Middlebury
Vassar (open curriculum)
Hamilton (open curriculum)
Bates
Grinnell (open curriculum)
Skidmore
Connecticut College
Safety options: Clark University, Wheaton (MA), Muhlenberg
Don’t be fooled into thinking Bowdoin is easier to get into than Williams. This past year, Bowdoin had the lower acceptance rate.
not to be (too) biased, but i definitely recommend grinnell, haha. williams is located in a town smaller than grinnell. it’s around an hour from both des moines and iowa city, so although they aren’t the most “hopping” cities, you can still get a taste of life outside of just small town grinnell. grinnell also offers merit scholarships. most of the “higher tier” liberal arts colleges do except carleton (if you’re in need of that). there are a lot of great things that pushed me to ED to grinnell (financial aid is one of them), so if you ever need a cheerleader for grinnell, don’t hesitate to send me a message!
p.s. bates, amherst, conn, hamilton, macalester, kenyon, and vassar are all great suggestions
p.p.s. grinnell’s acceptance rate for the class of 2022 was a little bit less than 23% (less than vassar’s, conn’s, mac’s, and kenyon’s), which is a pretty significant decrease from the 29% acceptance rate just a year earlier, so don’t let it fool you! wishing you and your daughter the best of luck. x
I second or maybe by now third the Grinnell College suggestion.They gave D18 an early write acceptance which was a nice surprise and paired it with the punch of a very generous merit scholarship and study abroad scholarship. I have to say, it was the BEST way to start the waiting to hear back season! My daughter ultimately chose Amherst College, but I will always be a Grinnell fan!
OK, I get it! Grinnell is now officially added to the short short list! 
I would also suggest Reed. Similar students to those attracted to Oberlin and Grinnell - although more strict course distribution requirements
I agree with the suggestions other posters have given. Take a look at Bard. Their approach is novel, and it’s a very intellectual place. To the extent that there are requirements, there are interesting and supportive ways to approach them. It is not known for great aid, though.
Yes, my daughter visited Reed a couple months ago. We live about 3 hours away by car. She really liked the environment there. The course distribution requirements were the biggest negative, but she got a copy of their course catalog, so she’s going to look through it and see what classes she might take to fill those requirements. If it’s all stuff she’d want to take anyway, it won’t be much of an issue. She just doesn’t want to be in a situation where she feels like she’s wasting one of the classes she can take in college just to satisfy an arbitrary requirement. After all, if you assume 4 class/semester, you only get 32 classes in your college career. They should all count.
I haven’t really looked into Bard much though I am familiar with the name. I’ll look into it for sure!
She seems like a strong merit candidate for Scripps. (Maximum would be half-tuition.) There are distribution requirements but most of them can land in the “things you would want to take anyway” bucket unless your interests are very narrow. The required humanities core - one class per semester for the first three semesters - might or might not be above the “I’d take it even if I didn’t have to” line, depending on whether you get a professor/theme you like. Lots of social action stuff going on.
Is your daughter also looking at other Claremont colleges? Pitzer might be a good fit too. Neither of my daughters liked Pitzer based on “prospie” presentations, but now that my younger daughter is at Scripps, she feels like if she had it all to do over again she would enjoy being a Pitzer student. (Passing up the Scripps merit money to move her two blocks to the east isn’t necessarily an alternate universe I’d sign up for, lol, but just fwiw!)
Carleton also seems like a potentially good fit. And I wonder if she might like William & Mary?
Have you considered Haverford?
My daughter just graduated from Haverford. Classics Major-pre-med minor. She loved the school and made good use of the close ties between Haverford and Bryn Mawr especially during her senior year and with her Classics senior thesis
Brown, Hamilton, and Wesleyan all have open curriculums.
Also, since she doesn’t mind being outside of big-city proximity, Whitman would be a great school to look at more closely. It’s intellectual and rigorous but not a pressure cooker. Like Grinnell, it loses a lot of potential applicants to the “not close enough to a city” filter and thus is less competitive than it would otherwise be for the quality of the education and undergrad experience. Good merit aid potential. Walla Walla is reportedly a nice town. (Neither of my kids wanted to visit, see comment re: urban-proximity filter!) I’d say it’s one of the most intellectual of the CTCL schools (after Reed which is really an outlier on that list and probably does qualify as a pressure cooker).
