Help With Daughter's College List

Parents Forum
1

<p>My D is finishing her junior year at a suburban Chicago hs, after transferring from a highly regarded public school in the Cincinnati area. She is a B to B+ student (3.3 gpa), taking standard college prep classes with a few honors classes. She scored a 23 on the ACT with no prep, is now taking a prep class and will take the ACTs again next week.</p>

<p>Her areas of interest are Japanese and theater design. She took 2 1/2 years of Japanese in hs before transferring, took a two week summer class at Earlham after her freshman year, and will be going to Japan this summer through AFS. She founded her school's anime club and has her black belt in karate, although she is now continuing with tae kwon do.</p>

<p>She has been involved in the theater programs at both high schools. She is not interested in acting, but in design or production. She doesn't have a portfolio, and has no interest in a "conservatory" type theater program.</p>

<p>She has a variety of other ECs, including band and marching band, volunteer work at hospitals and soup kitchens and work after school.</p>

<p>She is interested in a small university or an LAC in a community with some critical mass (it doesn't have to be a big city, but should not be rural) where she can pursue both theater and Japanese, although she may not major in either. She's open to anywhere except the northeast. Finances are not an issue.</p>

<p>We've seen a number of schools of interest to her, including Wittenberg in Ohio and Valparaiso in Indiana. She liked Earlham although it felt somewhat isolated to her, and very much liked Beloit, although that is a reach for her at this point with her grades and test scores.</p>

<p>We're travelling to the West Coast to look at some schools in Oregon and Washington state before she leaves for Japan, although these too may be reaches for her (Lewis & Clark, Willamette and Puget Sound, as well as Pacific U.) We've also identified a range of schools, such as North Central and Lake Forest in the Chicago area, Carthage in Wisconsin, Redlands and UOP in California and Guilford in North Carolina, that she might consider.</p>

<p>I'd appreciate any thoughts you might have on additional schools to consider.</p>

2

<p>I don't think a strong student ( and yes I consider B average strong - that is still better than average unless the school has total grade inflation)- would have a huge problem with good recommendations and essays getting into the nortwest schools you mentioned</p>

3

<p>I have a friend studying Japanese at St. Olaf. I don't know how good the program is, but it's not too far from the Chicago area and might be worth a look.</p>

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<p><a href="http://www.mills.edu/academics/undergraduate/asst/degree_requirements.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.mills.edu/academics/undergraduate/asst/degree_requirements.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Great location.....cross registration with Berkeley.</p>

5

<p>Wittenberg University in Springfield OH has a fantastic East Asian Studies program. I may be incorrect, but I believe Earlham is also strong.</p>

6

<p>You might want to check out Elon University. I know that they have a very active theater program and also have Asian/Pacific studies with Japanese and Chinese. It is a beautiful campus, great size school (about 5000), only about 1/3 of students are from NC. We had a great experience there, though son was not in those majors. It has a good location---about 30min to Chapel Hill, 30min to Wake, a little longer than that to Duke.</p>