@ballerina2020 While you certainly don’t need more reaches on your list, Swarthmore/Bryn Mawr might be worth checking out. Reasonable ballet offerings (with the Rock School an hour away by bus if you wanted more of a challenge). Barnard, mentioned above, is strong for dance and would have plenty of access to additional dance opportunities in NYC.
For safer admissions options, I thought about Fordham, although I’m not sure how accessible dance classes would be to non-majors. If you’re open to smaller schools, Dickinson would be a match - LAC in Carlisle PA with connection to CPYB.
One other thing to think about - I am sure that I don’t need to tell you how easy it might be to get drawn into the life of a studio/company if you decide to pursue dance in the broader community. That opens the risk of diluting your residential college experience between a potentially time-consuming activity off campus and other aspects of student life. That may well be the right choice for you, but I thought I’d mention it.
I know what it takes to achieve that level of excellence in dance while also getting top grades in a rigorous program of study. Congratulations and best of luck in your college admissions.
@ballerina2020 Harvard likes extremely talented ballet dancers. The young ladies I met who were accepted there with a ballet “hook” were dancing professionally with major companies when applying. The head of admissions at Harvard seemed very proud when introducing them. Don’t know much about ballet, so don’t know how your level of accomplishment compares, but if it is comparable, it might be a significant boost.
Lookingforward, my work with shoe distributions has been with a non governmental organization, not a school club. I also started the partnership with two seemingly unrelated NGO’s (a ballet non-profit and a welcoming community for refugees). Not sure if that makes any difference. I think the main thing impacting my interest in immigration reform is personal family experiences as one of my family members was undocumented. I also attend a bilingual church where I teach English classes, so I guess that ties into my career aspirations to some extent as well. I do certainly appreciate your critique of not being involved in enough major specific EC’s (my mom holds a similar viewpoint haha).
There’s nothing to lose in viewing your qualifications in multiple lights. The question I told my girls to ask themselves was, “These colleges would want me because…?” That does mean learning what one can about what the targets look for.
Helping with English is nice vol work. Teaching dance is nice. The admit competition for your reaches is fierce, is there a way to add some “oomph?”
Hooks are recruited athlete, URM, child of a major donor or legacy (with caveats.)
My NGO work has been hands on/first person involvement. I guess I was referring to a “spike” as opposed a “hook” in response to tdy123’s comment. I’m not sure if the dance classes being somewhat of an entrepreneurial endeavor that I started at a very young age (8) may add a bit of proverbial “oomph?”
Right. Your spike is dance so you would be likely to have the best chance at schools where they could use your dance experience on campus. Schools want to know how you will contribute to their community. If you’ll spend most of your time outside of class in the nearby city taking ballet class then I think that’s not using your spike to its fullest advantage. Colleges need to fill their dance programs and their dance ECs so you’ll have to convince them that you’ll take part in those on campus. That’s why I think the spike isn’t as much of a spike for some of the schools that can’t offer you high quality dance instruction. If you truly won a national competition like YAGP, then I don’t think most of these schools can keep you dancing at the level you are dancing at.
OMG I absolutely adore you!! I can definitely see you getting into many of these schools! Your EC’s, grades, and test scores are great-- the remaining pieces to your application are your essays and LOR’s. Did you do questbridge? I wish you the best of luck!
You might want to consider Northeastern which has formalized partnerships with Boston Ballet. The two non-profit boards share a number of the same Trustees. With your extraordinary extra-circulars, co-op also seems like a natural fit. They have a very highly ranked International Business major and I think youd really enjoy their Social Enterprise work.
I’m very late but I loved reading this! Your stats, your story etc. It’s nice reading about a fellow pre-professional ballerina especially bc I don’t find many on this site. I’m sure you would get into most of the schools you applied to. What competition did you place in, was it like YAGP or ADC?
??
I wish I would’ve known about it! It seems like a great program!!