@Publisher Could you expand on that? Is there a college on my list you think is rural and/or lacks an intellectual atmosphere (besides Stanford or Harvard which other posters have already addressed)?
@circuitrider I never thought of cutting my list down that way. I’ll consider that.
Several of the schools on your list lack an intellectual atmosphere & several are rural.
I do not want to offend other posters who have suggested particular schools to you, but, as an example, Dickinson College lacks an intellectual atmosphere in the context of one who has scored 1580/1600 in a single sitting for the SAT & wants to earn her PhD. in philosophy.
@circuitrider: Huh? It’s not like she is guaranteed admission to all these schools and just has to choose. If several schools have what she is looking for, applying to them is a smart strategy.
She should be cutting out schools that have less of what she is looking for.
“Is a college’s location not as big of a deal as I think?”
Yes. Unless campus life is dreadful (none of these colleges) or there is no real campus (NYU and the U of London schools), you’ll be spending 90-99% of your time on campus anyway.
If it were that easy, she wouldn’t have twenty schools to begin with. FWIW, I’m on record as saying she’s fine with the list she has. She just needs to keep the bottom three which are presumably her safeties, and make some hard decisions - if she feels the need.
@circuitrider, presumably, she has preferences. So for instance, if the U of C, Swarthmore, and Reed are her top 3 preferences because they are most intellectual, cutting out either the U of C or Swarthmore makes little sense.
Okay, now I see where you are coming from: “No one in their right mind would cut out Chicago or Swarthmore!” Unless, of course they’re crazy enough to cut Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Pomona, Brown, Wellesley or Princeton. Sheesh.
@circuitrider, do I have to repeat what I said? Did you miss the “intellectual” part?
If someone is looking for a “life of the mind” and “where fun goes to die” environment, cutting either Brown or Stanford certainly makes more sense than cutting out either the U of C or Swarthmore. Do you disagree?
I disagree. I disagree vehemently.
@circuitrider: “I disagree. I disagree vehemently.”
Please justify. I’m curious to hear your reasoning.
Can’t speak about Brown… but I would say Stanford very much encourages a life of the mind – while also offering so much in the way of weather, college sports, local pleasures, an engaged community, etc. that it can’t be described as “where fun goes to die.”
First of all, we’re dealing with tropes, tropes pretty much all in the heads of a bunch of over-involved adults. Seventeen year olds have enough pressure on them in this silly rat race (which Americans have created solely to compensate for the fact that we don’t have an aristocracy in this country the way they have in the UK) without making every decision she makes sound like its against one of the Ten Commandments. She will be enormously happy wherever she winds up in college a year from now.
Secondly, Stanford has already been taken off the table. But, even if it hadn’t, I could apply the same standard to it and Pomona as “Extreme Overlaps”. I don’t think cutting either one of them diminishes the number of tropes on the OP’s list. Thirdly of all, I disagree with the idea that Brown is not an intellectual college. It practically invented the whole idea of “study for its own sake” with the advent of the first open curriculum over 50 years ago. So, there.
If you are currently living in London, going to a small town in Wisconsin (Beloit) or Indiana (Earlham) might be a little more culture shock than you expect. If you go to a high school with 5000 students, going to a school with 1500 might feel very small to you.
My daughter’s boyfriend is an athlete and travels to a lot of smaller schools in Georgia, NC, and SC. I asked him if he ever wished he’d gone to one of those schools (higher ranked/national champs teams). He said so many of them don’t even have a real town, no where to get pizza after 6 pm, no movie theaters or book stores or ways to just get to the outside would except by the internet. Nothing there but the pickle factory! The school they go to isn’t huge, but the town does have a farmer’s market, some artsy areas, a mall, some bars and restaurants. They aren’t limited to going to a few places that all the other students will be at looking to escape the dining hall or library.
When we were looking at schools, we pulled into one town that was just tiny. The school was small (too small), the town was too small. It was very white. It was very southern. It wasn’t at all what I’d expected (didn’t even know such places still existed). If you can’t visit the colleges before deciding, don’t try something new. If you know you like urban, go with urban. If you don’t know if you’ll like the hot desert sun, don’t go to the American SW.
My urban child was shocked we couldn’t order Thai delivery while visiting a college in the mid west. We need to get out more.
@OutOfKantrol: Forgive me for questioning you, but I am a bit confused as to why you are even considering many of the schools on your list. As far as I can tell, (and I am not well versed on UK admissions) you seem to be quite qualified for many of your country’s top institutions. I don’t understand why you would even consider a school like Carleton when you have a good chance of getting into Oxford’s PPE program.
