A 17 year old doesn’t even know what the choices are in most cases. Just saying… my youngest ended up at a school that I suggested, doubt it would have made her list otherwise. She is very happy there, and the decision was definitely hers in the end. There is nothing wrong with parents suggesting a few visits to different types of schools just to cover the bases. You would hate to have her decide during senior year that she wished she had looked at LACs or places on the West Coast or whatever. I also think she should visit a women’s college – my kids didn’t think they were interested until they actually visited one. Both ended up applying to and getting accepted to one, although for various reasons they made other choices. Hopefully she isn’t so much “the boss” of her parents that you can’t suggest that at least initial visits to different kinds of colleges are in order. I assume you are paying, after all. You are laughing about her attitude, but I find it kind of appalling.
She’s too good a student for NYU. In my opinion, which some will disagree with.
How about Georgetown? Washington, DC is a legitimate city. And I would definitely suggest that she look at UChicago. It has non-binding Early Action, which can mean that the applicant may have an acceptance to a highly desirable school in hand before Christmas, and still have until May 1 to make a final decision.
It will be interesting to see how she likes NYU v Columbia- very different places! Good trains from NYC to Boston will be handy.
It can’t hurt to at least consider a few schools outside the NE or big cities, if they meet most of her other criteria. My daughter was adamant about going to a school in a warm climate (like she’s accustomed to), and initially refused to consider anything else. She wound up choosing a school where it was 19 degrees today with a couple feet of snow, and she LOVES it there.
I would get her to come up with a few that she likes, not just poo poo your list, she needs to be invested in it. The pint to visit different schools is not to force her to go to it, but to become educated about what people like about different qualities in a college and what she might like and want to find in another place. But if I had a kid that told me she wouldn’t get out of the car if I took her someplace I would be thinking that I had a bigger problem.
But did you know that you can get free college advising from Brown Alumni Services if she is a legacy? Not just for applying to Brown but for all colleges. Plus I bet they have some very interesting info to share about applying to Brown. I do hear that legacies have a 30 pct admit rate.
http://alumni.brown.edu/services/advise/
I think it is very important that she have a couple of safeties she really likes, since the top schools are tricky and you don’t want a shutout.
I would encourage two things. First focus on picking a couple of safety schools she likes and will be happy,eager, to attend. This is probably the hardest part of the college list to do, especially for high stat students because they tend to limit themselves to the single/teen digit acceptance schools.
Second, have her think outside the box. In your daughter’s case, the Northeast. She really has limited herself to New York at this point. She has eliminated Philly. Will she say Boston is too close to home? Broaden her scope by going to Stanford, UChicago, Berkeley (doesn’t sound like her, but who knows), UCLA, and Tulane, WUSL. Have her visit a college town, say Charlottesville or Chapel Hill or Ann Arbor.
OP- I know lots of kids like your D.
I think you or the GC has to approach her search with the following reality- she will either get into Harvard/Columbia/MIT or she won’t. (meaning one of the “near Boston or in NY options among my top choices”). If she gets in- great, problem solved. If she doesn’t, then she needs to be comfortable knowing that she has traded off a “Harvard/Columbia type experience”, i.e. U Chicago, JHU (fantastic writing program by the way), Penn, Wash U, etc. in order to satisfy her geographic requirements. And if she’s happy with that- great. You’ve got BC, Fordham, NYU as your backup plan. You as a parent may not be so happy paying the NYU bill (paying Harvard prices for an undergrad college which in many ways does not provide the value of a Harvard education- and cost of living in NYC bound to be much higher than having her in Cambridge) but that’s neither here or there unless you really care about “educational value”. We did- our kids were all full pay, privates, but their backups were much less costly options since we were unwilling to pay Top tier prices for a second tier experience.
If she doesn’t want to be at Fordham or Brandeis or any one of a bunch of fine schools which are easier admits (didn’t get into one of her top choices and unwilling to look outside her geography) then you’ve got a problem.
In my own neck of the Northeast, I’ve seen the kids who in previous “generations” wouldn’t have gone further south than Princeton have to venture forth to explore UVA, Wash U, Rice, Davidson, Vanderbilt, and a bunch of other very fine institutions. And many of them are thrilled- due to the HS they come from, their class is clogged with faculty kids from either the NY universities or the Boston universities, and they know that not everyone is going to get admitted to their first or second choice. And all of a sudden, their geography becomes advantageous and not a problem.
So you’ve got some work to do.
And you need to unpack what she means by “big city”. She’s a teenager. For some kids, that means that they cannot conceive of a smaller place that has a vibrant arts scene (so a weekend in Burlington Vermont would cure that). For some, it’s code word for 'need good LGBT support" which of course is not limited to big cities. And for some, they just don’t realize that folks in medium sized cities or suburbs also attend concerts and poetry slams and galleries and eat exotic ethnic foods at fun restaurants.
From my oldest D’s experience, I see nothing wrong with picking a few areas such as big city in the NE and going from there. You have to narrow it down somehow. Mine applied to 3 colleges in DC and 3 in Boston, plus a local safety. Really no need to insist on looking elsewhere.
I think she would prerfer NYU over Columbia just given the location. I know this kid 
I am a bit confused guys. Wasn’t this supposed to be easy??
I thought we are supposed to have 3 reaches, 3 matches, 3 safeties right? Using the Parchment stats as directional, so we have Harvard/MIT/Columbia for reaches (may be after much discussion add Brown and UPenn), Tufts/NYU/Brandeis as matches (may be after much discussion add Barnard and CMU), and BU/Northeastern/Fordham as safeties. Is this risky?
