Which program would she be applying to at McGill? Some of them won’t be safeties.
If she is looking for a collaborative environment, why not Brown? DS will be starting there in a week. His GPA was lower than your D’s.
If your D is thinking of Cornell, I suggest you visit soon. It is very different.
@bouders thanks for the heads up, she’s started looking at that. One of the challenges she has with schools like mcgill and cmu is that she has to pick her course of study before arriving. She’s not entirely sure she wants a pre-med program and she’s read medical schools are taking kids from other disciplines.
what schools at mcgill are competitive? My wife attended and her sense was that as long as you met the min entrance requirements, you were admitted.
I’m trying to keep myself from beating the Brown drum, but if she is not sure what she wants to major in, it would be a great place for her.
thanks @NYMomof2 , I’ll mention it to her, our school does place a student into brown every couple of years (unlike duke and dartmouth, at which we’re a combined 2 for 60). It’s mostly been off her radar, she loves schools with competitive sports/school spirit (hence the focus on duke, u mich and wisconsin) but is willing to consider other factors.
Congrats to your son on his acceptance!
Thank you - he applied ED and I was against it because I thought he had no chance. Most years there were 17-20 applications and 1 or 2 acceptances. He was admitted for good reasons that are not reflected in Naviance, but still there was a tremendous amount of luck. PM me if you want to know more. They do have sports and lots of school spirit.
Have you considered Wesleyan? DS and I both loved it. If she is considering medicine or science, I don’t think she could do better. And she would have a great chance of admission. But I don’t think they have much in the way of sports.
two issues with wes, it was her oldest brother’s ed choice and the rejection broke his heart, it might be a bitter pill to swallow to see his sister there. More importantly, she visited her other brother at Oberlin and lost patience with the what she characterized as over-the-top political correctness (“Hi, my name is Joe, and my pronouns are…”). She paints Wes with the same brush.
Funny, that’s DS’ biggest concern about college - and that same phrase was used. He’s quite liberal but thinks things have gone too far. She would definitely encounter that at Wesleyan. And I completely understand the issue with her brother. I know several kids who have had their hearts broken by Wesleyan.
@quietdesperation If your D is into college sports culture, Rochester might not be her cup of tea. Unless she’s really into squash, that is. (The very low-key approach to sports at UR was a huge plus for our daughter, but it sounds like it might be a negative for yours.)
Many years ago, Jeremy Piven (PBS’s “Mr. Selfridge”) had a breakthrough role as an ordinary college student caught up in the activist scene at a place clearly based on Wesleyan. The college has been wearing the phrase, “PCU” as a badge of honor ever since. You will still see perfectly normal people collecting signatures for unusual causes. There’s even a serious attempt at an alternative language regarding pronouns (“Ze” for “He” or “She”.) I’ve seen worse customs and traditions. Every year there are kids who return home from Harvard, dropping their "r"s, Yale men with a sudden passion for bow ties, and Princeton frosh with a penchant for tiger stripes. It doesn’t effect the rest of their lives.
UW OOS parent here – UW for an out of state student with her stats is a likely admit, but there are some cautionary notes. High stat kids tend to be the ones who get admitted rather than postponed in the first decision cycle, but she could be “postponed” and not get an acceptance/rejection decision until late March, which tends to drive some OOS families bonkers. A high stat OOS kid, who writes good essays and shows interest (signs up for mailings at a minimum, opens emails, checks portal) “should” be admitted, but there are some odd decisions which come out of massive application pools like those found at public flagships. I would be careful about removing too many “safeties” as there could be some risk of deferral or late decisions which would keep the pressure high in your household.
@circuitrider I thought pretty much as you did. But my son came back from Oberlin and complained that he had to filter everything he said, that he was called out in class by other students for offering an opinion on slavery because he was white, that people yelled at him for making mistakes with pronouns but when he asked why, he was told it wasn’t the yeller’s job to educate him. I thought this too will pass, and he was probably exaggerating. But then the New Yorker article came out http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/the-new-activism-of-liberal-arts-colleges lending credence to his complaints. And then he informed us he was thinking about a transfer, as were a lot of his friends. So at the least, I’m sensitive to my daughter’s complaints about what might be going on at Wes.
@Midwestmomofboys and @doschicos and everyone else, i’m getting a lot of feedback pointing to a top heavy list and that maybe our safeties are not really safeties. I have two ideas, the first is that if she doesn’t get into wisconsin or mich ea, she has to apply to two more safeties. The other is to have a frank talk with her about the real possibility she has to attend a safety and see if she wants to change the list.
@quietdesperation - I read the New Yorker article. Thank you for citing it. The author, a self-described millennial, seemed to go out of his way to interview every crazy person he could find on campus. It’s possible Oberlin has more crazy people than most places. It’s possible. Graduation rates are clue although not always dispositive. Here are the rates for Amherst, Wesleyan and Oberlin (six years after freshman enrollment):
Amherst - 95%
Wesleyan - 94%
Oberlin - 87%
Oberlin does seem a little low compared to other well-regarded LACs and this could augur high stress levels associated with problems at home, financial problems - and, yeah - being around too many crazy people.
Re: Oberlin. There are students who are enrolled in the conservatory getting music degrees, and are getting degrees from Oberlin College at the same time. In the vast majority of these cases, it takes five years to complete a dual degree with conservatory/college.
^But, the scores cited are for six year periods.
@circuitrider do they have a five year graduation rate cited? Bet not.
^What is your point?
@quietdesperation Life sciences is the most competitive at McGill:
http://www.mcgill.ca/applying/how-we-make-decisions/minimum-grades-used-admission-previous-years/unitedstates
Just a quick update, we visited wash u, she loved it and it’s displaced dartmouth as her number two school. She’s thinking through the conundrum of applying to duke ED, wash u RD and probably getting rejected at both vs. Wash U ED and having a decent chance of admittance at her number two school. I don’t envy her the decision.
Wash u LOVES ED students.
They have a MUCH higher chance of acceptance than RD applicants- most of whom [ thousands each year] get put on a wait list.