Reply #4 says that the student’s interests are economics and mathematics.
. . .and I don’t see Pitt or SCarolina being better fits than UW.
You’ve apparently already been considering Claremont-McKenna and CMS swim. I’ll mention that Harvey Mudd (the “M” in CMS athletics) has a distinctly higher acceptance rate for women than CMC does. Looking at the Common Data Set numbers over the last five years, it looks like the HMC acceptance rate for women has averaged perhaps about 24% – a lot higher than its overall acceptance rate nearer 13%.
HMC isn’t for everyone, but your daughter has the academic background, and it sounds like a possible peer group “fit”.
Take a look at all the top Liberal Arts Colleges - maybe the top 25. Also the “colleges that change lives” (some overlap there).
I have discovered that for high-stats students, there are no matches, only safeties and lotteries where their excellent grades and scores entitle them to a ticket to the lottery. Perhaps swimming will make a difference for your daughter though.
Good luck!
I think the first thing you need to figure out is her recruiting situation. Being actively recruited makes a reach school into a match.
Given OP’s daughter’s stats I would assume that she would have at least two 800s in SAT IIs, strong LORs and great essays too. Being STEM focused she should be a very competitive applicant at MIT, Caltech, Harvey Mudd and CMU where STEM girls typically would enjoy some admission advantage and also have world’s best economics and math departments. Keep in mind that at these top schools acceptance rate for girls is around 15%, far better than the single digit schools. Lots of posts on this forum sound too pessimistic. I happen to think that OP’s daughter has a great shot at these top schools. I know about half a dozen girls of similar profile who were accepted to MIT a few days ago this admission cycle. BTW, all of these schools are D III swimming, but coaches may not have total say in admission like in D I schools. I agree with others that the process of getting recruited needs to get started ASAP. As long as there is some good safety like UWash I don’t see any harm of aiming high.
Since you are west coast, I would seek EA schools with easy access to airports. I think it would be hard to walk back from a school she has fallen in love with. There are many terrific schools. DD fell in love with the Block system at Colorado College (intensive study of one course at a time) so when the EA acceptance came in, she breathed easy. I hope you are able to visit schools and get to where your daughter can envision herself being happy at a number of schools and also identify the qualities that appeal to her so she can further narrow the field.
I’d suggest that MIT is almost a “match” for the OP’s daughter. Not only girls have a much higher acceptance rate than boys as @jzducol has stated (up to 3x higher at these STEM schools), but strong athletics is almost a hook at MIT (unlike at Caltech). With very strong academics AND athletics, the chance of acceptance at MIT for a female applicant is very good.
@jmtabb I think you got some good advice here. I really don’t think target schools will reject her for being too qualified. There are plenty of kids who select a school for reasons other than top academics, like geography, affordability, arts or athletics, and they know it would be foolish to reject a high performing applicant. That said, I 100% agree with others who said that she needs to be convincing: writing a Why This School? essay that isn’t generic, doing an interview, etc. Target schools (in my neck of the woods we call them targets rather than match schools) can offer academic challenges to even the brightest students! My D isn’t quite as stellar as yours but she’s got an ACT 35, 3.95 uw GPA, all IB courses, AP calc BC score of 5 and then math taken at the local university for another 2 years, fluent in Japanese, black belt in Taekwondo, symphony violinist and really solid creative thoughtful essays. She just got rejected from Swarthmore. But she got accepted to St. Olaf which she views more as a safety school. They didn’t pass her up - instead they offered her a gigantic scholarship. There are also schools, like Rosered noted, that are highly ranked and respected but have much higher acceptance rates, like Smith, Brandeis, Macalester, Grinnell, Oberlin (we’re a bit small liberal arts-oriented so those are my examples) - as far as I can tell, part of what drives down the acceptance rates is being in a big city that is popular, like NY. It doesn’t actually mean that the applicant pool is more competitive. So there are these gems that are ranked very high and have excellent academics but aren’t in a big popular metro area and don’t have as many applicants so their acceptance rates are higher. My D may have gotten rejected from Swarthmore, but she got accepted to Smith which is ranked #12 and is a fantastic school - and has a 36% acceptance rate.
I agree with @jzducol. Hope those top schools on your list.
@PurpleTitan They may not be better fits, but OP initially stated that UW was out. Maybe that was just from a swimming perspective. I threw out Pitt and UofSC as safety options from both an admissions and financial perspective, with Pitt also having the advantage of being a highly regarded school that does rolling admissions.
Safety options specifically for DIII swimming might include SLU and Rollins. Sorry for staying East of the Mississippi (except for SLU). I’m not too familiar with the schools on the other side.
Has she looked at University of Rochester? I think it might check all the boxes you’ve mentioned.
Well, the good thing is that UW is a terrific safety. Have you checked into the Honors Program? Lots of perks like advance registration for courses, Honors housing, and the possibility of applying for a very well-funded, student-designed study abroad experience.
Frankly, I think your daughter will have many options and that she won’t be shut out entirely due to yield protection. If she ends up with a strong favorite that is affordable for your family, ED or SCEA/EDII might be worth considering.
I can’t speak to the swimming component, but for a life of the mind kid who finds intellectual abstraction fun, I can recommend U Chicago, Swarthmore, Wesleyan (reaches for all), Reed and Oberlin (probably solid matches).
Women’s colleges like Barnard/Smith/Wellesley/Bryn Mawr might also be worth pursuing, if she is open to the idea.
Best of luck!
@1NJParent,
“strong athletics is almost a hook at MIT”
That would depend on the sport at MIT, actually.
@PurpleTitan I’m not talking about being recruited for any sport at MIT. In recent years, MIT has favored academically strong athletes in general.
Mudd has a limited number of majors (but I think you can double major elsewhere) but yes, she should have it much easier at the top tech/STEM schools than their acceptance rate indicates.
Not counting JHU among them, but have they been mentioned? They are DivIII in everything but lacrosse.
All the UAA schools are DivIII (WashU, U of C, CMU, Emory, NYU, Rochester, etc.) if she wants non-LAC alternatives. NYU, Rochester, and of course the U of C are all strong in econ.
If you are looking for a strong D3 swim team with strong academics, I would look at Kenyon. Swimming at Kenyon is like football at a P5 school.
@1NJParent, care to mention in what sports they were athletes in?
On CC, you can find plenty of posters relay experiences of kids who were athletes and stellar academically but still rejected by MIT.
@PurpleTitan The cases of applicants that I’m familiar with have played in a variety of sports so it seems to me that the admission advantage is not specific to any sport.
Thanks all for your comments! Lots of schools have been mentioned, including a few that we are talking to coaches for already. But there are a bunch that are not on our radar yet that merit more attention in the coming days so you’ve all given us some food for thought.