Chance my daughter for these schools please

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Note: She is planning to apply to only 12 schools, so we did the NPC and all of the below were fairly affordable. Some will give her full tuition because of NMF. So, please rank them based on safety, match, reach, and dream. We really don’t understand what it means by low or high match/reach, so please explain. Thank you in advance.

Schools: CUBoulder, Colorado State University; University of Denver, Drake, Creighton, Univ of Nebraska Lincoln, Univ of New Mexico, Univ of Oklahoma, Tulane, Rice, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Emory, Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Vassar, Duke, Dartmouth, Univ of Chicago, John Hopkins. Not sure about other Ivy schools yet.

She is a junior IB student, and will have her IB diploma as well as 5 AP (2 from last year with 5s, expected to be 4 or 5 in the other 3).
GPA: UW 4.0; W 4.32 (note: honors classes are not weighted in her school). She has taken all honors, AP, and IB classes so far. Her W GPA will be probably lot higher since all her classes next year will be weighted.
Senior year courses: 4 HL IB courses and 2 APs (Physics and Spanish)
Rank: 1/488 for UW and 2/488 for W.
Race: Half white/half Middle-Eastern (I guess that is white non-URM too).
ACT: 33 (English 36, Math 32, Reading 33, Science 31; writing 10/12) will be retaking this in 2 weeks.
PSAT: 223 (state cut off for NMSF last year was 213); expected to be NMSF
SAT: 2210 (will be retaking this in June). We didn’t know that she needed SAT and SATII until recently. Yes, her school is not that good in giving her information.
SATII: will be taking in May and October (most likely 2).

She is an excellent writer, so I think she will do fine with college essays.

Science research: UCHSC (college summer research/last year; nanotechnology); published one article with the college professor; will be doing more research this coming summer.

Honors and Awards: Expected to be a National Merit Semifinalist/Finalist; National Honor Society; Spanish Honor Society; Certificate of Merit for Outstanding Accomplishment in FBLA (2nd place in the district); Most Outstanding Freshman – English, Social Studies, and Mathematics. Brain Bowl Regional Competition - 1st place; State Competition - 2nd place

Performing Arts; 2015 Colorado Teen Video Challenge Finalist; Denver Center Performing Arts Semifinalist for annual statewide teen playwriting competition; USA Ballroom Dance member – Rocky Mountain USA Dance Competition Teen first place award

Volunteering: Community Service 1st Letter Award (>300 hours)

Museum of Nature and Science Volunteer; Every Creatures Counts Pet Adoption Agency; High School Spanish Tutor;
High School Library Assistant.

Leaderships and clubs: National Honor Society (President); National Spanish Honor Society (Secretary); Youth suicide prevention project student leader; Incoming freshman assistance program club (President;Senior year); Theatre Teching (just freshman year); Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA) (just sophomore year); High School Newspaper Reporter; Webmaster for school newspaper

Sports: Varsity Golf; Basketball (just Freshman year).

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Anyone? This must not be a very active board!

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Only comment on CMC and Pomona. She is a competitive applicant and she has a good chance at either school. Since they are so selective and acceptance rates are low, there is never a guarantee. Good Luck to her.

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Thank you for your post. Yes, we know that she might not get into any of the selective schools. We are still at the very early stage of looking at these colleges. We have narrowed down the list to the above, so we just have to wait and see.

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Regarding both CMC and Pomona, I would definitely recommend that you emphasize the ballroom dance angle! We just came back from Admitted Students Day at Pomona, and in the introductory talk they (either the President or Dean of Admissions, I forget which) mentioned the Claremont Ballroom Dance Company and how successful it is, http://www.pomona.edu/arts/dance/

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Interesting! I didn’t know that! I am pretty sure she doesn’t want to pursue ballroom dancing as a career. She likes sciences (maybe premed) and creative writing/screenwriting as a minor, but we definitely emphasize that in her applications. Thanks for the information.