Are you all suggesting replacing Harvard/MIT/Columbia with say UChicago/Stanford/WashU? Why go out of NE when there are so many good choices here? I can add more NE safeties - why go to Tulane when Fordham is very similar in difficulty of getting in?
Shouldn’t she get into 1 out of 13-15 schools as above? We talked again last night and she is fine with the matches and safeties and I am fine with paying.
@Blossom, It’s the
@Brownparent, Thanks I didn’t know that
and will avail.
I don’t know why people are suggesting out of area colleges when she/you aren’t interested either. But your dd seems a fairly disinterested party in this process which seems strange. Yes I think she will get into NYU/Brandeis/BU NEU, Fordham likely as they all seem match/safety. I don’t know what a true safety is for a student with strong stats, but normally these are not true safety schools as they are all selective enough.
@Chopin24567: The best way to approach this after you have your initial long list of colleges in each of the three degree-of-difficulty categories is to make several visits and interviews prior to applying. A “safety,” for example, isn’t a true safety unless it’s a college your daughter would like to attend (and can afford).
Also, if she is going to even consider applying to several “out of region” colleges (Chicago, Stanford, WashU, JHU, etc. – I might add Carnegie Mellon as a possibility) she really ought to visit them before applying. If she is fortunate to get multiple acceptances from colleges all over the country, it may be difficult to make visits on the scheduled “accepted student days.” That’s a problem that my kids ran into.
@BrownParent, That’s excellent feedback and clearly we need to expand the safety list. What would you or others consider to be a true safety? She is not a disinterested party though. She really wants to go to one of Harvard, MIT, Columbia, or NYU. The rest for her is “Whatever!” as long as it is in Boston or New York. That’s why I think this girl is going to NYU lol.
@mackinaw, yes yes fully agree! We go to New York all the time and will be sure to do the visits early.
My D’s best friend had similar stats this year, desperately wants to go to Columbia, and got deferred. She is now waiting on RD decisions from Brown, Vanderbilt, and Duke. Her older sister went to Princeton and loooooved it, and is now living in NYC. Princeton is only an hour train ride from NYC, so it should probably be on your list.
You really should visit Penn though. It’s in a great part of Philly and there is so much going on there now for college aged kids. The campus and facilities are a lot nicer (IMO) than Brown or Columbia. My D is probably going to Drexel and a few of her HS friends got into Penn this year. They are right next to each other, which provides a large critical mass of students in the neighborhood. They are walking distance to the Amtrak station and there is a Megabus stop right on the Drexel campus for cheap rides to NYC and Boston. Of course, we live outside of Philly so we are a little biased. We have a lot of family in Boston and we actually think Philly has more of a “big city feel” to it nowadays than Boston. Of course, neither is New York.
Personally I think NYU is overrated. I know a few kids who went there and hated it, and left. I visited with my S and he really wanted to go there, but he is a musician. The business school there is also wonderful, but the regular academic programs did not impress me much. It’s also hugely expensive and very stingy with merit aid.
As for other safeties, you might want to look at Providence College, Emerson, and Pratt Institute in NYC (it’s known as an art school but has an amazing creative writing program that is very highly regarded. Good merit aid too.) I also agree that DC schools should be on your list - Georgetown, George Washington, and American.
In other parts of the country, it’s often the flagship state university (which also serves as a financial safety for those who are concerned about need-based aid). But flagships in the Northeast are often less attractive to top students than those in other parts of the country.
Forget Parchment- you need your own HS’s Naviance or at least some perspective both on who from your D’s HS got in to these colleges, but also what the profile looks like of the kids who get rejected.
The rejects gave us some humbling moments.
I can’t tell you if NYU is a good match school for your D- but if the chief appeal is living in the Village I’d keep looking. Many kids assume that they will be living the life they see on TV- and the reality of a tiny and expensive dorm room (which by senior year is a tiny share in an overcrowded apartment) starts to wear thin when they realize that they are in college to get a degree- not to hang out in cool bars with well dressed friends eating sushi every night.
NYU is not like Harvard but bigger and in NY. Some of the pre-professional programs are great; some of the academic offerings are outstanding. But at a place like Harvard a kid has to work hard to get lost- either intellectually or socially. The house system, the size, the fact that the college sets more of the tone than the professional schools… these are not present at NYU.
I know current NYU students who have felt that changing majors was like rolling a boulder up a hill. And if a kid is interested in something interdisciplinary, or requiring sign-off’s from multiple departments, that kid quickly realizes that it might not be worth the hassle.
So sitting in on some classes, eating in the dining halls, spending the night on someone’s floor- she’ll need to do this before deciding that NYU is a fine backup if Harvard/MIT don’t pan out.
Not knocking the university- but it’s not a four year party living in lower Manhattan. It’s college.
That is a good start to look at the chances. However, more important would be checking the NPC and the campus. Many students would prefer not a top school but a school they like to attend particularly for a specific program/major.
I hope you don’t mind my jumping in on this thread. To the OP I would like to offer a suggestion. I think it’s wonderful you are beginning your school search now. However, I think I would take a step back for a moment and concentrate on where your DD’s interests lie. Why does she want to major in English? Does she have a career in mind? You needn’t share the answers here, but I would have her think about where she wants to be in 5 or 10 years. Then go from there.