Chances at Mount Holyoke, Smith, Wellesley?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Wellesley College
1

<p>Chances at Mount Holyoke, Smith, Wellesley? </p>

<hr>

<p>African American Female
SAT: 1290
ACT: 28
SAT II Writing: 700</p>

<p>GPA: 3.8 my gpa freshman year was only a 3.2 so that brought my gpa down for the next three years. I have a 4.2 so far this year
Ranked in top 25% of Class
Honors Courses: English 9, 10 Physics 12
Advanced Placement Courses: AP Composition, AP Calculus AB, AP Chemistry, AP Literature, AP Government
Journalism 10, 11- Editor of School Newspaper
Three years of Spanish</p>

<p>Work Experience:
Network Operations Center- Systems Administrator- 10</p>

<p>Leadership Accomplishments:
Junior Class Vice President- 11
School Newspaper editorial board/ production class- Sophomore Year, Junior Year, Senior Year
Junior Association for the Advancement of Minorities Publicist
Manager of Junior Class Store- Junior year
Member of Student Government Association
Student Government Leadership Conference at Teamwork Towers- Schwetzigen, Germany 2003
Rape Crisis Volunteers of Cumberland County Teen Forum Attendee- November 2000</p>

<p>Volunteer Activities
Mentor/Teacher’s Aide at Mark Twain Elementary School (Heidelberg, Germany) - Junior Year
Student Tutor
Participant in 7th Annual San Francisco/Bay Area “Making Strides Against Breast Cancer” 5 Mile Walk- October 2004</p>

<p>Athletics
Varsity Softball- Sophomore Year</p>

<p>Extracurricular Activities
Member of HS Booster Club- Junior Year
Member of Student Government Association- SGA- Junior Year
Member of the Junior Association for the Advancement of Minorities- JAAM- Junior Year
Member of the National Honor Society- NHS- Junior, Senior Years
Student Ambassador- Junior Year
Member of the Prom Committee- Junior Year
Bel Canto Women’s Choir- Senior Year
Spanish Honor Society- Junior Year
Member of Exit Club- Non-denominational Christian Organization- Senior Year</p>

<p>Awards
High School “Renaissance Program”- Gold Card Holder (3.5 gpa or above)
Exemplary Achievement in Honors English- 10
Exemplary Achievement in Journalism- 10,11
Academic Letter-9, 10, 11
Exemplary Achievement in the Junior Association for the Advancement of Minorities- 11
United States Army, Europe Scroll of Appreciation for Outstanding Performance- 11</p>

<p>World Travels
Lived in five different US states. Lived in Germany (Heidelberg, Vilseck, Mainz and Landstuhl). Traveled to France, Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland, England</p>

2

<p>Go for Wellesley!! Your chances are great. Only report the ACT score. That is all you will need with all your other awards/ec's. Good luck! My daughter was accepted at all three, and choose Wellesley for several very good reasons. She is extremely happy there......btw, her roommate is from CA!</p>

3

<p>i agree w. previous poster. you're an excellent candidate for any of them. my tip for you is to begin thinking about which one (or two) fits you best. while all 3 offer outstanding teaching and wonderful academic experiences, there is a different character and ambiance on each campus.
are you at lowell hs, by any chance? we're in SF too, our d. got into smith and wellesley last spring. both schools were attractive to her in terms of facilities and resources for science, music performance, studio arts, and other amenities. she decided on smith for its on-campus engineering program vs. wellesley-MIT exchange. two of her friends entered wellesley, one a pre-med, the other a polished classical musician.<br>
good luck.</p>

4

<p>You should have no problems at any of them. Papajaja is correct, they are each great schools, but they are different. Wellesley has the advantage of being close to Boston, but there is no "there, there" where the school actually is. Mount Holyoke is bucolic, and gorgeous, and has the advantage of the 5-college system. Smith abuts up against a happening town.</p>

<p>Smith is by far the most economically diverse of the three, and has the best JYA programs. My d. chose it over Williams, Mount Holyoke, and a bunch of others (she didn't apply to Wellesley) because of its strength in music, foreign languages (especially Italian), and the town. But you can't go wrong with any of them.</p>

5

<p>Echoing others, you should have no problem with admittance at any of the three. My D chose Smith over Wellesley and Barnard. One of her comments that may or may not be relevant to you is that she felt its students were very down to earth. </p>

<p>Mini also has an excellent mini-essay (what else would you call it?) on the greater economic diversity at Smith than the other schools. In fact, Mini, I'd appreciate it if you posted it again. I was telling someone about it the other day and wished that I had had it at hand to cite. Certainly my D has found that diversity to be true.</p>