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Your daughter is an academically strong candidate, so I think at this point anything she can do to stand out from the crowd of other high stats candidates is desirable. I don’t feel knowledgeable enough to talk about others on your list besides CMC and Pomona, but with those I would think that the interest and skill in ballroom dance could potentially make her stand out in the minds of the adcoms. I don’t think it matters whether she intends to major in dance. The point is that they start to remember her. I would try to get to know the local reps for Colorado from Pomona and CMC. Email the reps with intelligent questions about stuff (like maybe the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company), and be sure to meet the rep when he or she comes to your school (or if not your school, your area). If the rep isn’t coming to your school, try to find out if he or she is coming to another school nearby or maybe a college fair. Anyway best of luck. I’m sure your D will end up someplace great…

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CUBoulder
Colorado State University
University of Denver
Drake
Creighton
Univ of Nebraska Lincoln
Univ of New Mexico
Univ of Oklahoma
Tulane

Above this line are safety schools

Below the line are match to low reach schools

Rice
Vanderbilt
Wake Forest
Emory
Pomona
Claremont McKenna
Vassar
Duke
Dartmouth
Univ of Chicago
Johns Hopkins

Obviously your daughter is a strong candidate to any college, and it’s possible one or more of those schools will reject her, but she is more likely than not to be admitted.

My only concern about this list is that there are some seriously different colleges there. You mentioned that your daughter’s school wasn’t too good about giving info on SAT II tests, but I think that lies with you and your daughter. All of the schools clearly have their entrance requirements on their websites. You should become intimately familiar with what those requirements are if she is going to apply. Since you didn’t do that, I wonder if you researched these schools. Why these? Vassar is UBER liberal and then you have more conservative schools on there like Rice and several of the safeties. You have small liberal arts colleges and then large research universities, and you have targeted every area of the country. I’ve never before seen Vassar and Nebraska on someone’s list of top 20. I don’t mean to beat you up here, but your daughter is a legitimate applicant to ANY college in the US (and outside too), so when you get to have your pick a little more (I mean a college somewhere would reject her), you should make sure the one you pick is the best fit.

How to fit:
What to study?
Area of the country
Liberal or conservative?
Small or big?
Liberal arts or research university (with graduate students)?
Food
Dorms
Happiness of students
and on and on

You’re in Colorado it appears, so why no Colorado College?

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Thanks stepay
Your post is very helpful and informative. This is exactly the type of information she needs. I didn’t add Colorado College in the mix because she doesn’t like the block plan of the courses (one course every few weeks). She didn’t want to do School of Mines because of the limited courses (mostly engineering). Colorado colleges are not very generous for instate students. They might give you some limited scholarships, but the final price tags are usually much higher than OOS private colleges. We just picked a few instate schools as safeties.

Univ of Nebraska, NM, and OK are mainly for NMF scholarships. We visited Drake and Creighton tables at a college fair and my daughter liked their school.

So Tulane as a Safety? I thought Tulane rejects a lot of top students! We did NPC for Rice and Tulane and they came out to be the highest priced on the list, so those might come off the list. We didn’t add anymore Californian schools because they are hard to get into and not that financially generous.

We are still researching schools. There are a lot of kids in her school and each counselor has over 200 kids. They are mostly busy with kids with issues, so good students usually don’t get much help. She actually found out that she needed to take the SAT after receiving her PSAT results late in Feb (it was written on the paper!). She actually took the SAT (in March) without looking at the SAT book. No time to prepare! She is very busy these days with IB and AP classes and EC (golf season), and more, so she doesn’t have time to research any schools. That’s why I am doing the majority of work right now.

We will check entrance requirements on each website. We will do most of the research together during summer.

Thank you

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Corinthian, great information. Thanks

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By the way, stepay, I am surprised that you added all those colleges as match/low reach!
Here is my list for her.

Safety: All Colorado colleges
Matches: All other schools (eg, Nebraska, OK) not on other lists
Reaches: Tulane, Rice, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Emory, Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Vassar
Dream: Duke, Dartmouth, Univ of Chicago, Johns Hopkins, and 2 Ivys (not sure which)

I was way off!