We actually visited Scripps, and my daughter really liked it. I’m curious - what makes you think she’d be a strong merit candidate? Are there any stats out there that indicate what the cutoffs for merit are at different schools? At this point, we’re more worried about her just getting in - any merit aid would be welcome icing on the cake!
We also checked out Claremont McKenna. It was hard to evaluate, since the weather was uncharacteristically terrible. It was pouring rain, and we were just trying to rush through the tour as quickly as possible. I do remember they talked a lot about sports, so that was kind of a negative as my daughter is about the least athletic person since, well, maybe me. 
Pitzer sounded interesting. I imagine it’s like Oberlin but in California.
Pomona was the one that sounded most ideal - kind of a learning for the sake of learning type of place. But I think the probability of getting in would be quite low. Probably the hardest to get into of all of the LACs?
Yes, we actually toured it and really liked it - especially the attitude toward the honor code and the senior year research thesis. They’re also making a lot of investment in the buildings. There was a ton of construction going on during our tour, which must suck for current students, but would be great for my daughter since it’ll all be done by the time she would get there.
Thanks. We toured - and liked - Wesleyan, so that is definitely on the short list. I probably should have listed that at some point. About the only thing I know about Hamilton is its open curriculum, so I may need to see how it’s different from any other similar LACs. Brown is also probably the only large university that she’d be interested in, but I’m guessing it’s about as hard to get into as Pomona. Worth applying to for sure, but highly unlikely. (Or am I being overly pessimistic?) I think if she only applies to one reach, at this point it’d be Bowdoin. 2 would be Bowdoin and maybe Williams. Then it goes Brown, Pomona, Amherst… But her - and my - mind changes on this nearly daily.
My daughter got 34k merit from Oberlin this past cycle. We thought my D would be a strong merit candidate at Scripps but she was a victim of yield protection I think…(we are West Coasters) she was waitlisted with 13 APs 4.0 high SATS so just be aware not a safety or merit absolute for anyone even with high stats. Bummer because she loved the school. I’d agree with some of the other recommendations. Loved Grinnell, Whitman and you should check out Carleton (no merit though). Great merit to be had at Mt Holyoke too. They give out a few full tuition scholarships.
Hamilton’s key distinction originates from its history of once having been two colleges: one classically traditional, one designed to be innovative. Curricularly, architecturally, spatially and culturally, elements of this legacy persist in and enhance the current school. Hamilton’s Adirondack area location might serve as a further distinction for students who seek outdoor experiences.
@Veryapparent , Scripps was in a tight spot this year because of last year’s over-large class, so they accepted much fewer and made a lot of waitlist offers. I know several highly qualified students who were waitlisted, so it may indeed be yield protection - they may have figured that those who still wanted Scripps after receiving their other acceptances would stay on the waitlist and they could accept them then. I know they did end up drawing from the waitlist (though I have NO idea whether they gave merit to any WL students??) - they were just tightly controlling the class size, hence the precipitous drop in acceptance rate. It was kind of a brutal year because of the extremely narrow class-size target (not enough housing to overshoot). Did your d accept a waitlist spot, or just move on?
@dla26 , merit at Scripps is hard to predict - my sense is that the essays are a big factor. I too was not confident that my daughter would get in at all, and then she got in with significant merit. (But this was in '17, a much more forgiving year than '18.) She hadn’t even visited or interviewed, which I’d thought might sink her whole application, but for whatever reason she got an offer that was a game-changer for her decision process. Your daughter’s ACT is farther above the curve for Scripps than my d’s was, and her weighted GPA is similar. (My d’s UW was a little higher but she had a lot of unweighted music electives diluting her AP’s.) All I can really say is that merit is possible with those stats if her application resonates, but the key to that resonance is a little mysterious, so… hard to say!
