OP- as others have said- this list is too reach heavy and not enough matches and safeties. You have to remember that for many of the schools on your list, the colleges have already filled a lot of spots with the ED/EA students and athletic recruits. Plus your DD wants to study STEM-that is a more popular area so there is more competition. I would be very nervous if my DD was applying with the same list. I second the CTCL schools. I also suggest you look at Miami of Ohio-very nice campus, considered a “public ivy” and they give good merit. However the merit scholarship deadline may have been the EA application deadline I would check the scholarship deadline. Baylor gave my STEM girl good merit money this year, but the invites for the scholars events has already gone out so there may not be as much merit-you would have to check with admissions. The fact that you DD hasn’t been accepted anywhere yet makes me nervous since all of my students have at least 4 acceptances with good merit under their belt already while they wait for their reach schools or the SCEA/ED’s have gotten their acceptances. Whittle down the list since it is better for quality than quanitity. Also remember interviews-my DH interviews for Haverford in California and he has already done 4 interviews in the ED round. Also look into living communities or special programs since they may be avenues for additional merit. Both my children were in special living communites or honors program and benefited from it.
Does your DD have the UC guarantee and if so would she be happy attending the less popular UC’s on her list since those are usually the UC’s used for the guarantee. Plus the UC’s just released their application numbers and it is the biggest pool of applicants-102K just for UCLA!! For the CSU school you mentioned, did you check to see if there is any geographic limitation or whether the STEM major is impacted? I have had students in STEM from CA with a gpa over 3.5 get turned down by some of the CSU’s so don’t necessarily assume they are safeties. I have had a hard time getting a good read on the UC’s and CSU for some of my students in the past three years (we are in CA too).
I am sorry if I am stressing you out, but every year on CC we see students in April with lists similar to your DD’s upset because they didnt’ get into any of those colleges or only one college and have very little options.
What can you actually pay? Do you have any of the situations listed in earlier posts that might throw off the NPC numbers? She needs at least one school she is pretty sure to get into that you KNOW you can afford.
A school that costs a little less and gives merit include Lawrence.
Also, just to be sure you know, merit and need based aid won’t stack at many of these schools. Merit would just replace need based aid at many of them. So your cost of attendance doesn’t change unles the merit is bigger than the need based components.
Lesson for anyone reading the thread and just starting out, it is best to run NPCs before arranging visits.
Agree with the others that none of the schools on your private list could ever be regarded as a “safety” – but I’ll give you a pass on that given the comprehensive list of UC applications. I think you or your daughter have a jaded and stereotypical view of life on a UC campus — it reflects the worst stereotypes but not day-to-day reality for most UC undergrads.
In any case, regardless of preference, it doesn’t make much sense to hunt around for safeties that are likely to be less academically challenging but far more expensive than a plain-vanilla UC. The UC will seem a whole lot smaller by the time sophomore year rolls around.
If the apps aren’t already in, I’d suggest trimming the list based on the NPC result - no point in applying to a college that is going to be unaffordable.
As a prospective STEM major, is your daughter potentially available for STRIDE at Smith?
Colleges where her STEM interest goes against “type” and which also offer merit money or preferentially package their aid might award stronger packages if her STEM interest & credentials are strong. (Credentials means simply that her professed interest is backed up by academic record – for example, top grades in AP classes in math & science, participation in STEM-oriented EC’s. )
Let your daughter know NOW, before admissions decisions are in, what your bottom line is financially. That will save a lot of grief later on.
@BobShaw sorry about Hofstra…that was another poster.
In post 17 you list a lot of costs to attend a lot of colleges. Can you pay for your kiddo to attend these? In addition to being reaches…only three give merit aid…at all. That merit aid is highly competitive to receive.
What is YOUR budget per year??
You are. CA resident…no instate publics on that lengthy list? Why?
Another who agrees that your D’s list is way too top heavy.
Also remember as @intparent mentioned upthread, the merit and the need basis aid are not stackable.
If you have a financial need of $20,000 and you get the $10,00 Strides Scholarship, you will now only have a $10,000 need. THe school is not going to meet your need of 20k and then give you a 10k merit scholarship on top.
What are her stats, perhap we ca =n offer up some suggestions where she can still be a viable candidate for merit $$.
I agree with the other posters who think that this list is really top heavy in terms of reaches and super-reaches. If she really likes LACs I would suggest looking at Whitman, Puget Sound, and Wilammette in the PNW. She could be eligible for merit (highly likely at the last 2). Also, I’d run the NPCs and cut that list by what will be unaffordable even with an acceptance. We’ve seen kids with lists like this get in to only their public safety, and also kids who managed to get in to a long list of great colleges that they cannot attend due to costs.
And you don’t think Stanford and Harvard are big, cutthroat, and somewhat impersonal? I think any school can be, but it is also possible to get to know your professors in a bigger school too. I have one in a ~3500 school and one in a ~10k undergrad school, and they both know their professors and interact with classmates. I would feel claustrophobic at any school that was under 5000, and while the catalog may list 14 art history classes and 6 languages taught in a small LAC, it is unlikely those courses are all offered every semester or even every year.
My kids have never had a problem getting into a class. Sometimes it takes going to an adviser to get off the waitlist or showing up for the first few classes and waiting for a spot to open, but there are ways to insure you get the classes you need. If it were such a huge problem to get classes, UCLA and Cal wouldn’t have anyone graduate in 4 year, and each school has thousands that do.
I agree your daughter has to cut the list by at least half. If she’s already applied to 3-4 UC/CSU’s, I’d think that another 5 schools would be plenty. Is she really going to go to Grinnell over Cal? Would she be just as happy at Scripps as Smith?
