<p>So I really want to go into English, I want a recognized school not an obscure one. One with a swim team preferably division 2 that is coed or has a girls team. Also I was hoping for theater clubs as well. Also four year housing would be preferable, so any schools with these requirements.
Also looking at UK and Canadian schools as well,
not like Harvard or oxford I have an 93 GPA soo yea</p>
<p>Nationally recognized programs for English immediately bring to mind Kenyon and Hamilton, but what are your other stats (SAT/ACT, leadership positions at school newspaper, literary review, poetry publication…?)</p>
<p>Have yet to take the SAT im taking it in April as I am a junior just looking for colleges. I was a semi finalist in the Eber and Wein national poetry competition, I’m a junior editor of the yearbook, I have been published in every issue of my school’s literary magazine since sophomore year, also I’m vice president of drama club, captain of swim team, and planner of a big philosophy club conference we have every year with 32 other schools.</p>
<p>Kenyon for sure, also Emory or Emory’s oxford college. Another option would be bucknell.</p>
<p>Denison is right up there with Kenyon and has slightly lower admission standards (and is test optional).</p>
<p>I applaud your desire to major in English, and in preparation for it I suggest you continue to read widely. In addition to your schoolwork you should have a list of books you want to read before you go to college and a schedule for the completion of the list. Stick to it, 15 minutes, or whatever you can afford, every single day. Don’t go to bed without having done it. If you do you will be way ahead of your classmates; many will be English majors because they didn’t know what else to do but they wanted to be lawyers. they will not have read anything nor will they have much interest in reading–sad to say. I’m sure that’s not true of the English majors on this list. As you’re reading broadly, learn to find problems in the literature, in the words on the page, not in the authors or other contextual elements. Who cares if the work suggests the author harbored a deep-seated animus for his mother? Instead, find mother hatred in the work and write about that if doing so makes the work breathe. </p>
<p>I also suggest you consider taking some computer graphics courses and familiarize yourself with all the major softwares for writing, editing, photoshop, and design. Learn to put up web pages and create blogs–and troubleshoot them. Being something of a wizard around both pcs and macs and their softwares won’t hurt. If you choose to become a writer, have some skills that will enable you to pay the bills until the first national runner-up notification comes in. Think of writing then very broadly, not just in terms of what you love to do.</p>
<p>A bunch of those midwest LACs are known for their writing programs. A couple more are Centre College and College of Wooster. Sewanee is another. Some will offer minors or majors in creative writing or in writing in general. Learn to read, write, speak, and think and you’ll have some skills that can lead you to the good life. I apologize for rambling on, but it’s a subject dear to me.</p>
<p>Kenyon and Dennison are both great suggestions for English and for swimming. They are both D3 programs but very strong programs - depends on what your swim times are like. They typically look for at least one junior nat cut.</p>
<p>jkeil, just wanted to say that you made a highly passionate speech that moved me. I love English and writing for their own sake too.</p>
<p>I don’t know anything about swimming programs, but any elite or highly-selective LAC will have a very good English Department, as will top universities, such as the University of Chicago. I gather you are a female, so don’t overlook the top women’s colleges. When I was at Wellesley, the English faculty included three well-known poets: Robert Pinsky, David Ferry, and Frank Bidart. Look for departments that offer specific literature courses, not a lot of surveys. Look at the course listings and number of professors. For example, I looked at the catalog for Juniata, a respectable LAC with perhaps a more vocational focus, and found that the English Department was heavy in things like business writing, not literature.</p>
<p>It’s time to have the money talk with your parents. You’ll need specific information from them that they’ve probably not wanted to share with you, heretofore, because you’re going to need to run the online net price calculators (that’s what they’re called) on several of these schools to get a ballpark understanding of what the colleges will expect your parents to pay. Then you’ll need to find a school that with what your parents want to pay and what you yourself can take in loans ($5000/yr for an English major could be the high end) you will be able to afford. Chances are you won’t find one easily; there will be a gap between what the most schools’ net price calculators say you and your parents’ will pay (called the Expected Family Contribution) and what you want to pay. </p>
<p>So keep the LACs in mind, the ones recommended here, but also look at your state schools and run the NPCs on them, too. Many students have to start out at a community college and thus make the first two years of college less expensive; they they try to transfer to a state school. Until you know this financial information and figure out how to pay that EFC, none of your desires for this or that school mean much. Colleges will sometimes advertise that they want everyone to be able to afford [an elite school], but they’re not going to be the ones to make that possible. Oh, maybe for a few athletes or highly gifted applicants or maybe even a few students who have known crippling poverty, but for most families the schools won’t be the ones making it happen. Families will have to assume tens of thousands of dollars in debt for each child. </p>
<p>I’m neither bitter nor pessimistic. I know nothing of your financial or parental situations; I don’t know if you can earn an athletic scholarship; I don’t know if you’re a URM or a Gates Millenial Scholar; I don’t know if you’ll pull down a 2400 on the SAT. (I do know that your GPA suggests you’re not Albert Einstein or Marie Curie, and that is nothing to be ashamed of). And I do know that what I’ve told you about money is true for the large majority of families when they try to send their children to college. Still, most children who want to go to college, at least for the next few years, seem to find ways to make it happen–usually by pulling in their sails and charting a less ambitious course.</p>