For My Little Sister, Who Wants to be in CA...

College Search & Selection
1

<p>She's her class valedictorian. Took 3 AP classes and passed 1 of the tests. She's taken some classes at the local community college.</p>

<p>She plays the flute and the piano, and was drum major in the band and plays in a community orchestra.</p>

<p>She also does golfing.</p>

<p>Her SAT scores are 600 and 700 and 750. Her AP is 31.</p>

<p>Also, our home school is not all that challenging, and I know my sister is not a great writer.</p>

<p>I'm going to a top-ten liberal-arts school, and I think she feels pressure to get into a school at least as competitive as mine. However, I'm a little concerned about her chances.</p>

<p>Schools she's applying to so far:
Stanford
Duke
UCB
UCLA
Pomona
Occidental
Tulane
University of Illinois</p>

<p>My father has already said that he doesn't think he wants to pay for her to "go to a school like Occidental"</p>

<p>My parents are unfortunately under the illusion that because she's a valedictorian and a good amateur musician, and from a geographically underrepresented community, she can get in anywhere.</p>

<p>I personally am thinking maybe she should look at some schools "better" than Occidental, but easier to get into than Pomona. Thoughts? (Either about her chances of admission, or recommendations for other schools she could look at... ideally both)</p>

2

<p>What about University of the Pacific? Santa Clara University?
She would probably see some merit money from both of them. Her list is a bit top heavy.
Also: for the UCs is she certain she has taken all the requirements? She must have a Visual or Performing Art (one year).</p>

3

<p>She’s taken visual arts I think.</p>

<p>We’re in-state for Illinois. So although my sister wants to go to CA, my father says he does not want to pay for another school unless we can prove it is “better than the U of I”</p>

<p>She might also be willing to consider schools in other warm places besides CA, however.</p>

4

<p>Marching band will cover her performing arts requirement.</p>

5

<p>Have your sister considered Banard, or another school I’m highly considering ( still working on app.) Boston University… these would be good choices as well as she express interest in Arts.</p>

<p>( She plays the flute, nice… one of my favorite instruments along with violin/viola, and sorta clarinet)</p>

6

<p>

Smart man. Illinois is a darned good school. Paying OOS tuition for the UCs would be foolish in the vast majority of cases.</p>

<p>

Claremont McKenna and USC are virtually the only schools that fit that criteria. Occidental is an extremely good school that I think both you and your father are underrating.</p>

7

<p>Yeah if your in-state for Illinois I definately would consider the school high on the list, great school.</p>

8

<p>

</p>

<p>Actually, I tried to convince my father that Oxy was a good school. But he’s convinced it is no better than U of I based off its test scores, and was put off by some news articles he read that apparently sort of dissed Oxy as mediocre in saying that Obama went there before transferring to Columbia.</p>

9

<p>Oxy is a good school for a LAC. They also have a connection to CalTech. I know someone who was undergrad Oxy, then Harvard Law. Another who was undergrad Oxy, USC for MBA. </p>

<p>What does she want to major in? USC has a good music program at Thorton.</p>

10

<p>

She thinks she might want to go into Music Business, but mostly she’s undecided. She doesn’t think she wants to major in music.</p>

<p>Saying

isn’t gonna cut it with my father. He wants “proof” that it’s better than U of I, which probably means facts or rankings…</p>

11

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<p>Claremont McKenna College fits that description.</p>

12

<p>ecape,</p>

<p>I teach in IL. Let your Dad know that the stats so important to him at UIUC are as high as they are because the engineering stats skew things. This isn’t the case at Oxy.</p>

<p>Will she need FA? Unless your family qualifies for MAP, Illinois won’t give anything but loans.
IS for UIUC is ~$26,000. There are many private schools she might get merit aid that could bring the cost in line with UIUC. Perhaps your dad could at least let her apply and compare costs to places she gets accepted. Now, there’s no guarantee of merit aid, but it may come.</p>

<p>In the latest admissions cycles, the acceptance rate at CMC has come very close to Pomona, so that’s not a much easier admit, really.</p>

<p>My D was admitted to both Oxy and CMC, but chose to attend another LAC.</p>

13

<p>escape, </p>

<p>If she is at all considering music business, many of the schools on her list don’t have that on their “majors” list (actually, I can’t find any of them that do, but I may have missed it). It’s a specific major.
If she is considering that as a major, she should probably think about her college list a bit differently.</p>

14

<p>Wouldn’t waste the app money on Duke, Pomona or Stanford, unless she is a hooked candidate. UCs are big stretch, and not worth the OOS price. Forget 'em. If she likes Claremont, consider Scripps.</p>

<p>Second vote for Pacific, which has an excellent music program.</p>

15

<p>

I tried to explain to her and my father that due to the sheer numbers of candidates with similar or better grades, testscores, ECs and writing skills to my little sister, she probably wouldn’t get in to these ones, although she stands a chance.</p>

