Like I said above, I actually think she’d be happy at any of these schools. She’s struggling to decide which she likes more, so I tried to help her out by calling out the differences between them.
The travel issue is not one that I think she’ll have a problem with. It’s not like she’ll be going back and forth every weekend. It’s a hassle that she’ll have to endure a few times a year.
You’ll want to check the most recent CDS at each of the four schools, but if memory serves me properly, Amherst and Williams have ED acceptance rates in the low-mid 20s%, Bowdoin’s is in the high 20s%, and Middlebury’s is upwards of 50%. So if she were making her choice solely on the basis of probability, she’s roughly twice as likely to get into Midd than the other three in the ED1 round.
But as long as questions and doubts linger regarding which is her favorite, I would advise against ED. Imagine if she applied to Midd ED and was accepted, only to discover that she really wanted to be at Bowdoin instead? How agonizing would that be?
She may be somewhat ambivalent now, but none of us can predict whether or how our feelings will change in the future.
She has excellent stats, and if she handles the qualitatively be aspects of her applications well, I would say she has a pretty good shot at getting into one of those schools, or one of their ilk (Haverford, Carleton, Swat, Wes, Vassar, Pomona, etc.), in the RD round.
The only thing she must do is apply to at least one safety. For her that’s a school with a 50%ish acceptance rate, where her stats are at or above the 75th% GPA/scores, and which obviously is affordable. And which she likes – good fit – of course.
Then it’s going to come down to “feel.” She’ll just have to rely on her gut feeling.
As for travel, maybe it doesn’t seem important now, but it could weigh heavily when she’s there. Will she come home for the short breaks like Thanksgiving and fall break? If not, where will she stay? Can she stay in the dorm? Is the dining hall open? If she doesn’t go home for the short breaks, she’ll have six trips/year (start of year, round-trip winter break, round-trip spring break, and home end of year.
Oddly enough, Midd is the easiest to travel to because the closest airport, Burlington, is only about 40 minutes and van services take students from BTV to the campus.
We do not live in the NE and travel to NASCAC schools will be considered in the end. Bowdoin is also pretty easy since it’s only 30 min from Portland. We would have to do some serious thinking about Williams and Amherst. Flights plus long drive not ideal especially in the winter. It is something to consider.
Did I miss what her major is? I agree she should visit, but perhaps the tie breaker could be strength of her major. Look up specific courses and if they interest her.
@dia26 We were told at an admissions session that just under 50% of Williams students take a tutorial over their 4 years, and the vast majority of those students only take one tutorial. So, tutorials might not warrant such a high prioritization.
@dla26 - Yeah, in terms of “rejecting” schools, I had assumed what you said was the case. Often, it’s not that one place did anything wrong, but, just something that clicked at another. I know from experience that Wesleyan has a bigger student body and a strange face would not necessarily register as someone who was new or visiting. For some, that extra layer of people they haven’t met yet is an advantage; Others may prefer knowing everyone by face a few weeks into the school year.
True - and I think all of these schools offer free shuttles to airports and nearby cities at break times, I know Amherst does.
Definitely worth checking. Amherst stays open even for the 5 week winter break, meals and all. And students don’t have to move into a different dorm if they stay, as is the case with some.
My D has family in NYC and generally goes there, not home to Ohio, for Thanksgiving. She’s brought friends who live far away with her every time so far.
Williams offers buses at both Logan and the Albany airports for all school breaks. My son comes home for Thanksgiving, but the dorms remain open and I think the dining hall has a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for those students who remain on campus.
We didn’t have trouble with the actual transport with collegekids who were far / in remote places. It was more the challenge of getting flights booked- the connecting flights get full/expensive quickly (+ my lot always seem to struggle with when exactly they can leave- when their last class/exam will be). Not insurmountable, but worth being aware that you need to be on top of it if you want them home
She’s undecided. Right now she’s leaning toward Political Science, but she’s also interested in Psychology and Environmental Science. For Poli Sci, I believe Bowdoin has the highest rated program, though they’re all good.
One thing that’s been kind of nice about this process is that my daughter doesn’t feel so attached to any one school to the point where she’d feel crushed if she didn’t get in. Right now I’m sure she’d say that she’d prefer Bowdoin over Midd because of the poli sci program and the friendliness of the students. That said, if hypothetically she could guarantee herself a slot at Midd and not have to roll the dice and potentially get rejected by both, I think she would be perfectly happy to go to Midd sight unseen. The writeups in the Fiske and Princeton Review guides as well as the comments on College Confidential all seem to point toward her having a great experience there. Would Bowdoin be significantly better than Midd? To be honest, probably not. She’ll acclimate to wherever she is, especially since they’re such similar schools.
