A safety is a sure thing admit, not a school that is going to take demonstrated interest into account. Look at your instate options with honors colleges.
At schools with sub 20% acceptance rates, it doesn’t matter if you are above the 75th percentile. They are still reaches for everyone.
As I mentioned toward the top of the thread, our guidance counselor advised that their experience has been that at a certain level of applicant there are no ‘safe’ state schools. That they are denying ‘overqualified’ applicants rather than admitting large numbers of candidates who will then reject the school in favor of another.
Someone, @ucbalumnus I believe, then offered sound advice on how to convince a safety school that you don’t view it as a ‘safety’ and instead have a significant interest in attending.
.Again, as I mentioned upthread the question of what is a ‘reach’ school is one of nomenclature. Attempting to obtain something for which one is objectively qualified can’t be a ‘reach’ - if you are above the 50th percentile it doesn’t matter if your chances of acceptance are 1% or 99%. I’m fond of aspirational…but ‘unobtainial’ will do.
For my daughter MIT is a reach school despite her appreciation of the campus, love of the students we met, and desire to satisfy her inner biochem geek. The rest of the T10 are just aspirationals.
There are plenty of auto admit schools. Maybe not in your state but elsewhere. And if your D is competitive for schools like MIT, she’ll get a ton of merit.
Mom- I don’t disagree with you. At my kids HS, an “auto admit” was considered any college where nobody with your stats has been rejected in the last five years. But if OP’s kid’s GC is telling her that she’ll get rejected for being “too competitive”— that’s a complicating message.
OP-- there are quick fixes to the “my stats are too high/don’t want the school to think I’m not interested” problem. And Covid makes it easier- nobody is getting on an airplane to check out colleges right now! Have your D one of the undergrad fellowships on the Classics department website- email your regional adcom to find it out if there’s somebody in the department willing to spend ten minutes on the phone with her discussing who has won it and where they have gone to study for the semester/summer etc because that’s exactly the type of opportunities that she is seeking in a Classics department…
Would be a shame not to lock in the safety/match college…
Plenty of state schools have automatic admission criteria for high-stats applicants. Of course, those not in your state will be more expensive (but you have not mentioned financial constraints). Many others do not consider “level of applicant’s interest”.
I don’t know enough about classics departments in the US to contribute to that part of the discussion but I will say this: if you still have anything close to this debate about which schools to apply to at the time she is actually submitting applications, I would strongly urge not EDing anywhere. It should be a clear front runner, first choice, no regrets and no wondering “what if” in the event that the ED outcome is an admit.
I am going to add in what you may or may not have seen before about Georgetown- there is no advantage to REA there. The admit rate is lower than RD (they only take the absolute cream, in their own words from an info session we attended a couple of years back), and the rest are deferred. So I wouldn’t “waste” a restricted early application there, simply because there is no benefit to doing so.
Please remember that there is a difference between Truly Safe (a guaranteed auto-admit for stats) and Every Student Like You From Our High School Has Been Accepted So I Think It Is A Safety For You. Once human beings start reading the applications and expressing opinions about them there can be ugly surprises.
@SJ2727 Georgetown’s restricted in the sense that you are not allowed to apply ED. There is nothing stopping you from applying to UChicago and MIT as well EA, which are both schools @LeoMNY was interested in.
@blossom I never said that Brown wouldn’t want to accept a UFLI student who has worked extremely hard, or was comparing a student with legacy with a UFLI student (it’s also impossible to be a first-generation student AND an undergraduate legacy, furthermore the two applicants would likely be very different in terms of context and background.) I WAS comparing two applicants coming from similar backgrounds and applications BUT one of them having legacy, which can help choose between two otherwise similarly qualified applicants: if not, why would Brown, or any of the other Ivies, for that matter, state that they even consider legacy status on their website? However, geographic diversity does matter (according to the CDS,) which accounts for not every student coming from the NE prep-schools, but there are still plenty more students coming from there than most other public high schools in the nation, and many with legacy status.