6

<p>I began this inquiry because I was simply trying to find a way to quantify the experience of my daughter. She visited a number of small liberal arts colleges and, despite similarities in academic programs and resources, admissions policies (at least on paper), and even perceptions of URMs on campus, she felt huge differences in campus “feel”, not all of which were easily attributable to school policies or locations (except as they impacted who attended.) </p>

<p>It was simpler for me to see the difference. Having attended Williams back in the Paleozoic Era, but coming from a far lower economic bracket than the overwhelming majority of students, I remember the differences in the way many students perceived the world, (what I think of as their inner sense of “Entitlement”), and their actual experience of it: the kinds of cars they drove (and whether they had cars at all), the clothes they wore, the discretionary income they had on campus, the sports they participated in, where they went for winter and spring break, the kinds of summer jobs they had (and whether they carried an on-campus job at all), how well traveled they were, whether they were fluent in other languages, whether they assumed they could afford expensive professional schools after college. There were also differences in alcohol and drug use (theirs tended to be higher, but no fixed rule), and academic preparation (theirs tended to be better, but no fixed rule.) As we visited campuses, I was still able to perceive these differences (and better able to describe them than I could then.) I received a GREAT education at Williams, for which I remain thankful to this day, but I can’t make believe that I didn’t feel those differences while I was there.</p>

<p>So I wondered whether these differences could be quantified or indexed. And they can, of course. The first difference is whether students attended private schools. Now of course there are many kinds of private schools: elite boarding schools, religious day schools, private academies (especially in the South, many of them initially set up to avoid integration, but having long outlived that purpose, and offering excellent educations). But what they all have in common is that (for the vast majority of students) families pay for them. It is a big commitment.</p>

<p>The second difference is whether students received any need-based assistance (grants or loans) from the institution. Today, there is often a vast difference in experience between a student coming from a family that can afford $168k for four years of college education, and a student coming from the average American family, income $60k, with total assets of around $55k (plus house, if they have one.) To imagine that this wouldn’t find expression in student attitudes would be strange. Students are not to blame for them (hey, there’s nothing necessarily worth blaming!) – all I am trying to do is find a way to quantify experience.)</p>

<p>So, for what it’s worth:</p>

<p>ENTITLEMENT INDEX AMONG 50 “TOP” (according to USNWR) LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES</p>

<p>The first number represents the percentage of students who were admitted from private schools. The second number represents the percentage of students who do not receive need-based financial aid from the institution. The final number is the “Entitlement” (“preppy”) Index score. Numbers are taken from the most recent Princeton Review.</p>

<ol>
<li> Davidson 52/67 119</li>
<li> Washington and Lee 40/73 113</li>
<li> Trinity 57/53 119</li>
<li> Bates 48/60 108</li>
<li> Middlebury 45/60 105</li>
<li> Kenyon 46/59 105</li>
<li> Williams 46/58 104</li>
<li> Univ. of the South 48/55 103</li>
<li> Connecticut 48/54 102</li>
<li>Colby 40/60 100</li>
<li>Skidmore 40/58 98</li>
<li>Bowdoin 43/55 98</li>
<li>Furman 39/57 96</li>
<li>Haverford 39/57 96</li>
<li>Amherst 44/52 96</li>
<li>Wesleyan 44/52 96</li>
<li>Barnard 47/48 95</li>
<li>Swarthmore 40/51 91</li>
<li>Pomona 40/49 89</li>
<li>Whitman 30/58 88</li>
<li>Scripps 37/51 88</li>
<li>Franklin & Marshall 34/53 87</li>
<li>Colgate 30/56 86</li>
<li>Colorado 30/55 85</li>
<li>Dickinson 38/47 85</li>
<li>Sarah Lawrence 31/51 82</li>
<li>Hamilton 40/42 82</li>
<li>Vassar 34/47 81</li>
<li>Wellesley 37/43 80</li>
<li>Denison 30/49 79</li>
<li>Lafayette 32/46 76</li>
<li>Oberlin 34/42 76</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr 38/38 76</li>
<li>Bucknell 26/49 75</li>
<li>Union 27/48 75</li>
<li>Gettysburg 30/44 74</li>
<li>Claremont-McKenna 27/44 71</li>
<li>Carleton 25/45 71</li>
<li>Smith 26/44 70</li>
<li>Occidental 30/39 69</li>
<li>Bard 30/38 68</li>
<li>Mount Holyoke 38/30 68</li>
<li>Agnes Scott 30/36 66</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 20/45 65</li>
<li>Macalester 34/31 65</li>
<li>Depauw 17/42 59</li>
<li>Centre 21/36 57</li>
<li>Grinnell 13/40 53</li>
<li>Wabash 8/30 38</li>
</ol>

