@Publisher I have a feeling that an app to UIUC is in her future if only as a safety. That’s a popular thing to do at our high school. S19 was just completely against that idea even though ALL of his friends used UIUC as a safety (but none of them ended up going.)
@Midwestmomofboys I’m really hoping for a good visit to Denison. I think it has everything she wants and it’s not to far from home. She will know a few kids there who aren’t as strong students but I know there are a ton of super bright kids there who followed the money. It’s a pretty campus and the town reminds me of our town. It will feel familiar to D and that might be a plus.
Vanderbilt.
I have met several moms & daughters at Vanderbilt when visiting. All had nothing but praise for the school & the social life. Just enough Southern to yield warmth, but not too much to scare non-Southerners away.
Only school where I have had such encounters repeatedly.
My impression of OP & her daughter match the families whom I met at a few visits to Vanderbilt. All were from upper middle class or above.
@Publisher If she gets a 35 then I promise she will apply to Vandy. How about that?
We know the kids who just got in ED from our school and that the deal here.
Even S19 was waitlisted in RD to Vandy so it’s rough. He probably would have gotten in ED.
@homerdog thanks for sharing your daughter’s journey. I will enjoy seeing the progression.
I like your long list (Dickinson, Denison, St. Olaf, Santa Clara, Tulane, W&L, Davidson, Wake, Richmond, Elon, Bates, BC, Colgate, W&M). You have some great LACs and mid-sized schools that have marked contrasts, which should help her decide on the type of school she wants as she visits and looks into them deeper. Glad you are keeping W&L on the list for now. It is a fabulous school and worth a visit so y’all can decide on your own if it’s a potential fit.
Good luck!
Yes, thank you, @homerdog, this is a fun thread, and your long list looks great. One of my son’s best friends, a super-talented kid, is at Dickinson, and he is very happy there. My son stopped by on his way back to Granville from Philly after Thanksgiving break, and he reports that the campus and the town are very nice. Of course, he is a Denison die-hard - arrived home last night decked out in Big Red gear from head to toe, which is not at all like him.
Southwestern U in Georgetown, TX is a LAC with dance. The campus has a traditional feel and Georgetown isn’t small. It isn’t far from Austin and there is a quick toll road from the airport.
Good luck with your visits. My daughter is a sophomore and I like reading the stories of process. She is also different from her older brother so it feels a bit like starting over.
We are from Ohio. I think your D should consider both Bucknell and Lafayette. My D graduated from Bucknell in 2018 and my son is a senior at Lafayette. Son switched from mech E to a very happy history major in his sophomore year. He also ground out a math minor since he had done a year and a half of STEM classes. He studied abroad in Berlin junior spring and has been very involved with his fraternity and has held a variety of officer positions. He thinks academics have been great. Pretty much all small classes. He has not taken advantage of career services much but they have a great program starting first year that he could have Participated in.
My D was an arts person at Bucknell, which has dance merit scholarships by the way that go up to $20k per year now I believe. I think you just have to be a dance minor. My D who was a theater arts merit scholar absolutely loved the dance faculty and supportive arts community on campus. The residential college experience first year was great. D had all kinds of jobs on campus, was a junior fellow and got two different grants from the university to fund a summer program and her travel to a unified audition her senior year. D was also in a sorority which served various needs at different times during her time there.
I really like both schools and think either could fit how you describe your D. Both my kids had high weighted gpas of 4.4 or so and UW of about 3,8. Act of 32 for both of them. Both got merit. My impression is that Bucknell is a bit better funded with much nicer housing and lots of options for on campus jobs and grant even for non work study students. But Lafayette is expanding and building new dorms and their new integrated science center is breathtaking. Bucknell seems more intensely Greek and Lafayette seems a bit more laid back. Both schools could work on increasing diversity but students seem friendly, smart, serious about their classes, and socially adept. I don’t get an intense life of the mind vibe at either.
We also really liked Denison fwiw. Liked both much better than Union. My D also liked Williams, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Hamilton, Conn College. Sorry for the long post but I think those colleges are worth a look in the match category. And neither Bucknell nor Lafayette are big draws for their competitive public HS which always gets kids into ivies, Stanford, vandy, duke, wash u, Emory, northwestern, u Chicago, Kenyon, oberlin, and Nescacs. Sometimes it’s not a bad thing to be a geographical outlier.
