I’m interested in colleges where ECs are not heavily considered in admissions. I would love to find a website that would allow searching by the section of the Common Data Set that covers what is important to admissions, but I’m not sure such a thing exists. Anyone seen such a search engine? We are looking for colleges that are 5-20k enrollment within 10 hour drive of NH. Major is something in humanities or social sciences.
There is no easy way to search for this. But the simple truth is that nationwide, most places don’t give a rip about ECs. Admissions is almost entirely based on grades and test scores. Check your own home-state publics first, and see if they have auto-admit for specific grade and test score ranges. Ask your guidance counselor where students who don’t have much in the EC line have been admitted recently. And check through this thread on auto admits: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1562918-updated-list-of-schools-with-auto-admit-guaranteed-admission-criteria-p1.html
http://www.collegedata.com has a subset of CDS information for each college. It does not have a search for specific admission items, although it is at least theoretically possible to web-scrape the information for each college and then write one’s own program to search it (or ask a CS student to do that).
I can confirm that the IPEDS database does not appear to include that information.
Thanks everyone. I suspected that there was no search I could run for this, but using collegedata is better than downloading each school’s common data set which is what I have been doing. Ultimately, we are looking for relatively selective colleges that do not put as much emphasis on ECs since my son has one (soccer and not a star at all). He has very good grades so far and top 3% PSAT and I think will have a good essay and recommendations.
For admission to the most selective 50-100 schools, ECs typically do matter.
Check out schools that are larger, less selective, or more focused on engineering/technical specialties than what you might otherwise consider. Chances are, your state flagship is a good university that does not emphasize them as much compared to a smaller, private school with comparable state.
Yes, generally public schools will place less emphasis on ECs.
Are there any general areas your son is interested in studying? Is he interested in studying STEM subjects?
Some that come to mind of the top of my head include Rochester, Colgate (little smaller than range), Tufts, Northeastern, Villanova, Lehigh, William and Mary (more than 10 hours but 6500 undergrads a good #), U Conn, and Penn (most competitve). More specifically STEM schools would include Case Western (maybe more than 10 hours, but not much), WPI, RPI, and Carnegie Mellon (most competitive),
All of these would pay attention to ECs but also a lot of emphasis on grades/scores. William and Mary looks favorably on males and athletes. School likes to keep a fairly even gender balance and receives more female applications.
Maybe you can narrow down your list to 15-20 schools and then go through the CDSs for just those schools to get an idea of how much they emphasize ECs. Good luck!
UK unis don’t care about ECs and not much about grades, either. They care mostly about standardized test scores (SAT, APs) and entrance exams.