I received an email from Amherst College following the Questbridge match (did not get matched) saying that they’ll waive my fee AND supplements if I do ED. (they won’t care that its late and decisions come out this week). They only sent this email to a select few of QB applicants. I also have a great recommendation from a professor there (for my intended major as well.) Their ED rate is 40% which is super high, I feel like I have a good chance.
BUT its binding, and i’ve never been there and the super small undergrad enrollment (less than 500 kids for freshman year) scares me. I always wanted to go to a mid-sized school.
My dream school is Cornell or Brown, but my worst fear is getting rejected from them AND amherst for regular decisions. my EFC is 0 so I will most likely receive similar financial aid either way. Am i stupid for turning this offer down? This is binding so its a big choice, and I wanna see if I have a chance at my dream schools.
ACT: 32
Asian female
GPA: 4.54 weighted
Rank: top 5% of class
ECs: Co-head of a branch of a worldwide climate change organization, president/founder of a club that is working with my local city council to push for a law for carbon neutrality by 2025, yearly mission trips to haiti, volunteer for my church, frequent speaker/speeches at events and rallies, research program Pioneer Academics where I was selected to do research with an Amherst professor, Questbridge finalist, student council executive representative
Do you guys think I should try for my dream schools? I know my standardized testing is not in the safety range (34+) but It’s still in the middle 50% and I was hoping my extracurriculars can make up for it. Should i be safe and take the offer?
Have you run the Net Price Calculator on the school’s web site to see how much the bottom line cost will be for the school? Do that before you consider ED.
Can you flip your ED to Cornell or Brown? Cornell gives a significant boost to ED candidates. Not as high as Amherst but if Cornell or Brown are the dream, why not see if you can convert your application ED to one of those schools? I would not advise binding ED’ing to a school you aren’t sure about.
My daughter was also not matched from QB this year and received the same email from Amherst, which she deleted. You should never do a binding admission with a school you don’t 100% want to attend. Was Amherst one of your match schools? If not, that’s really telling about how you feel about them. If it was, then in a sense you had already mentally agreed to bind to them, so I would consider it more seriously. My daughter did decide to try ED at one of match schools, but it’s been her number one school all along.
I believe all three would meet full need without loan for lower income. (Amherst does that for everybody.) If you turn down Amherst ED and don’t get into the other two RD, what are your other options? Do you have a pretty sure thing that meets full need, or that does so with no loan for low income? When people want to try for their dream schools, that’s probably fine if there’s a workable backup plan. I would make sure there is.
@cindy341 You did research with an Amherst professor but haven’t visited campus?
How was that research experience? Did it give you a sense of how well you would work with professors there, the type of teaching there and so on?
Re: size, it’s true Amherst is less than 2k students. But there are a LOT of other students around because of the consortium - another 30k students that are out and about in town, in your classes and clubs, at parties, etc.
Even with 2k students it’s hard to imagine running out of people to meet - how many friends can you have?