best Communication Arts programs in the country with state-of-the art facilities because of their Dean who is very experienced. We have had DC alumni receive a high quality education at schools like Springfield College for Athletic Training, Clarkson University for Graphic Design, Taylor University for English/Journalism, Cedar Crest College for Biology, Ursinus College and Rutgers for Medical lab research just to name a few. I love when students take advantage of opportunities to pursue a major at a college that has a high quality program and they get significant scholarship money to attend that school.
4. Hidden gem colleges tend to have a very strong regional reputation but not so strong of a national reputation.
This is pretty self-explanatory, right? You can’t hide that much if you are so concerned with being in the top 50 of the US News and World Report College Rankings. I am not saying that Hidden Gem colleges are schools you have never heard of, but typically, their admission rates don’t put them in the top 50 or even 100 of the national rankings, but then you see that they are ranked pretty high in their region which doesn’t get that much attention. So if you do look at rankings, don’t be discouraged when you see a school you were looking into low in the national rankings. This can mean that they don’t spend a ton of money like the schools that are ranked high, on “playing the game” so to speak to move higher in the rankings.
5. Hidden gem colleges are honors colleges or programs within a larger university.
There is a post by Lynn O’Shaughnessy in her The College Solution blog on this topic of honors colleges being hidden gems. Please click here to read her post.
