Help Needed Making College LIst

College Search & Selection
1

Hello,

My daughter is a junior and we recently had a meeting with her college counselor and are concerned about the list of colleges we walked away with. We are not sure the ones she gave us as matches are really achievable, so I was hoping to get some feedback from some experienced people!

My daughter attends a catholic girls hs in northern nj. Here are her stats:

Avg weighted gpa: 3.9
avg unweighted gpa: 3.7
ACT superscored: 30

courses: all honors and 2 APs. will have taken 4 years of honors spanish, english, history and math. 2 years of cp science and 1 yr of AP (environ science) and 1 yr of AP pyschology
APs are not offered in her school until jr year, but she is not the kid who has taken 2 or 3 per year, just 1.

ECs: National Honor Society
Traffic Safety Squad
Spanish Club
Eagle Ambassador for her school
Volunteers every sat teaching Austic children to swim and coaching the special olympics swim team
Club and HS Varisty Swim Team all 4 years
summer service trips
volunteer teaching religious ed to elementary school children
paid summer job teaching swim lessons + volunteer to teach less fortunate

She is unsure of what she wants to major in, so we are thinking of a LAC school.

She would like to continue swimming in college at a D3 (slow D3) or club level if possible, but not mandatory. Does not want the commitment of a D1.

Here is her wish list:

medium size school (under 10,000 undergraduates)

location: not rural, wants to be able to see civilization and possibly walk to something. Our only restriction is we do not want her on the west coast. Prefer the northeast, mid atlantic, or the southern states (NC, SC, VA), but we are open to anywhere.

school spirit: she would like a school with spirit, where she can attend events and have a college experience. She spends all her time now studying and at swim practice, and she wants to find a college with a balance. She wants to be challenged academically, but also wants to have a college experience attending events and having some fun.

greek life: would like the option to join a sorority.

Anyone have any thoughts on some colleges that we should have on our list as good matches/targets?

Thanks so much in advance!!

2

Budget? What is affordable to your family?

3

not sure yet, but we have a college fund so I am told that we should leave that out of the equation for now:)

4

sorry, forgot to include the colleges:

Reach:
Wake forest
Univ of RIchmond

Match
Conn College
Emory
Rhodes
Bucknell
Lafayette
Gettysburg

Thoughts on if these are reachable and matches based on her stats, and if there are any others we should add?

5

Bucknell has a slightly lower admit rate than the two “reach” schools, so not sure where counselor was coming from there. I think they are all in the “match to reach” range, no one stands out as being exceptionally easier or more difficult to get in. Bucknell is division I for swimming and in as small a town as any other school listed. That being said; there is a walk-able downtown area with shops, restaurants, movie theater, bus trips & bus service to NYC, Phila and DC; decent school spirit (M/W basketball teams in NCAA tourney this year); active greek life (rush sophomore year) and plenty of on campus activities, clubs to join. I’d suggest visiting as many of these schools as possible. I remember how their opinion of a school (good or bad) could be cemented by a visit, so the leg work early on will save time and expense later on applications, CSS profile forms, etc.

6

DS has similar stats (a bit higher class rigor and a bit lower ACT) and received acceptances from, in no particular order, F&M, Dickinson, Lafayette, Union, Sewanee, UVM, and Hobart. Conn sounds like a good option. Skidmore might work too. Bucknell, Lafayette, and maybe Emory seem a bit more reachy than matchy to me (don’t know enough about the others) but her CC should have a reasonable perspective on this. What are her “likely” schools?

7

A few thoughts on the list.
Emory is definitely a reach school.
Gettysburg and Rhodes would be the most likely on the list. The others are a match based on stats fitting in the mid 50, but due to their fairly low acceptance rates, you can’t bank on any of them. Definitely check naviance from your school though. That would be a good predictor.
Most on the list are D1, so if she wants to swim, they may not work for her.

8

@avalon4502

My daughter is a HS senior and is now in the final process of choosing which college she would like to attend in the Fall. We are also from northern NJ and she is undecided about her major. We looked at small LACs and small universities within a 3 hour radius and wanted something in the 2,500-6,000 total undergraduate population range. Since she is undecided, we felt that a school on the higher side of the size range would offer her more opportunities to find a major she would like.

Two of the school that foot the bill are Marist and University of Scranton. We especially liked Univ. of Scranton because they actually have three different “undecided” tracks so that you would not fall too far behind meeting the core requirements and seemed to be very supportive of first year students. The also seemed to place a great emphasis on preparing their students for getting a job after they graduate. Their website tells you the the exact stats you’ll need in order to qualify for different levels of merit scholarships. Their women’s swim team is D III whereas Marist’s is D 1. The acceptance rate for U of Scranton is something like 75% but we did not feel in any way that it was an indication of a lower quality of education. Their students were also very much involved in volunteer work within the local community. When we first started our search U. of Scranton was not even on our radar, primarily because it was in a city and we did not want to be in a city. We decided to visit it while vacationing in the Poconos and were very much surprised by everything we saw. It had a beautiful campus IMO and did not feel like it was in a city. Yet downtown Scranton was just a few blocks away and there are plenty of things to do in the region. This is now in the top three of D’s choices. I also want to mention that Scranton is a Catholic (Jesuit) school but that there are only a minimal number of required religious courses.

We used bigfuture.com to develop our list of schools to research. We felt it was much more user friendly than Naviance as you could easily tweek different search parameters and change the display order of the results based on your own preferences.

9

@avalon4502

I think this is bad advice… why let your kid get excited about schools that are unaffordable. Is this your first college student? Prices are not what they used to be! It’s better to set a clear budget - what you are willing to pay each year out of savings/529/current paycheck or whatever, and what you might be willing to take out in loans (or not) if she were to get in to a particular school.

I’ll try to pop back in later on the actual list! :slight_smile:

10

I agree that finances/cost are an important part of selecting schools.

FYI Scranton does not have Greek life.

Also, I found that our schools naviance was more accurate than collegedata or other sites. Our high school is competitive and the avg gpa on naviance was much lower than online.