It’s my first post here, and I wanted to say that I love this thread. In fact I wish you HAD started one with D19 because I would love to have followed that adventure as well! We are also from Chicago, looking at LACs for D21 – who sounds a bit like your son academically, though is a theater kid rather than a runner. My sisters and I went to LACs with fewer than 2,000 students and have drunk the LAC Kool-Aid, so we are also amazed that so few people in our area consider – or know anything about – these schools. H went to a state school and was sort of horrified to hear about the price tags, but he knows how important my alma mater still is to me, so I’m sure he’ll come around!
Very excited to see how things progress from here for many reasons, including making my own notes for D23 (also a dancer, though not ballet) whose interests, thus far at least, seem to be aligned with your D21. I promised myself I wouldn’t jump the gun, but I now have a list of “possible D23 schools” with lots of help from this thread!
Thanks for taking us along on the journey!
Probably not correct, as there is no reason to keep any other applications open after matriculation to an ED school.
D20 loved Dickinson, and it was one of her target schools after we visited during her junior year. After working with a private tutor to increase her ACT score several points, and having a stellar year with a very rigorous course load, she felt more comfortable looking at some of her reach schools. She was accepted to her ED college, but she still would have been happy at Dickinson. The main issue was the distance from home (we live in MA). She didn’t like the idea of needing a plane to get home. If it was closer to us, it would have been #3 on her list. Even with the distance, she had it on her list above Colgate and Lafayette.
Is this even a thing, though? Among all the schools my kids applied to and we visited, which were many, I never saw or heard reference to such for the ED process. My understanding is that ED is a commitment and ED acceptance means you drop your other applications, private or public.
Ummm…Not sure I would classify those schools as a solid “match.” Have you seen the numbers for Williams and Middlebury, especially?
They are good to include on the list, but I would be sure to include true matches and safeties.
With S at Bowdoin, I’m pretty informed about the NESCACs and I don’t know if I see D at the most sporty of them like Williams. And she would never get in! Maybe Hamilton but she’d have to ED I think. Anyway, keeping lots of LACs in the back of my mind. Need to get final scores of course and, if after seeing more schools she really wants rural LAC then a Bates or Midd or Hamilton will be considered.
@homerdog Colgate is also considered rural. The “downtown” is a rural downtown. It’s surrounded by lots of rolling hills and cows. The town population is roughly the size of Colgate’s student body.
With respect to upstate New York schools, Colgate can be classified as authentically rural. Hamilton College’s proximity to a small city confers suburban attributes. Both colleges are nicely offset from the East Coast megalopolis, however.
https://www.newsweek.com/25-most-desirable-rural-schools-71865
https://www.newsweek.com/25-most-desirable-suburban-schools-71867
^^Interesting list. Data is really out of date.
Great list of schools. Academically ALL excellent. Aside from financials, it really is about fit. W&M vs. Wake is a good scenario. W&M more quiet / introverted vs. Wake more social and big time sports. Academics are both very rigourous. Lots of traditions, etc.
BC and Richmond more like Wake than W&M in terms of feel.
We spent a lot of time looking into these four (and Lehigh). I think she’ll get a sense of the vibes at each upon visiting.
@merc81 The thing with categorizing a school as “rural” is that not all “rurals” are the same. Some of the schools on the above list have a pretty nice little town right off campus. Some do not. Some are 30 minutes from an airport. Some are way more than that.
Ideally, the school has a town. Like Bowdoin has Brunswick. You walk to restaurants, coffee, the grocery store, even the local grade school where S19 tutors. We haven’t been to many of the schools on D21’s tentative list but I know at least a few of them are more than 30 min from the airport (most of them?) and seem to be campuses without a town. Hm.
The truth is that kids don’t go to the cities “near” campus all that much. Even when I was a NU, we hardly ever went to Chicago and that’s a super easy and short train ride. Evanston and NU had enough going on and we were studying all of the time. Lol. S19 has been to Portland once for some climate march. I think the surrounding area for a college is pretty important. Otherwise, you’re getting into ubers or need a friend with a car. I don’t know. Maybe it won’t matter to D. I think small campuses without a town are harder sells.
I read a description of UIUC the other day and it said, if you get bored, you can go to Chicago. Huh??? Chicago is a three hour drive. No one is doing that.
I agree that you will need to get a feel for these settings and how they relate to your daughter’s preferences. Varying by the time of day, this Colgate webcam offers a sense of Hamilton, NY:
https://www.colgate.edu/about/campus-facilities/webcams-around-colgate/village-hamilton