I hope so! I’ve read too many posts here to remind me that although I have every right to be very proud of what my daughter has accomplished, there are tens of thousands of kids who have accomplished the same or better. One thing that I’ve been pretty happy to hear from her is that none of her friends are applying to East Coast LACs. The super high achievers are all applying to Stanford and a few ivies, as well as West Coast schools like Berkeley, UCLA, USC, etc. Even the ivies are relatively underrepresented compared to the kinds of schools East Coast high achievers apply to.
Absolutely. She’s got one safety in mind (Willamette University) that has early action, no application fee, and no supplemental essays - yet it’s a good school and one she’d still be very happy to attend. They have a 78% admit rate, and her stats are far beyond their 75th percentile. Once she gets her recommendations in order and finishes up her Common App personal essay, she’ll be applying there and getting that squared away.
Also, I’m not sure if I’m overestimating her chances, but I’ve been thinking of Oberlin as her safety as well. Normally it’d be a match school to be sure, but she has a few things going for her that I would be shocked if she didn’t get in: she’s a triple legacy (my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, and I are all alumni) and she is being flown in for their diversity fly-in program, which I’ve heard virtually guarantees admission. Plus she’s full pay (unless they choose to give her a merit scholarship) and recently Oberlin is very much not need blind. And if she ever got to the point where she was waitlisted instead of admitted right away, I know people on the board and faculty. Obviously, I wouldn’t want to play those cards unless I knew she would enroll.
Since the goal of these visits is to converge on one and only one ED school, I think that she needs to pick her top two before planning the overnight “due diligence” visits. The plan is to get in ED and be done.
I’m assuming that you are traveling with her. I’d fly into Hartford and rent a car. Amherst is 53 minutes from Bradley International Airport in Hartford. You stay at a motel while your D stays on campus. If you are keeping Middlebury, you can fly out of Burlington VT. I always find good one-way rentals on carrentals website.
You keep mentioning that friendliness is an important factor. How could she know that students at Williams or Middlebury aren’t as friendly (or perhaps friendlier) than students at Bowdoin unless she visits? One thing to keep in mind: the kids from all of these schools are pretty much cut from the same cloth. The overlap in applicants to this group of schools is enormous. If you randomly selected 25 kids from each of these schools and put them in a large room together, you’d have a hard time telling which students belong to Bowdoin vs. Midd vs. Williams vs. Amherst. Even for the kids wearing purple.
The OP’s D has the right attitude that all 4 are great choices. And in a situation where there’s no clear favorite and the family has the ability to forego the chance to shop FA or merit offers, I think it makes perfect strategic sense to pick one school for ED.
My vote would be Middlebury: largest first-year class of the bunch translates as fewer hooked appltcants, especially recruited athletes, per capita to deal with. Plus, Midd will often offer applicants the option of being admitted in February instead of the Fall, sort of a second bite at the apple, as it were.
@TheBigChef The problem with waiting to RD if you aren’t sure which of several choices you like best during ED is that choice doesn’t necessarily crystalize when you get all your acceptances either, while meanwhile you decreased your odds and your top choices. My son held out for RD due to indecision and remained very undecided after he got his acceptances and flip flopped several times, and spent some time regretting the one he ended up on the waitlist of during RD that he might have gotten into ED (grass is always greener…). All ended up well. Also, touring all of them in person did very little to solidify his opinion, except for dropping one off the list after a bad overnight experience. So seeing in person often isn’t a game changer. The real issue is all of these schools honestly are more similar than they are unique. And they are all great.
That was really what I was thinking. Williams has the Tutorials, but realistically, my daughter might take 1 or 2 of those. Amherst has an open curriculum, but my daughter will probably fulfill any distribution requirements other schools have in place anyway, since she wants to learn about a variety of topics. Bowdoin has a great Political Science department, but it’s hard to say if it’s significantly better than anywhere else - and my daughter isn’t sure she wants to major in Poli Sci anyway.
Culturally, they’re all New England LACs, and they all have New England weather - both of which will be things my daughter will have to adjust to, coming from the PNW. They’re all liberal, and they all have a not insignificant percentage of students who play varsity sports. So to me, I’m thinking that maximizing the chances of admission to one of those 4 is going to be more important than be able to choose from 2 or more of them later, since I think she’d be lucky to get into any one of those schools.
You have mentioned OV, which is a great idea. Few schools offer these to students who have not been admitted (except recruited athletes or fly ins.) With that said, they don’t mind if a prospective student does an OV by staying with a friend. If she doesn’t know anyone there, ask her GC if she can be put in touch with an alum who is there. Ours did this for DS, and the visits reordered his list. (And when the alum were girls, they had male friends who offered to host.)