<p>Incomplete data from Holy Cross and Rhodes. Tie-breaker is percentage of students who do not received need-based aid.</p>

<p>If you’ve visited a lot of these campuses, you’d likely not find many surprises in this data. The only clear generalizations to be made are that, on the whole, midwestern schools do not seem attractive to private school students (or they simply aren’t accepted – which I find unlikely), and southern schools (with the exception of Agnes Scott) offer (or need to offer) significantly less than average in terms of need-based aid. One caveat that must be attached to the data is that some schools (some that I know of for sure are Bard, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Macalester) offer merit-based aid to significant portions of their entering class (as much as 10%) – some of those students, upon receiving the merit aid award, no longer qualify for need-based aid, and hence wouldn’t appear in this picture.</p>

<p>This data picture as always is incomplete. While it reflects “entitlement” on the campus as above, it does not reflect the impact on campus feel of low-income students. A school could offer lots of rather small “need-based” grants to attract students away from the competition, without really changing the make up or feel of the campus. (Macalester has a reputation for doing this – whether it is just or not, I have no idea.) One way to correct for that is to subtract the percentage of students on Pell Grants (with family incomes below 35% of the national average) from the total. All of a sudden, the extremes become more extreme, and the picture (I believe) more clear.</p>

<p>Numbers Represent the “Entitlement” Index minus Pell Grant Shares:</p>

<ol>
<li> Davidson 119-6 113</li>
<li> Washington and Lee 113-3 110</li>
<li> Trinity 119-13 106</li>
<li> Bates 108-9 99</li>
<li> Middlebury 105-8 97</li>
<li> Kenyon 105-8 97</li>
<li> Williams 104-9 95</li>
<li> Colby 100-7 93</li>
<li> Connecticut 102-11 91</li>
<li>Univ. of the South 103-13 90</li>
<li>Bowdoin 98-10 88</li>
<li>Furman 96-9 87</li>
<li>Skidmore 98-13 85</li>
<li>Haverford 96-13 83</li>
<li>Wesleyan 96-14 82</li>
<li>Amherst 96-16 80</li>
<li>Whitman 88-9 79</li>
<li>Swarthmore 91-13 78</li>
<li>Franklin & Marshall 87-9 78</li>
<li>Barnard 95-18 77</li>
<li>Pomona 89-12 77</li>
<li>Colgate 86-10 76</li>
<li>Scripps 88-14 74</li>
<li>Dickinson 85-12 73</li>
<li>Sarah Lawrence 82-12 70</li>
<li>Vassar 81-12 69</li>
<li>Colorado 85-17 68</li>
<li>Lafayette 76-8 68</li>
<li>Hamilton 82-15 67</li>
<li>Denison 79-12 67</li>
<li>Wellesley 80-16 64</li>
<li>Bucknell 75-12 63</li>
<li>Gettysburg 74-12 62</li>
<li>Bryn Mawr 76-15 61</li>
<li>Carleton 71-10 61</li>
<li>Union 75-15 60</li>
<li>Oberlin 76-17 59</li>
<li>Claremont-McKenna 71-15 56</li>
<li>Harvey Mudd 65-12 53</li>
<li>Macalester 65-15 50</li>
<li>Bard 68-20 48</li>
<li>Mount Holyoke 68-21 47</li>
<li>Depauw 59-13 46</li>
<li>Smith 70-24 46</li>
<li>Occidental 69-27 42</li>
<li>Agnes Scott 66-26 40</li>
<li>Grinnell 53-13 40</li>
<li>Centre 57-18 39</li>
<li>Wabash 38-19 19</li>
</ol>

<p>Make of the data what you will. It is just data. I may get around to the national universities later.</p>

7

<p>Mini, thank you. You had another post about how colleges manage to hit the same percentages of financial aid year after year to the decimal point. I'd like to collect the pair together...so would you pretty please post that one as well? One of the more soundly argued provocative reads I've seen on CC it was.</p>

8

<p>I didn't do a statistical run of those - the numbers I had were the percentage of Pell Grant recipients (low-income students). However, if you ran through each set of Princeton Reviews or the Common Data Sets for each school, you'd find that the percentages of those receiving financial aid at supposedly need-blind schools doesn't vary much from year to year.</p>