I’ll suggest that Bowdoin and Northwestern are reach schools for anyone. I understand that when the formula crunches the numbers, you match up well.
The problem is that this is a numbers game. Both of these schools have had acceptance rates in single digits in recent years. They reject more than 90% of their applicants. And mostly only top students apply to schools like this in the first place. So students who look like matches are rejected or wait listed all the time.
The prospects for any applicant are particularly challenging at a school like Bowdoin. They only have 500 spots in their freshman class in any given year to begin with. But 200 of those spots go to athletes. When other hooked candidates are factored in, it’s probably fewer than half the spots are available for the general applicant pool, lowering the real acceptance rate in the general pool even further.
I disagree with your folks on cost. You know your EFC up front - so you’ll know who will give you need based aid. Who won’t. Obviously, Iowa and Mizzou likely gave you merit. Yes, some of the other have merit, but your list is high end so few schools give. But it will work your way. In other words, if Northwestern is your top pick and the money works, then you’d go. If the money doesn’t, I guess you’d go to choice two.
@Bill_Marsh said much better what I was trying to say about why Bowdoin and Northwestern being reaches for all.
I think I go back to my statement on you can make a big school small but not a small big. It doesn’t mean that Kenyon or Grinnell wouldn’t be awesome for you. And they’ll have many groups and many types of students.
But there will also be kids like my son at the publics. He goes to Alabama. Couldn’t care less about football and partying. His dorm freshman year (Honors) was so eerily quiet he was bored. But there are kids that play board games on weekends or video games.
So big or small, you’ll find your crowd anywhere.
Since you’re in the midwest and interested in journalism, Drake is in Des Moines - and is a fine journalism program. It will be bigger than an LAC and smaller and much easier to get into then many of your schools. You can apply still and there’s no app fee (not sure if essays)…just to give another option.
Good luck - I’m sure you’ll do well wherever you go - it’s about you moreso than the school. You’ll find lots of opportunities - wild and crazy or subdued.
There are some LACs like Williams and Middlebury and Colby and Hamilton – which are fairly rural and far from the nearest city.
But most who go there seem to say that they don’t lack for fun and entertainment. If you must have a weekend in NYC or Boston – they’re available. I just feel like if those rural LACs were boring and wholly inhibiting fun, the word would be out. Same with Grinnell, Kenyon, Oberlin in the Midwest… the Claremonts out west… Davidson and W&L in the South… etc.
Like if we hadn’t landed on the moon, someone among the thousands of people who worked on that space program would have blown a whistle. And certainly the Soviets didn’t want us to win the moon race, but you didn’t hear any of them doubting or challenging our victory. And they had operatives here and satellites in space to monitor what we were doing – and they just shut their mouths and took it. I don’t know enough about the science to thwart the conspiracy theorists’ doubts, no – my certainty comes via the complete lack of dissent from anyone who had a stake in it at the time. The fact that nobody who knew enough about the science, or had an axe to grind, said anything to dispute it… is proof to me that we did it. So it is with the LACs: while no school is perfect for everyone, the consensus seems to be that there are opportunities for fun/mirth/excitement/adventure at all of them that you have listed.
We don’t hear many say that they are having a sucky time socially at those schools, unless they just aren’t finding friends. But that’s a behavioral and psychological thing, not a setting thing. Someone who has a hard time making friends in any population of 2000 people will likely struggle to find them throughout life. 2000 is a fair sample size. Sometimes you have to actually talk to people, be nice, etc.
My overarching argument is, don’t sell your LACs short. If you get into, say, Bowdoin and Fordham, don’t turn down Bowdoin because you believe you’ll be bored.
I get the cost thing. Creative Writing is a low paying, low success career. My son is focused on musical theater (also low paying, low success). I have a limit I, as a parent, am willing to pay for a low paying career from anything less than a school that is universally considered tippy top BUT. . . if he gets into a school where the name of school means something to the general public outside of MT (for MT that probably means Carnegie Mellon, Yale and Northwestern (maybe NYU and Penn State), I am willing to pay considerably more than my rather low limit (although I am not willing to pay NYU full freight!).
I wound counter that with - when you go to a show or read an article in a magazine, do you know where the person went?
Many actors have gone to Yale and Carnegie Mellon. At the same time many have gone to high school.
And then conservatories and academies and lesser known colleges in between. Writers have gone anywhere from Mid TN State to Harvard.
You know what all these people have in common - they’re likely paid at the same scale - the ones that are lucky enough to find jobs.
When I graduated Syracuse journalism, I’d be shocked if even 10% of my classmates made it - and that’s a name.
If you saw the really cool tribute from Hugh Jackman to the understudy that had to fill in on his show due to his counterpart having covid - her name is Kathy Voytko - I just looked - she went to Shenandoah with a BFA in 1994 and I’m guessing makes little. But she could also have been the star and was that day.
My point of all this babble - you said the statement in the next paragraph below - and that statement should be no different for Yale or Shenandoah…in that field, Yale, CMU, or Northwestern don’t bring you any extra $$.
“Creative Writing is a low paying, low success career. My son is focused on musical theater (also low paying, low success). I have a limit I, as a parent, am willing to pay for a low paying career”- I ended it right there even though you continued…
My point, that maybe I didn’t make well, was I have a budget but that budget has room for movement if my kid gets into a school that just by its name opens up non-MT careers. I know people succeed in MT and creative writing from all over the place but there are a few schools that might help them succeed in something else by their mere name or the connections you make there (ie a backup career).