My daughter is 15 (soon to be 16) and entering her junior year next year when she will soon be starting the college app process with the PSAT, then SAT, school visits, etc. She has a late summer birthday and is on the young side for her class. I was the same - I was 17 when I started college. I don’t think it is too early at all at that age, especially if she is a rising junior. My husband took both daughters on several college visits during the summer (the oldest will be off to college this fall) and they had a great time and took time to see local attractions and to hike and explore. They had a lot of fun.
Note to the OP @VanessaKVH - I would refrain from using your real names on CC. Just for privacy reasons. Good luck to you - she sounds like a great kid with a great family.
I meant they visited colleges last summer. Last year my youngest was a rising sophomore, but we had her tag along so we wouldn’t have to do repeat visits to colleges she might also be interested in.
We started looking at colleges early, mostly driving by campuses near us after her Freshman year. We live in between Boston and Providence, so this was easy to do. My daughter takes a while warming up to things so this helped. She started visiting (tours) late summer before her Junior year, and with busy schedules, we are very glad we started early, one parent getting an unexpected operation can make things challenging. IMHO, you can never start too early, just don’t over concentrate on prestige.
15isn’t too soon to research and visit colleges. 15 is too young to rule out co-Ed schools. A women’s college is a commitment–a choice made after careful consideration of all the options.
I respectfully disagree with the idea that “15 is too young to rule out co-ed schools.” – why wouldn’t a person know her own mind at that age? Why shouldn’t that be respected? Who says any young woman HAS to consider co-ed schools . . .?
Besides many women’s schools are in consortia with co-ed schools and the women take classes with men; men can come to the dorms overnight, and the social organizations are co-ed for many women’s schools.
One big advantage of women’s colleges is that that it can be easier to get into a top woman’s college than to get admitted to an academically equivalent co-ed college simply because their applicant pools haven’t ballooned to crazy proportions. So Bryn Mawr take about 40% of applicants – twice the admission rates of Haverford. Smith accepts about one-third of applicants, and Mount Holyoke accepts more than half – compared with a 14% acceptance rate for Amherst. So basically admissions become somewhat more predictable, and depending on the qualifications of the student, it’s very possible to find a woman’s college that is a solid match for a student, but has the equivalent academic caliber of reach schools.
Listen. I understand the advantages of women’s colleges. I just finished paying giant $$$ to my daughters Seven sisters school. At 15 kids should be exploring different avenues, feeling out own their identities. How would she know if strawberry ice cream was her favorite if she never tasted chocolate or vanilla. Too young to take co-Ed schools off the table.
Not too young to visit schools. It’s pretty hard to fit them in senior year as we have discovered and junior year is critical for grades. Look early follow up with visit days in senior year (usually in April). I’d agree with others to look at both female vs coed… A different switch but an example of how things can change-My D would not consider an all women’s college at all (I think the works were no way in hell) but completely changed her mind in senior year. Keep an open mind because kids can really surprise you. I know you said West Coast was far but there are tons of flights. We loved Scripps. It really has so much to offer with the Claremont Colleges all there in one place. Beautiful campus.
First college visit for D was to Barnard, in tenth grade. We were in the city for Thanksgiving so we did it. Why not? It gave her something to think about, and she was able to look at schools the next year/two having that one to compare. She visited Temple U in Philly before junior year too, because she did an academic program there.
If it fits in the family vacation or whatever, I think visiting is great., and the wider variety of colleges/universities/rural/urban/co-ed/etc the better.
Making a final list? Plenty of time for that.
Making sure she’s college ready doesn’t depend on the final list, most selective colleges require the same series of high school courses, more rigor better, higher grades better, some prep for SAT/ACT so that is as high as can be also better.
But in this case, the student’s top choice is Bryn Mawr, which is her mom’s alma mater and which she has visited many times. Presumably if she still feels the same way senior year and if finances aren’t a barrier, she’ll apply E.D.
The parents are looking to broaden her search-- from one women’s college to multiple women’s colleges. Looking at other schools now (at age 15) doesn’t preclude the daughter from also looking into co-ed schools a year or two from now. Since many of the women’s colleges are in a consortium relationship with nearby co-ed schools, it would make sense to visit the other nearby schools as well.
There are some unique benefits that women’s colleges offer – and I think that is as legitimate a criteria for a student to have as anything else. For example, my Barnard-grad daughter would have preferred co-ed, but she was dead set on an urban campus – NY, Boston, Chicago. So why would “must be in a big city” be an acceptable criteria … but single gender is not?
@calmom the op asked for suggestions, “very important to her to be able to study women’s/gender studies.She needs to be in an academically intense community of strong, supportive women. Any suggestions you have are most welcome!”. Finding a supportive community of women, academically intent, with gender studies does not limit choices exclusively to women colleges. -FYI
If she is a fairly strong student, she should be OK with Smith, Wellesley, Barnard, Mount Holyoke in addition to Bryn Mawr. All would offer good single sex education with some differences. Some also offer good merit scholarships (eg Trustees scholarship at Mount Holyoke I think). She might also want to look at former woman’s colleges like Vassar and Sarah Lawrence, as they tend to still have good gender and woman’s studies despite going coed. Sweet Briar would be a bit different being in the South, but was saved at the last minute, and might be worth a look.
Connecticut College
Wheaton in Mass
Goucher in MD
Adelphi in NY
Manhattanville in NY
Skidmore in NY
Wells in NY
Women’s colleges
Also consider Agnes Scott–a wonderful women’s college iwith cross registration with Emory.
Simmons–has some very exciting programs, in Boston
Russell Sage
Hollins
Also: William Smith–the women’s college portion of Hobart and William Smith
I also encourage you to at least tour a few coed schools. It would be pretty easy to do when you visit the women’s colleges: Haverford and Swarthmore while visiting Bryn Mawr, Amherst while visiting Smith and Mt. Holyoke, and then anything in Boston/Cambridge while visiting Wellesley, for example. It might also be good to see a larger school just to confirm that a liberal arts school is the way to go. Maybe see Tufts or MIT or BU while in Boston?
My D actually wasn’t considering women’s colleges at first. I encouraged her to at least look. Bryn Mawr was the first, and she really liked it! She ended up applying to a variety of women’s and coed schools, and she is now a very happy Smithie!
I’m glad she explored some different options. That’s how she found her school. If nothing else, it prevents the possibility of her looking back wondering, what if?
From your description of your daughter, in my opinion she should strongly consider Mount Holyoke. It has always had strong science departments and good connections with medical schools. It has its own post-graduate medical school preparatory course. It also has a strong women’s studies curriculum. It was the first institution of higher education for women and has been strongly feminist since its founding (by a female chemist in 1837).
Just a caveat, what your daughter likes at 15 may bear very little relation to what she likes at 18. I know lots of people who fell in love with a certain college at 15 and wouldn’t even apply by the time they were seniors. There is a lot of growth in that time.
My daughter visited Mount Holyoke for her first college tour days before her junior year of high school and fell in love with it. We ended up visiting about 20 colleges, and when it was all said and done, she is a happy firstie at Mount Holyoke. I think what she likes best is the diversity, and no frats or football. She says she can’t tell the difference between higher and lower income students even thought she knows her school has a lot of both. We were glad we started the college search early, as an unexpected operation for one parent can throw a wrench in the whole process.