In my opinion, you should only apply to the following schools:
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
UChicago
Columbia
Brown
And maybe:
Reed
Swarthmore
The rest of the schools on your list simply don’t make sense in light of your options in the UK, but feel free to clarify any misunderstandings I might have, or maybe your reason for being dead set on the US. I feel like if I understood your thought process better then I may be able to help you out more.
“Thirdly of all, I disagree with the idea that Brown is not an intellectual college. It practically invented the whole idea of “study for its own sake” with the advent of the first open curriculum over 50 years ago. So, there.”
The students are intellectual but the culture may not be as intellectual as a Chicago or Swarthmore, a good article in Brown Daily Herald in 2014 on grade inflation address this, all the comments are by Brown administration (professors, provosts)
"As a member of an admission committee for graduate programs at the University of California at Berkeley, Schlissel said, he and his colleagues knew which universities gave out As liberally and ignored those students’ grades.
“The value of a Brown degree might be worth more” if people beyond College Hill thought the University was more rigorous, Lindstrom said.
Surveys of incoming students indicate that they perceive Brown as an easy Ivy League school, Schlissel said, which he called “unfair.”
But both Paxson and Schlissel attributed this perception more to Brown’s lack of core requirements than to grade inflation."
And trying to be practical on this, if the OP has to use the ED option to improve her chances, you’d want to use that on Chicago, Columbia or Swarthmore.
Oxford is a special place, but no one can count on getting in there, especially for as competitive of a major as PPE. Applying to just the Ivies + UChicago is extremely risky and poor advice.
The Oxford experience is different too. I don’t know about Carleton cross-admits, but I do know 3 people at Pomona who turned Oxford down simply because they preferred the broad liberal arts education model over the specialized program based emphasis at Oxford. To be fair, all 3 were non-British international students who did not receive aid from Oxford, while Pomona was at a similar or slightly cheaper cost overall due to need-based aid. The financial gap between the Ivies/LACs and Oxford would be massive (up to 6x more) for a full pay student, so is it worth paying that much more for the American liberal arts experience? I personally don’t think so.
What do you mean by a place like “Carleton”? If you cite Reed and Swarthmore as “maybe”, you should cite Carleton as well, which is just as strong of an LAC with as big of a presence in producing PhDs.
@OutOfKantrol A couple of questions:
Will you be able to visit at any time before applying? Aside from helping you to focus your “Why X?” essays, a visit before acceptances are sent out can make a significant difference to small LACs. It can crystalize the points of differentiation among colleges and build confidence in your safeties. If you can’t visit before applying, visiting before making your final decision is essential for LACs, though less so for mid-sized schools. Nuances of culture and environment simply can’t be absorbed from afar.
What ECs, interests, talents will your application feature?
These are critical at all selective colleges, but emphasis can vary according to the college’s prevailing culture. Some are more arts driven, some more active in social or environmental advocacy.
My opinion would be to reconsider Harvard, Stanford, Clark and Rhodes. I’m not so sure about Princeton or Scripps. I would definitely add Holyoke. I would also encourage you to add more midsize privates (similar to Chicago, Tufts). Some suggestions would be Emory, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Rice, Tulane, WUSTL.
At this point I’d leave the option to apply to up to 20 schools open ended. It’s not a decision that you need to make right now. When you start writing essays you may find that that’s way too many, or you may find the common app makes it doable.
If you apply early and are accepted, you may be one-and-done. Planning your early strategy will be important. Early decision figures vary from school to school, but generally speaking ED provides a boost. Non-binding early action gives less advantage but still can help calibrate your RD list. Be aware that single choice early action or restricted early action may prohibit you from applying early to other schools. Read the rules.
I admit bias (my son is a Williams grad) but yes I think Williams would be a good fit for several reasons, its location not withstanding. My son only ever lived in mega-cities and first targeted urban campuses, but something about Wiliams’ insular mountain village and close knit intellectual and arts community spoke to him. Friends of his had the opposite reaction. That’s why visiting is important.
Williams students get to Boston or New York once or twice a term and as I mentioned, New England is a culturally sophisticated environment. Williams art history program is second to none in the US and there are three world class museums on or near campus. Williams’ tutorial program (one professor, two students for a whole term) is unique.
It’s interesting to note that Williams administers its own study abroad program at Exeter College, Oxford.
http://exeter.williams.edu/
@OutOfKantrol It’s Hobart and William Smith (not William and Hobart Smith), but you should strike that from your list. It’s not what you’re looking for intellectually.
Let me say something about Williams. Yes, it meets the definition of rural based on population per square mile. But it’s not isolated in thought or worldliness. It’s not a rural backwoods. It’s in a region rich in culture and intellectual pursuits. Search “The Berkshires” (name of the region of Massachusetts it’s in) to see what the area has to offer. Amherst, Smith, and Mount Holyoke are similar. They’re in the Pioneer Valley region, just east of The Berkshires. Similar vibe.