@MYOS1634 , I hear you. I realize that these schools are all very competitive. It is true that there are a lot of talented, highly qualified students out there. The process also feels somewhat arbitrary, given ethnic, gender, and racial balancing as well as factors such as legacy status. Some universities have been drawing flak for their perceived admissions practices, and none of these schools are transparent about their “holistic” (ha ha) admissions criteria. This increases fear and anxiety among applicants and their even more stressed-out parents. However, this is a game of probability, calculated risks, gut instinct, and taking a leap of faith. I am confident but pragmatic, and at the risk of sounding immodest, I can assure you that based on quantitative and qualitative criteria, my D has a good shot of getting into at least one of these schools. I don’t know much about financial aid, but I know that she is at the top end of the applicant pool. For her, it will boil down to the essays and what each college wants in the entering class. If she can’t sell herself on her application, she’ll learn one of life’s most important lessons. Besides, although rejection letters are demoralizing for anyone, all she needs is that one acceptance letter. For someone intending to go to graduate or professional school, undergraduate college is not the most important decision in life. And she has affordable yet exceptional backups: our state colleges. The UCs are meritocracies, for the most part.
Regarding the schools you name specifically, please don’t add anymore to her list or I will shoot myself! :-/
St. Olaf is a school still formally affiliated with a Christian church (Evangelical Lutheran Church?), so it was not under consideration. But they do have an excellent music program. She LOVED their neighbor, Carleton. Northfield is a nice place.
I did suggest Whitman, but it is a bit remote and somehow never made it on to the list.
Here’s what I heard about Reed: great school, high placement rate into Ph.D. programs, excellent research opportunities. However, it is reputed to have a difficult grading policy. Even though they don’t normally publish your grades, they are required to on the transcript that goes to grad schools. And then, surprise!!! Anyway, that was our perception, flawed or not, so we didn’t waste anymore time on it. We have more than enough to work with.
We don’t know anything about Agnes Scott, Denison, Clark, or Lawrence. Unfortunately, it’s too late in the game to learn.
It really isn’t. But you are convinced that it is, so probably not worth discussing further. It is NOT too late to learn about a few of the schools mentioned and put in an application. Run the NPC on Lawrence, have your kid look at the website, and the application is pretty quick. They don’t require a full essay, just a few sentences on why she is interested. You want your kid to have choices in the spring, and there is time to learn more before May 1 if she gets in and they are affordable.
agree with those urging you to apply to a few lower tier LACs. Based on your description of her strength as an applicant, there are good schools that would compete for her by offering merit scholarships. Willamette and Whitman have been mentioned. Those would be good backups so she is assured of admission to an LAC. Plus, from CA you could visit either one in a day if she’s admitted. Yes, the UCs are great backups. But if she wants an LAC why wouldn’t you want her (and your bank account) to have a range of options?
Majors are impacted so that the number of students in the major do not overflow the department’s capacity. Of course, sometimes a student has to take the 8am course or the one with the less preferred instructor.
I would say that for me too it was a shock to realize that the costs vary so much, even with pretty much the same tuition and my finances pretty simplified. Wellesley was twice the cost of Smith for example according to the NPC.
You can’t stack merit and financial aid. Any scholarships received will reduce the amount of financial aid received, not your costs. And for many of the schools on your list there is limited merit aid because most applicants are outstanding.
But it isn’t. If admissions is a game, it is a game that involve some skill in targeting schools in a way that both maximizes chances for an affordable financial aid package, and also maximizes likelihood of admission.
On the financial aid end, you’ve already realized the problem you face – obviously you are running against colleges who weight your home equity differently.
Here’s a tip: your opinion as to your home value may not be the same as the schools. The reason my daughter got a more generous aid package from Barnard than other private schools is that Barnard used the federal housing price index to determine value --not current market rates. As I had lived in my California home for many years – I bought the house the same year my DD was born – that worked in my favor. The federal index is a projection based on the home purchase price and the average rate of real estate appreciation nationwide – but I had no idea until I had the financial aid award in hand that the college chose to use that measure.
But bottom line, colleges that meet 100% need using so-called institutional methodology are highly formulaic – but each college uses its own set of rules The more you know about the rules, the better you can predict likely aid. The way to find out the rules is to have a conversation with an experienced person on the college financial aid staff – and they are very busy people. But certainly you can ask questions.
Your problem is that your daughter’s list is unwieldy, making it far more difficult to arrange the kind of communications that you really should have been initiating months ago.
As to admissions: there is something that makes your daughter special. It is something about her interests or talents or goals or personality that makes her different from other applicants. Getting accepted to a competitive college is about figuring out what the difference is, successfully conveying that in an application, and applying to colleges that will value that difference. I’m sure you’ve heard the rather clichéd example of the college orchestra in need of an oboe player – but it is more complex than that.
However, the college list you presented is far too long for me to get a “read” on what your daughter might be looking for in a school – which in turn suggests to me that neither you nor your daughter has spent much time figuring out the “why” part of college applications – why does she want one school over another, and (more important)-- why should each school choose her over the many other qualified applicants they have to consider.
I’d strongly suggest that your daughter narrow that list down to 6 or 8 college at most.
You may be correct that your daughter is a strong enough applicant that most of the LAC’s on her list are good bet for admission – but sometimes in the spring admission results can be harsh. There is a risk in having a too-perfect academic profile but a profile that simply doesn’t come alive to admissions readers - that looks as if it is interchangeable with hundreds of other well-qualified applicants.
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And for many of the schools on your list there is limited merit aid because most applicants are outstanding.
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Very true. Merit cannot be counted on from those schools. These schools have all top students. Merit is often used to either poach tippy top students away from Ivies (the resumes are that good) or to target certain students that help with their ethnic or diversity numbers.
We have been to both.