<p>All that did was make her cry, and have both her and my father challenge me and basically suggest maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. I don’t know how to emphasize this enough, but we are truly from a VERY small town, where VERY few people go to private colleges. So our college counselor just isn’t geared towards that.
(I went to a charter school far away from home, so I had a different perspective than my sister and father now have.)</p>

<p>I’ve also been hard-pressed to get my parents to shake their original belief that essays aren’t that important, since they said college admissions was all about grades and test scores back when they were applying.</p>

<p>I couldn’t talk her into applying to Scripps; I tried. She doesn’t want to go to an all-female school, even if it’s strongly connected to coed schools in a consortium yada yada yada.</p>

<p>Plus I think that my father and my sister think she’s too good for schools like Scripps and Occidental, even though I think she’d find them plenty challenging given what she’s experienced so far.</p>

<p>We’re not from a region/culture where people value a private education in and of itself. My father seems pretty fixated on name, status, and whether people he knows have heard of the schools.</p>

<p>Do you really think my sister would have a better experience at Oxy than at the U of I? If so, why?</p>

16

<p>I agree with your father and your sister, though, in saying that perhaps you don’t really know what you’re talking about. Your sister’s grades are obviously very good since she’s the valedictorian, and her SAT scores (with the exception of that 600) are right in the middle 50% range for schools like Pomona, Tulane, and Duke. They are definitely in the middle 50% range for UCLA and UCB, and the University of Illinois (well, that 600 is a little low but not enough to completely shoot her choices). I would certainly apply to Pomona, Tulane, and Duke if I were her - she’s an average applicant there. She’s definitely not a shoo-in, but I think it would be wrong to say that she “probably won’t get in.” The odds are not in her favor, but with 30% acceptance rates or less, they’re not in anyone’s favor.</p>

<p>Getting into UCLA and UCB with her stats (~average) will be difficult - not impossible, but difficult, because she’s OOS. She’s the average applicant at those schools, so if you were CA residents, you wouldn’t have much issue. Tell your sister to tell your father that Occidental’s stats are very similar to the stats for UCLA and UCB as far as SAT scores and percent admitted go.</p>

<p>Honestly, I don’t blame your father. Oftentimes the dreams of 18-year-old college-bound seniors clash with the realities of their older parents who are holding the purse-strings. It doesn’t really make much sense to go to an OOS public school and pay $45K per year (without much aid - because she’s very unlikely to get merit aid from UCB or UCLA) when you have a fantastic public university right there in your home state (UIUC).</p>

<p>If she just wants to go somewhere warm, she might also consider Rice in Texas and Emory in GA.</p>

<p>I also think she should leave the major out of it. Very few schools have music business, but it is very easy to major in music and minor in business or vice versa at the vast majority of schools. If she’s uncertain there’s no reason to lock her out of any schools. For what it’s worth, though, the University of Miami has a music business major, and SUNY-Oneonta has a music industry major.</p>

<p>Honestly, what I think is that you need to step out of this a little bit. I know that you want to help your sister out a lot, I understand because my little sister is 4 years younger than me. But if they don’t want to listen to you and they think that they’re too good for the schools that she’s likely to get merit money to (or admitted), that will be their problem to deal with in the spring.</p>

<p>“Better” is a qualitative word - whether she’ll have a better experience at Occidental v. Illinois depends on your sister, what she likes, and what she wants to get out of college. I know that I went to an LAC and if I had to do it all over again, I’d choose an LAC again. I loved going to a liberal arts college; it’s a very nurturing experience and I think it prepared me well for graduate school - even without the myriads of courses that bigger universities offered, I got more one-on-one time with my advisors and professors, and my classes were smaller, and I felt like I was very included in the college community.</p>

17

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<p>Umm… you totally just contradicted yourself. But thank you for telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about.</p>

<p>Anyway, I’m still involved in the process somewhat because I’m helping her edit her essays. I’m fairly sure she doesn’t write at the level of most people who go to schools like mine or the very competitive ones she’s applying to, but we’ll see if I can’t help her figure out how to write good short essays.</p>

<p>I’m not sure she really cares about things like class size and contact with teachers; my father certaintly doesn’t. I’ll try to get her to think some more about those sorts of things though.</p>

18

<p>She should definitely go to U of Illinois, what a great school! I am always jealous of you guys who live in NC and Illinois and California and Virginia because you guys have such great public schools. All we have is UConn, and that’s a lousy school.</p>

19

<p>for the record, pomona and claremont mckenna have nearly the exact same acceptance rate. </p>

<p>also, if he cares about ranking (like u said he does) occidental is ranked higher as an LAC than U of I is as a university.</p>

20

<p>juillet, you are right in that she could could major in music and minor in business, but the “music business” is major is not the same. It’s much more trade specific. </p>

<p>From my perspective, I don’t feel an interest should ever be left out of a school choice. I teach high school, and I can’t count how many times I have had former students contact me and tell me how they should have gone somewhere different, where they could have fully explored their interest. A strong high school musician going to a school with a mediocre music department is a good example of this. </p>

<p>This school year alone I’ve had two former students contact me for a letter of recommendation for their transfer application for that reason (and it’s only November).</p>