<p>Is her GPA weighted or unweighted? </p>
<p>The U of Rochester is associated with Eastman and gives merit money, inlcuding some especially for musicians. </p>
<p>I think Lawrence and St. Olaf are good suggestions, also. Better to spread things around a bit and have more choices.</p>
<p>I would suggest looking at some of the better test-optional schools such as Mount Holyoke, Smith, Bates, and Bowdoin. I believe that MHC and Smith give merit money, and the consortium adds to their appeal.</p>
<p>I suggested ED for WashU as a better chance of admission. I do not know that much about WashU except that I thought they heavily weigh ED. None of my kids had much interest in this school but had many friends who did. All of whom were weightlisted and were very close to the ACT/GPA of the OP. None were legacy s but many had visited and shown interest. </p>
<p>I was speaking from personal experience. My kids were close to the stats of the OP. We had a tough time finding matches. Everything that was a match also had a low rate of acceptance and therefore I never felt comfortable calling them a true match. But that was just my experience and my kids had different majors and we needed aid so our circumstances were different than many others.</p>
<p>Though I have no idea what schools are strong for music majors, there are plenty of schools that could be considered matches for someone in that range. Here are a few that I’m familiar with: Oxford College of Emory, Whitman, Occidental, Reed, UC Davis, Macalaster, CWRU, Brandeis, Furman, and Rhodes. Those schools, although all accept less than 50% of applicants do not reject such a low percent that they’re “reaches for everyone”. The only time a higher stats, higher income student doesn’t have a match school is when the student has a 34+ ACT with a correspondingly high GPA.</p>
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I don’t follow why multiple posters have suggested test-optional schools. That would place more emphasis on GPA, which appears to be a bit weaker than the test scores. For example, the post above mentioned Reed. Among the Reed freshman class, the average ACT is 31, the same as the OP’s superscore. However, the average GPA is 3.9. Why would you want to remove the average ACT score and instead focus on the below average GPA (for Reed)?</p>
<p>If the OP wants to look out of the geographic area…I would suggest Connecticut College (we know a kid who played her bassoon there) and Skidmore. Both have orchestras open to all majors.</p>
<p>“I don’t follow why multiple posters have suggested test-optional schools”</p>
<p>My son is at a test optional NESCAC school and he sure as heck submitted his score!</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions-- and the private message, which I can’t answer because I am not up to the required number of posts to be able to reply to those.</p>
<p>I like the idea of the SAT. That had never occurred to me but it makes a lot of sense!And the overall tone of these replies is reassuring, which helps too. </p>
<p>We will qualify for financial aid at some of the schools but I’m hesitant to count on that-- don’t want to take out loans and know that amount we receive can vary each year if our income shifts slightly. I had always just assumed she would get merit aid at some places and now am doubting that with most the schools she is favoring. And I am questioning whether she’ll even get accepted. She was over-committed junior year and her grades slipped slightly (GPA is unweighted), though her list of AP classes and extracurriculars blossomed! And then she has done well on the ACT but not as well as we anticipated. So we’re suddenly in a different spot than we thought we’d be and wondering if we need to target different schools.</p>
<p>We did visit several of the mentioned schools and I think I’ll encourage her to reconsider St. Olaf. Their music scholarships are quite good, the school is a bit larger than some of the other LACs we looked at, and it might be good to have another “match” in our group. She liked that school but didn’t like the location. Wants a smallish university (not as thrilled with the LACs as her dad and I are) in a bigger city, not east coast, with good music opportunities for non-music (or dual) majors. They’re harder to find than you’d think!</p>
<p>Again, I appreciate the feedback and suggestions you’ve made-- it’s not really something parents talk about face-to-face.</p>
<p>I know a couple of musicians who were not music majors and loved their time at Tulane, saying there were lots of musical opportunities there. It’s also a school that gives out a fair amount of merit money, although I don’t know what the stats are for merit. I agree that the gpa is a bit low. How strong is this magnet? Where are kids with her gpa/ class rank accepted?</p>
<p>I agree…the hardest criteria for my daughter was finding that college where she could play in the school orchestra (oboe) and take private lessons without being a music major.</p>
<p>The family needs to figure out if they want to be full pay at a school like Rice or WashU or get merit at lower ranking schools. </p>
<p>Merit scholarships aren’t usually based on superscores. merit is usually for single sitting scores.</p>
<p>Also…at test optional schools, usually test scores ARE used for merit consideration.</p>
<p>Very unlikely the student would get merit from schools like Rice or WashU because her stats aren’t in the upper 25%. Those schools target their merit to get kids who’d otherwise go to ivies. That’s not the case with this student. Her stats are good, but they’re not merit worthy at top schools because her stats are very average (or even low) for these schools. </p>
<p>llbrenner…what is your situation? How much will you pay each year? How badly do you want merit? Are you ok with being full pay? </p>
<p>If you want merit, you need your D to apply to the schools where her ACT 30 is WELL-WITHIN the upper quartile for the school. So, the school’s upper quartile would be something like ACT 28+</p>
<p>Yes, take the SAT and really practice the Math and CR, because usually that’s what merit is based on.</p>
