A few updates -
She’s in at Denver with $24,000/year merit. And in at Santa Clara and waiting on merit info coming soon!
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I can’t remember, were both of those good dance options?
No. Neither have dance. She could do dance team at those schools but that is more like poms. Not all of her schools checked all of her boxes. Without a test score, she applied to a long list of schools. The main priorities were size no bigger than 6,000, compact campus, good career placement, fun school spirit. SCU is also a good match because it’s the weather she prefers, we know some happy kids there and it’s a direct flight from Chicago. Denver has an edge in that we have close family in Boulder who she loves and misses. We’ve been to Denver many times and she really likes the city. Also a direct flight.
She really only has four (maybe five) schools where dance would be a bigger part of her life and she would prefer that but she is not majoring in dance. LMU is next up and dance is strong there but it’s unclear how much she could perform if she’s not a dance major. At Richmond, Wake, Davidson and BC, she has solid non-major dance options - audition only dance groups she could join.
Thank you. I recalled it was important to her but couldn’t recall if it was a dealbreaker. So viable options both - congratulations, she’s going to college! 
(Or, at worst, sit at a computer in her room for another year, but lets all hope not.)
Sigh. Yes let’s hope fall is in person of course. The issue with the CA schools is that one can’t even visit. Not sure how things will be by April.
Lots of schools have student run dance also. Also check out the local community. Some will have dance studios thar sometimes are or not associated with the school for students in your situation… Also… Lots of times if they do musical theater they look for dancers for certain plays… That should be fun…
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@knowstuff She would think that was super fun to dance in a theater production. 
They did this at some smaller lacs and even my daughters preprofessional arts Chicago High school. It would be fun…
$11,000 Bronco Scholarship at SCU. This scholarship is specifically for making the class more diverse including geographically. The description is confusing because some local non-URM kids also got this one so not sure what to make of it. Now wondering if I should have sent her SAT because it looks like some kids got a little more merit with scores close to hers. We are going to see the rest of the decisions but I would consider going back later in the spring and asking for more if we visit and D loves it. Maybe this year CA schools will have a harder time filling their classes and they might be willing to up merit.
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That does seem odd, I’m guessing there are a few students from Illinois, it could also be gender, area of study, wacky parents :-).
I live close to there, have toured it as well and know students there, so ping me privately if you need more info. SCU does have school spirit but it’s more on soccer, they don’t have a football team. Check into the religious requirements as well. good luck!
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Thanks @theloniusmonk! This Bronco scholarship used to be called an “incentive” scholarship so who knows. I looked merit up on SCU’s common data set and only 40% of kids get any sort of merit so we’ll take it! Believe me, D doesn’t bring any diversity (white suburban student from outside of Chicago) and I’ve now heard from three other parents who say their non-URM student who lives near SCU also got this particular scholarship. I read somewhere that their other named scholarships have limits on them (how many they can give out) so maybe they give those to certain kids and then give this one to anyone else they want to give merit to. Either way, money is money, right?
I’ll reach out if we have any questions!
D just accepted to Loyola Marymount. Yea! Great dance there and a beach! Merit comes in Feb…
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Nice program… Congrats.
@knowstuff she didn’t apply as a dance major. She’s accepted to the college of arts and science. Dance is an extracurricular for her so we need to find out more about if she can take dance class and perform. We’ve watched some of the performances and believe she’s got the dance chops but, for schools like LMU with strong dance programs, sometimes non-majors have a hard time getting into those classes or they aren’t allowed to audition for dance groups. I need to check. If it’s not a problem, then LMU indeed checks a lot of boxes.
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My daughter is a dance major at LMU. There are lots of dance minors there and lots of dance/other double majors. There are extracurricular dance crews that anyone can audition for as well as a dance team that performs at basketball games.
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Apps all in! Sent Lehigh last night.
D decided to send a dance resume to schools that allowed a resume to be uploaded. We went back and forth on that but it really does show so much more detail than what she could get on her CA activities section. I think it was a good move because AOs from two of her bigger reaches actually emailed her and said thank you and they will definitely consider her resume and then wrote quick sentences about the dance opportunities on their campus. Both welcomed her to stay in touch over the next couple of months and let them know if she has any questions.
I hear quite a bit to not send too much info. AOs don’t have time. So, she only sent the resume to schools that either take it on their CA or have it as an item in their drop down menu on their portals as an update to send. We figured it was worth sending as much as she can especially since she doesn’t have scores.
Richmond decision this month. Pretty nervous about this one. I feel like it could be a clue as to what to expect in the RD round.
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First semester grades are out and D finished with all As. Calc was a nail biter but she pulled it off. She knows a lot of kids here who did not do well with our version of remote/hybrid learning and their grades showed it so I’m proud that she stuck it out through this miserable semester and did well.
We will have her GC send updated transcripts to all RD schools and she just downloaded a screenshot to Richmond (which they allow). She had given them in-progress grades in October but wanted to give them a final update. I think it’s pretty late since decisions will come in the next one-two weeks but can’t hurt. I hope the update makes it into the hands of the AO. No idea how that works when EA decisions are so close.
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D21 in at Furman with $30K Bell Tower Scholarship. So happy to see all of this merit from her safeties. I hope that means her app is reading well even without scores.
Furman checks some boxes but not all. Mostly, we are concerned about the conservative nature of the school but I have now traded messages with one person I know well and a few CC “friends” who know liberal students there and they seem to like it and find their crowd. Our neighbor up the street (who is a Williams grad) sent his son there so I’m going to ask him more about it too.
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A $30,000 scholarship to Furman University should reduce the total annual tuition, fees, & books to about $25,000 plus room & board per academic year. This is an outstanding opportunity for your daughter to get an excellent education while experiencing a new culture.
Congratulations !
P.S. I corrected the COA.
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D21 accepted to Richmond! This was the first one she really cared about so this was a good night here.
They are offering weekend tours to admitted students. We need to decide if we should go in Feb and then swing by Wake where she can get a tour too since she did the interview for them. We would see Davidson too but we’d just have to walk around there - no official tours. Part of me wants to go in Feb and see these three and that would leave late March to see any others she wants to see. We don’t know yet but it might be hard to get to the schools she wants to see if we wait until all RD decisions are in. Other than these three, her other schools just aren’t that close to each other.
We need to talk more but I think all of her other EA acceptances are off the table now. She was never in love with Denver and it’s not looking like we can even visit the CA schools. And I don’t think Furman is the best match even though it was certainly worth applying.
Still have Wake, Davidson, BC, Lehigh, Colgate, Vanderbilt, Middlebury, and Dension left.
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