For example, Harvard-Westlake, a top prep-school in LA, publishes a counseling handbook, starting on page 30, that splits admission rates by those with and without “distinctions (legacy, recruited athletes etc.”) Brown had 151 applicants with 27 admitted last year, but excluding those with distinctions, there are 115 applicants and just 10 admitted: more than 1/2 of those admitted had a distinction (and likely the majority’s legacy…I highly doubt that the majority of admitted students from Harvard-Westlake are being recruited to Brown, it’s just not possible unless they’re all sports super-stars.)
HW Counseling Handbook: https://students.hw.com/Portals/44/Handbook2021.pdf
Brown, like every T20, does have a focus on enrollment management: there’s a reason that yield rates are so important to the undergraduate admissions process. Furthermore, ED admits by percentage of the class increased to 48% from 46% last year with ~30 additional admits (this is assuming that every student admitted ED committed, though the actuality is that a few will withdraw from the ED commitment due to finances.)
Brown Class of 2024 ED Profile: https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-12-12/early
Brown Class of 2023 ED Profile: https://www.brown.edu/news/2018-12-13/admit
Again, whether or not you agree that Brown considers legacy status when considering between two SIMILAR BACKGROUND AND APPLICATION applicants is entirely YOUR opinion. I’ll also note that I, myself, am not a legacy at Brown or any other T20, but it’s pretty plain to see that legacies tend to have an advantage with all else equal (applying ED, I will note, maximizes this the most because those admitted to Brown RD tend to be cross-admitted to other Ivies/T20s and are especially strong candidates to begin with, without needing the ED and legacy bump as much.) @LeoMNY 's question is about his daughter’s application, and him being a graduate of Princeton means that she has the difficult choice to either wait and see what Princeton’s decision is in the Spring or potentially commit to Brown early.
Pretty decent list. Her strong language background rules out most liberal arts colleges, but Bryn Mawr is obviously a unique exception.
Toronto is considerably stronger in ancient studies than McGill, but you can’t go wrong with either.
Berkeley is a powerhouse for ancient studies in general, and Barnard has some great faculty of its own as well as cross-registration with Columbia. Tufts and BC have good albeit not superb programs. Brandeis also has a small but good program, and it’s long been one of the handful of schools to offer not only Hebrew but also other ancient Near Eastern languages.
Among the Ivies, I’d single out Harvard and Cornell if she’s interested in not only Greek and Latin but also Indo-European linguistics.
Tricky criteria even when looking at the highly selective schools, though Johns Hopkins and Penn come to mind immediately. Wash U, Emory, and USC are other possibilities among the selective private schools, though they’re not as strong in Classics. USC is one of the very few colleges that’s been actively expanding its humanities offerings, and it hired three (!) new tenure-track classicists a couple of years ago.
As you’ve noticed, it’s not easy finding strong Classics programs among less selective colleges. Florida State, Indiana U, and CU Boulder are less selective than the top public schools like Berkeley and Michigan and have very solid Classics programs, but they’re not the best fits for her other criteria. The suggestion of U Cincinnati earlier in the thread was an excellent one, although - like UT Austin - UC has traditionally been stronger in archaeology and Aegean prehistory than philology.
I agree with Blossom that the Jesuit schools like Fordham are well worth a look, and I’d add Villanova as well.
Yes, my opinion based on years of volunteering for the U, years of being briefed by regional adcom’s about “here’s what to highlight in your write-ups”, years of learning from other interviewers about what constitutes an exceptional candidate vs. another “nice kid with high stats”, years of attending welcome events for the HS kids in my region who were accepted, years of reading admissions summaries of “here’s who is coming and what we were looking for and how we are doing year-to-year vs. our long range strategy for the student body”.
Yield- I cannot recall a year where that was a priority. Perhaps in the early 80’s when the U was not on as strong financial footing as it is today. Legacy- a footnote in an interviewer’s write up at least since the early 90’s when it could still get a kid a third and fourth look.
So yes- my opinion.
Warblers- thanks for the reminder about Villanova.
Thank you very much for your thoughts. In particular, Fordham and Villanova seem like excellent choices that we missed.
Nope. Legacies aren’t particularly influential at Columbia admissions or Brown admissions UNLESS the parent has been exceedingly active in alumni affairs and institutional support.