CMC is a hard school to characterize! So much of its image seems to be based on the guy-culture there, and yet there are just as many women, and the women seem quite happy. I wonder if a lot of the athletic emphasis on the tour comes from their pride in the new-ish, huge, and admittedly stunning athletic facility. My gut sense is that a gender-fluid student might feel more at home at Pitzer or Scripps (or Pomona) than at CMC, but that’s just one person’s admittedly-vague impression.
Yes, Pomona is the toughest admit. And zero merit aid. Great school, though!
Pitzer - you may be right about Oberlin in CA… only without the music emphasis. My daughter was in choir this year, and Pitzer was the least-represented of the four schools (Mudd/CMC/Pitzer/Scripps - Pomona has its own music ensembles, although students from the other schools can audition for those too.) My daughter likes the “dorm culture” at Pitzer better than Scripps (which she feels isn’t lively enough) or CMC (which she’s pretty sure is TOO lively). Her Goldilocks opinion is that dorm life at Pitzer is “just right” - plus, she loves succulents… and the vibe at Pitzer in general. And she has now declared a major that’s based at Pitzer, with a Pitzer advisor. So she seems to feel a little bit that she should have been a Pitzer student… but when she was applying, nothing about Pitzer particularly caught her eye. And anyway, I think the max merit at Pitzer is 5K/year, so… no regrets on my end!
She did not take spot on waitlist. They do not give anyone merit from WL. Ended up with full tuition at Mt Holyoke so in the end was a no brainer. But dang what a beautiful campus and so convenient for us west coasters. It was her only WL with 17 applications.
Well, @Veryapparent , sorry the bad admissions year at Scripps broke your D’s winning streak, but congrats on full tuition at MHC!! Even best-case, Scripps would have fallen six figures short of that over four years. And with no merit at all allocated to WL students… uh, nope! Hello, New England!!
The great thing about any of the Claremont Colleges is that you’re among 5 excellent schools, all right next to each other. Students can, and often do, take classes outside their home school. In fact, it’s encouraged. And the social life, while being distinct at each school, is also “joint” and cooperative. By that I mean that students go to parties at the other 5C colleges all the time. In fact, admission to any 5C student is required for a sanctioned event.
It’s too bad the weather was poor when you toured CMC. It’s a lovely campus and right in the middle of the colleges. CMC does have more of a athletic focus, but that’s just because a higher percentage (still low, mind you) of students play on a varsity or club CMS team. And all the athletic facilities are located on CMC’s campus, for ease of access. But the student athletes are all students first. They may have a preference in admissions, but it’s slight. Athletes typically perform the same as non-athletes academically and on graduate school entrance exams.
Scripps is a great place and an excellent school. I don’t know of anyone who goes there or went there who didn’t love it. Same goes for Pitzer, CMC, and Harvey Mudd. Ok, Pomona too. No matter where you are, you’ll get a professor who is there to teach first. Office hours are plentiful and the professors are open and accessible.
Very cool! I’d never heard that before. I might need to look into Hamilton a bit more then!
To be honest, we were pretty surprised by her ACT score. On the practice tests, she usually got around a 32 or 33, and her SAT was about 1470 or something. I guess she was on a hot streak that day! 
Since you mention APs, I’m a little concerned that schools may consider her course selection a bit on the light side. She will have taken 9 APs before graduating, but 4 of those will be in her senior year. (She was able to take 1 as a freshman and 1 as a sophomore. And 1 of her APs this year was only 1-semester.) Her school offers 17 AP classes, so she definitely didn’t max out her schedule. In addition, one might argue that she avoided the toughest APs. For science, in particular, she took AP Environmental Science, but not AP Bio, Chem or Physics. (She was also took some non-AP science classes when she could have taken one of the harder AP classes.) There was also a path whereby she could have taken Calc AB and Calc BC (or Calc AB and AP Stats) but she took a slightly easier path and will only take Calc AB. Last but probably the most worrisome is that she only had 1 year of a foreign language. It was at the AP level (she took AP Japanese as a freshman) and I’m concerned schools will think she should have taken another language from sophomore year. I think the argument she’s going to make is that she studied Japanese at a special school on Saturdays from kindergarten to 6th grade, so just because she didn’t do it in high school doesn’t mean that it wasn’t earned. We’ll see…