E is going to college and has been for the last two years. But he is a dual credit student. He started when he was 14. Clearly he is brilliant 😉 but now it is time to apply for colleges.
E doesn’t have a clear idea of what colleges he wants to go to. He does, however, know what he wants to do. He wants to be an actuary.
What we did
So, we went online and found colleges with Actuarial Science programs. Then we went to USNews and got the list of the best actuarial science programs. Then we compared the two. We started, of course, looking for Texas schools. There are four: UT Austin, UT San Antonio, Baylor, and TCU. Only UT Austin is in the best list. E doesn’t want to go to Baylor or TCU of course. (He’s an atheist.) That leaves UTSA as his second choice school. The minimum SAT from a Texas school they want is 920. It’s 1020 if you are homeschooled. So he has almost double the homeschool requirement. I would expect that he will not have any trouble at all getting into UTSA.
We’d like him to go to a good school for actuaries. Then we were looking for family or friends near enough to visit him.
I found a list of supposed good schools, but it is by a prof from ISU, so who knows if ISU really belongs on the system. But the other choices were interesting.
Boston University
University of Central Florida
Florida State University
Georgia State University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Illinois State University
University of Iowa
Middle Tennessee State University
Pennsylvania State University
Temple University
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Actuary.com has a list of schools based on whether they have the degree and whether classes support the first “four” exams… It is organized by region, which is nice.
Ball State (Indiana) looks good.
ISU looks good too, based on this website. Maybe it is just really good in Actuarial Science and not so good in others.
Maryville University in St. Louis also looks good. It’s a couple of hours from our friends, which is farther away than I wanted E, but it looks like a possibility. (Their website says it is one of 35 great ones, but it doesn’t say where I can find this list.) Cost, FYI, is $25,000 a year tuition and housing.
R says I’ve been too wimpy, rather than too tough, on the possible places to apply. So Wharton Business School might be added to the places he applies. I honestly can’t imagine him getting in, but I guess it is possible.
NAU, my dad’s alma mater, has a degree too. And according to their website E is guaranteed admission. That, of course, tells us that it is way too easy. I called my dad and he said don’t go. He said he’s glad he got the degree, but it doesn’t have a strong reputation.
Why am I still looking at colleges?
I am still looking because we only had a list of five and some of those are pretty hard to get into. So I am looking for others.