<p>D is considering the following colleges but is also being recruited (sports) from some others we had not considered or visited yet. Would anyone care to comment on the list? D is young for her years; so I want her to go to a place where the faculty will be watching out for her. She is a low-A kind of student, got high 600's in the two English sections of the SATs, bombed the math but is retaking after tutoring so we're hopeful. She wants to play the varsity sport but also has some real artsy interests (studio art, theatre), is a pretty good writer, but she has really no idea what she wants to study. She wants to study abroad at one point. I want her to be able to get a job after graduation. ;-) What is it like at these schools and what is their academic reputation?</p>
<p>Vassar (high reach, we know)
Stonehill
Franklin & Marshall
Roger Williams University
Clark University
Connecticut College
University of Rochester
Carnegie-Mellon</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon seems like an outlier here unless she’s serious about art or theater (one or the other not both.) Their programs are extremely pre-professional. You can’t just dabble in the arts there. If she likes Vassar, but wants a safer college, Bard College just up the road might be your ticket. It has a very nice academic program and great arts.</p>
<p>Yeah, I was going to sing "One of these things is not like the others . . . ", too. CMU is three times as big, twice as urban, and half as liberal-artsy as the next school on the list in each category.</p>
<p>I don’t know that much about Stonehill or Roger Williams. Franklin & Marshall sounds like a good match all around, including being a little jock-y. Clark is an excellent college that has not done a great job of promoting itself, and is somewhat unfashionable now, so a pretty clear “admissions bargain” (i.e., relatively easy to get admitted compared to perceived quality). Connecticut College is in a very competitive league, both for sports and academics. Rochester has a very intellectual, headed-to-graduate-school reputation, sort of a mini University of Chicago. That along with Vassar and CMU are the most academic schools on the list.</p>
<p>None of these colleges (or any other college, for that matter) will magically produce a job after four years. All of them (at least the ones I know) regularly produce graduates who get jobs (or at least did that prior to the last two years). I think Stonehill and RWU are not well-known outside Southern New England. F&M has a high profile here, which I believe extends at least as far as NYC and Baltimore, but I don’t know how many people north of Westchester or south of Washington have ever heard of it. Clark is generally obscure, even among liberal arts colleges. In theater, CMU has a very-well respected (and difficult to get into) conservatory-like program, but if your daughter is really a candidate for that then your list ought to look a little different And even that probably produces wait-staff in addition to theater professionals.</p>
<p>Bard was a great suggestion. I would add Skidmore and Ursinus to check out.</p>
<p>S will be attending Stonehill as a freshman this August. Two of the reasons touch upon those that you cite – attention from profs and international programs. It’s name recognition is pretty high in the Catholic high school community in our area (metropolitan NY), not as great outside of it, but they are actively looking to change that. A family friend is a professor in the SUNY system, and the president of his college spoke very highly of the academics there.</p>
<p>From an athletic perspective, I believe they are the only school on your list that is D2, so that may be a consideration.</p>
<p>I second Bard and Skidmore suggestions. Also, check out Brandeis. We are looking at some of the same colleges for my D, and I have learned that visiting small LACs is very important. On paper, many schools look like a good fit, but in reality, your D needs to visit and see if she would fit there. For example, my D loved Bard and Brandeis, but didn’t like Connecticut College (even though she was impressed with their studio art program). Bard, in particular, has very distinct personality, and it is very different from Conn. College or Franklin and Marshall.</p>