Thank you all very much for your input and advice (particularly @PikachuRocks15, @happymomof1, @blossom, and @warblersrule). The application process has been a fascinating experience and I was amazed to find that the old saw that schools ‘know’ their applicants turned out to be true.
Of the schools listed in my original post (aside from BC to which my daughter decided not to apply) she ran the table. Almost all the schools she later added - seemingly peer schools - were waitlists or rejections. Just goes to show that admissions departments really do have a clue.
What a great bunch of options! Congrats to your daughter.
Congrats!!
@LeoMNY, we’re not even done for DD22 and are looking ahead to DD25! I searched college confidential for classics and came up with this thread.
So, good news, first - well rounded student As across the board at a competitive private school. She is interested in classics and math, and I thought maybe double majoring in classics and math may make her a more interesting candidate. She likes history as well, and is a good singer.
What schools would you suggest looking at?
With respect to your daughter’s dual interests in classics and math, these sites may be helpful:
From the included schools, Amherst, Hamilton and Brown may be worth additional consideration because of their notably flexible curricula.
I had the joy and despair of doing an extensive search for undergraduate programs in the classics looking at schools in the middle of the country from Montana to Tennessee. We visited a lot of schools and specifically met with classics faculty during visits which was interesting. Some programs which look better on their websites are not so great when you visit. We found some programs where professors would comment on their impending retirements and potential for consolidation or elimination of their programs. Others seemed to be just getting by and one wonders about the long-term viability as well as the quality of the student experience. I think in general, if you can afford the highly ranked schools you will certainly find stronger programs and more stability, but our search was based on full-sticker price college cost expectations due to unfortunate college financial issues. In a nutshell, I don’t think any rational person can justify paying over $300k for an T20 education in classics (or basically anything else), especially since there are basically no directly associated job prospects when one is done. However, since most classics grads are going on for other training, job placement is not typically a key outcome, but it seemed crummy for those schools which talked about it.
One surprising school which did not show up on any of these lists is Hillsdale. The school provides merit aid and some chance of employment within classics. The all-in full sticker price of $42k.
Hillsdale is impressive with their 7 faculty members in classics at a small school–I think 2 faculty were recruited in last year or two. Many students in the school come from classics high school backgrounds so latin/greek jokes can be shared outside one’s class since a broader part of the student body has the same background.
Finally, and possibly uniquely, they have held classics job fairs. Apparently, their graduates are highly regarded and are the primary recruitment targets for a number of k-12 classical academies. For most students, classics education is just a means to another end, whether it be graduate or law school, etc. However, at Hillsdale one can apparently have a good chance of a job with a classics degree which could be useful if one’s plans require a gap year or some transition time while getting on track for post-grad education or career planning. Apparently 60 schools attended the job fair, and other recruiters were turned away as there was even more interest. Not sure that says their program is great, but it must be doing something right.
Hillsdale is a unique school and not for everyone, but seems like a good place to consider if classics education is one’s goal. Another program which is surprisingly strong was Gustavus Adolphus with six faculty, but it was not clear if that program was on as strong of footing as other programs.
Another sleeper pick for high reputation, good classics and good merit is Depauw U. They seem to have a pretty strong faculty. If you have reasonable stats, the cost can be quite reasonable with their generous merit packages.
There are a few others to look at in the mid-tier if one needs merit, but it depends if one wants to double major (which creates its own logistics issues at a number of schools) as well as what one’s goals are for a classics education.
Thank you for your post. Hillsdale is out, for religious reasons.
It does seem that stability is a concern. Going through a brutal college admissions season right now with DD22 who wants to major in a highly desired major, I thought I would point DD25 in a different direction. She is a long way from figuring out career goals. It does seem that majoring in something you like and excel in, as well as a major that is struggling to recruit could work out well for DD25.
As I said before, A student across the board who loves math, history, Latin. Has not done competition math so that hurts her for applying to math. Engineering is a possibility but that’s the family trade (so not too interested).
Brown would be fantastic, of course, but now our job is to find 10 schools like Brown, with higher rates of acceptance!
My thoughts on job training - girls majoring in math with a minor in CS need not worry as to employability if schools are not hiring Latin teachers.