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I find the terms safety, match and reach sort of confusing and not that helpful. In particular, I find the term “match” confusing because I don’t think there’s a consistent definition of what it means. Look at the Common Data Set for the schools your D is interested in. In particular, look at C9-C10 of the CDS so you can see where her grades/scores fall. For example, at Pomona her ACT is in the middle 50%. She’s top of her class but the CDS says that 91% of enrollees will be in the top 10% of their classes. You can say she is a “match” in the sense that she fits the characteristics of the kids who get accepted, but still only a fraction of the kids with those stats get in. So again, It’s a matter of standing out in the crowd.

Here’s a link to a running list of acceptance rates for the Class of 2019. https://college-kickstart.com/blog/item/class-of-2019-admission-results. Acceptances rates of course do not tell the whole story. But note that Dartmouth/Vanderbilt/Pomona/CMC all have 10% acceptance rates vs Duke at 9% so hardly different. By comparison Johns Hopkins is 12% and Rice is 15%. So I would put Tulane/Vasser/Emory/Wake Forest in a slightly different category of admission difficulty. But as @stepay noted, the important thing is to learn more about these schools and focus on the ones that really are the best fit.

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Yes, those terms are confusing. I guess I felt that if a college may reject you, then it will become a reach school. Dream means your chances are extremely low, so it will be like a lottery ticket! I thought that she would have a very low chance of being accepted to Duke, Dartmouth, Univ of Chicago, and Johns Hopkins! I think I have been reading a lot of posts with students with perfect applications getting rejected to these schools!

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@lonetreegrad - I realize it’s tough to think of some really good schools as safeties when it’s your own daughter because you are anxious for her, but your daughter has a PERFECT GPA so far, she is going to be a National Merit Semifinalist (that’s crazy good), and she already has an SAT score that is better than 98.8% of those who have taken it along with some very good ECs. Those schools love to have National Merit Semifinalists. Regarding Tulane, the middle 50% for SAT is 1870-2110 meaning that she is well within the top 25% with her SAT score. I can not imagine Tulane rejecting her.

I see with your description of why she is looking at the schools that she is that you did do your research, so sorry for being heavy-handed. I can understand her not liking the Block Plan at Colorado College, but you might want to run the Net Price Calculator for it if you haven’t already. CC was my daughter’s second choice (she will go to Vassar in the fall), and Vassar is giving us a very nice financial aid package even though we aren’t what I would call poor (not even close to it), but according to the NPC, Colorado College’s package would have been even a little bit better for us – all depends on your own personal data of course.

One more little thing to add…if your daughter thinks she might like Vassar, the comparable Ivy League school in terms of personal fit in my opinion would be Brown, not Dartmouth (though I’m not considering courses here). If your daughter thinks that Dartmouth is a pretty good fit for her, then I would say Vassar would not be a good fit.

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Thank you for your reassurance :slight_smile:
Yes, we have done some research. We have visited a few Colorado colleges, but not Colorado College yet. I just mentioned the Block Plan to her and she didn’t seem to like it. We will definitely try to visit it soon. It is only an hour away from our house. It would be nice to have her close.

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Colorado College is an amazing place. I know a woman who went there, and she loved it, and my daughter has a friend who goes there who also loves it. I DO think though that SOME of the appeal of Colorado College is the fact that it’s in Colorado, and if you aren’t from there, it’s kind of a cool place to be for 4 years, so your daughter wouldn’t have that same mystical feel about it in that way.

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Yes, Colorado is a great state. Colorado colleges get a lot of students from other states (eg, CA, TX). Colorado Springs is also a beautiful location.

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Duke and Dartmouth are reaches, so are JHU and Chicago. Good EC’s, grades, and scores though. Oh, and yes, Half Middle Eastern and Half american is not a URM (I’m Half Iranian and Half American myself, and was told by a few peoples (classmates and my GC) that it counts as Caucasian.)

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You can see on the Tulane thread that they did indeed reject a lot of higher stats kids who would use it as a safety, but it is free to apply to (hence the numbers LOL). They know the kids in the higher stats range will have more choices. If she is really interested, make it apparent.

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DU would be an excellent choice if she wants to stay in-state…will likely get high merit award or full ride. I personally know at least 3 Boettcher Scholars that chose DU.