<p>An unweighted 3.75 is a strong A-, isn’t it? How is this low in a challenging curriculum with honors and AP classes? In my S’s HS class there were only two kids with a straight A average.</p>
<p>I guess it depends whether it means almost all As ans A-s, or a lot of B+s…</p>
<p>Seems like our HS did not practice grade inflation!</p>
<p>M2CK, can you cite something that indicates that most non automatic merit awards are based on a single score rather than the super score? When I applied to colleges, my GPA was on the low end for all but a few schools, but my super scored SAT put me in the top 75% for most of the schools where I received substantial (eg $20,000 + per year) merit awards. However, if schools just considered my single score, my SAT would have placed me smack dab in the middle of the enrolled students stats (actually a bit lower when my GPA was factored in). </p>
<p>Btw OP, I had a 30 ACT and got good merit from a number of institutions, enough at many places to bring the cost to below that of a UC. University of Puget Sound was particularly generous.</p>
<p>WUSTL really likes to see demonstrated interest. Definitely go for the visit.</p>
<p>This is a low score? Really? My d’s were much, much, much lower (and declined rather than improved when she took the tests multiple times), it made no difference whether it was SAT or ACT, had a lower GPA, and got into every school she applied to except one. And she would have been happy at any of them, and we could afford all of them. (She got into and attended her first choice and graduated in three years at the top of her class.) </p>
<p>As long as she has a safety that she loves and that you can afford, everything else is gravy.</p>
<p>whenhen…I wasn’t isolating “non automatic”. Non automatic awards can be based on anything…scores, ECs, diversity, whatever.</p>
<p>Mini…I don’t think anyone was suggesting that the score was low. It’s very good. I think the mom is just concerned because for schools like WashU and Rice, the ACT score is lowish. As you know, it’s gotten crazy at top schools where the top quartile can have 2350+ and 35+ ACTs.</p>
<p>31 may be top 3%, but do any schools actually superscore the ACT? The 31 score is equivalent to a 1380 M +CR - which is a fine score, but certainly is not in the range where you can heave a sigh of relief and know that the score won’t hold you back. I’m not as familiar with how the ACT is interpreted, but I know that I would have been happier with my younger son’s scores if he’d managed to get his math over 700. I think it’s realistic to realize that while the score is good enough to get in, it’s also iffy enough that on the wrong day with the wrong reader, it could be deemed not quite good enough.</p>
<p>Ok, but can you cite something which indicates that most merit awards are based on an individual sitting, especially for the SAT? The Common App only asks for the best scores in each category of the SAT, not for each sitting (if I remember correctly). I agree that most schools don’t super score the ACT, but I thought that with the notable exceptions of the UCs and Georgetown, most colleges only looked at the best scores from each SAT section regardless of when the particular test was taken. </p>
<p>Fwiw, I didn’t have any musical gift, athletic talent, or really any significant hook when I applied. That’s why I assume the merit awards were probably given because of my super scored SAT.</p>
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<p>A few schools do superscore the ACT, but most don’t. There’s a technical reason for this. With an SAT score report, you can report as many sittings as you want for one price. With the ACT, you need to pay for a separate score report for each sitting. Most schools don’t want to give an income-based advantage to applicants who can afford to submit multiple ACT scores, so they just take the highest single sitting. Whether they then account for this in admissions by treating a slightly lower single-sitting ACT score as the equivalent of a higher superscored SAT, I don’t know.</p>
<p>I agree with mathmom that a 31 on the ACT, while an excellent score, does not make the applicant a strong candidate for schools like WUSTL and Rice. WUSTL’s middle 50% ACT scores are 32-34. Rice’s are a bit lower, 30-34, but even that puts the applicant in the third quartile. Apply, but these are pretty high reaches.</p>
<p>Completely agree with the suggestion to try the SAT. My D2’s SAT CR+M was the equivalent of 2 ACT points higher than her highest ACT score. For some people it’s the opposite, for others they come out about the same; you just don’t know until you try. My daughters report the ACT places more of a premium on know-how and speed, and the SAT more of a premium on logic, cleverness in problem-solving, and spotting of trick answers, but YMMV.</p>
<p>Oberlin is an excellent suggestion. Their Conservatory is first-rate but music opportunities are also plentiful for students in the College. Middle 50% ACT scores are 28-32, average ACT 30, average GPA 3.6. The OP’s D would be statistically well into the upper half of the class there. They do give some merit aid, not sure this applicant’s stats would bring home the bacon but it’s well worth a shot.</p>
<p>Has she considered Smith and Mount Holyoke (both SAT optional) and merit $ (I understand that she does not want east coast, but when you are looking for money, you have to be willing to cast a very, very wide net).</p>
<p>Will Smith and MHC award merit w/o submitting scores? I haven’t seen many test optional schools that award merit w/o requiring score submittal. Grade alone make it too hard for schools to determine who should get merit since so many kids have high GPAs these days and many schools have grade inflation. Test scores help separate the men from the boys.</p>
<p>Whenhen…the same schools that will superscore for admissions may not superscore for scholarships. Just because the common app asks for best scores, doesn’t mean that scholarship offices are using that. </p>
<p>And, just as there is a perceived advantage for wealthier kids to be able to afford to send multiple ACT scores, there’s a perception that wealthier kids can take more exams, period.</p>