Huge differences between FAFSA EFC and individual college Net Price Calculator EFC numbers

Paying for College
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OP here. Wow, this is better than Facebook! I love it. This is the first discussion thread I have started on CC. Okay, everyone thinks I am delusional. Maybe I am, but there is a method to my madness. First of all, after studying all the information posted on this forum and crunching numbers, I have figured out how much we can afford and/or are willing to pay. I do know how merit scholarships work and am assuming she won’t get any. I just listed it for people who might be interested in the information, for reference. Based on my spreadsheet of EFCs and NPCs, we are eliminating the schools that won’t give us much money. Luckily, most of her favorites are more affordable after financial aid (but not necessarily the least expensive in sticker price).

Now the larger question of my sanity and school selection. The listed privates are the only ones I am willing to go into serious debt for, given that we have the UCs. She will be fine at all of these schools. They will all give her a well-rounded liberal arts education and allow her to explore different subjects in natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities before settling on a major - probably something interdisciplinary, like History of Science, or Ethics and Society, or Cognitive Science. All schools will give her the four Rs: reputation, rigor, resources, and recruiting, albeit to different degrees. However, she has a better idea of what she wants in a school than what many of you are assuming, and she has her favorites. When she hits “submit”, the final list will consist of schools that meet her criteria AND our financial needs. You should see her spreadsheet of pros and cons. I am not stressed at all.

Some of you missed my post where I stated that she has already applied to seven UCs and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. She is guaranteed to get into a UC, and will most probably get into one she applied to (there are two less competitive ones she didn’t apply to). They all cost less than our Federal EFC, and they’re all good. They don’t use that CSS Profile thing.

Okay, I dislike the concept of publicly “chancing” my daughter on CC, but it looks like I will forever be labeled the Lunatic of CC, so please tell me if I am guaranteed months of crying come April:

  • Graduated from one of the highest-ranked public high schools in the nation. Translation: it is hard. I will not name it because some of you will immediately know where we live, who our neighbors are, and start to make more assumptions about her without knowing her.
  • Doing interesting things during her gap year in progress. These are not generic, pay-for-international-gap-year-experience activities. By the way, this also means that the colleges will immediately receive her full academic transcript, including senior year. She’s done, she’s more mature, and she is champing at the bit.
  • 4.00 standard/ 4.6 weighted GPA (due to college classes taken concurrently junior and senior years, not AP classes, therefore no AP exams). Their school doesn’t rank students or name a valedictorian.
  • 35 ACT Composite (36, 35, 35, 35, 10/12 Writing, one sitting). 99th Percentile on SAT II Subject Tests including 800 on Math II. It’s pathetic that they even look at these. I hate standardized tests. They say nothing about a student. They’ve built quite a lucrative industry around this (and college admissions). Bowdoin, Wesleyan, and a couple of others don’t require these, but she submitted them anyway since they’re decent scores.
  • A handful of extracurricular activities demonstrating long-term dedication to a few areas of genuine passion, with county, state, national, and international recognition. She was committed, but not spread out too thin.
  • Excellent interviews. I am a biased dad, but she has a great personality, confidence, and ability to articulate her thoughts. With one exception, she also had wonderful interviewers she clicked with.
  • Most importantly, she has a story to tell through her essays. I have read them. They are not cliched. She has something special to offer any college community. She is a thoughtful, humble, compassionate, unselfish person who tries to share her positive energy with everyone she meets and has devoted much of her time to social justice and activism. She works hard, and will go out of her way to help anyone who needs it. Whether these qualities and her story get through will be determined by those who read her applications. I know that she’s done her best.
  • Finally, here’s the truth: she is a legacy applicant at one of the schools. It makes the impossible slightly more probable at that school.

Bottom line is this: I believe one of these schools will want this girl as part of their community, and we will do everything in our power to pay for it. Our kids are our highest financial priority. In the worst-case scenario, if NOBODY accepts her, even from a waitlist, there is always a path forward in California: community college and transfer to Berkeley after two years. See, life isn’t so bad. :slight_smile:

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Your daughter is definitely getting into UC’s. She has the stats, she is guaranteed a spot, and her stats are good enough for the top UC’s so even though Berkeley/UCLA are a bit more iffy… she’s pretty much in. But she’s in.

The additional info you provided does shape up her chances at the privates – gap year is extremely valuable, especially if she has been doing good things with it. There are still some colleges that will appreciate her gap year / EC’s more than others-- depending on how much her activities resonate with the college’s concept of the type of student they want to attract. Keep in mind that part of the RD decision process involves yield protection - the colleges don’t want to to admit students who are unlikely to attend. The LAC’s will know that a student with your daughter’s stats is going to get admitted elsewhere - so if the impression gleaned from the application is something like “great student, not-so-great fit” … they’ll often pass simply because they think the student is unlikely to attend. There’s no right or wrong there, just that some human being will spend roughly 10 minutes reading through the app file and form a quick impression.

I’m sure that many of the schools will want your DD as part of their community… but given that cost is a factor, it’s also important to identify which of the ones most likely to grant generous financial aid that might end up being.

Legacy unfortunately does not mean much these days at most schools. Some schools explicitly won’t even consider it. But that info is usually listed in the admissions section of the common data set (section C7, where they list factors considered and relative importance of each)

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@blossom :


[QUOTE=""]
OP- this looks like a very challenging process to manage. Tell me about it.

Beware of “specific reasons” since invariably it comes back to bite you. Kids think they need to major in Bioengineering or International Relations or Museum Studies or whatever. This is false. A kid can major in good old fashioned/plan vanilla Mechanical Engineering and Political Science and Art History (or whatever) and come out with the same degree with the same course of study as their counterpart at a college which offers the same degree but with a better name.

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That’s not her situation at all. The reasons I speak of are different. For example, some of these East Coast universities are not far from her grandma’s house. She doesn’t want to be too far from family, even across the country, if she has a choice. Some combine the benefits of a research university with a higher-than-average emphasis on undergraduate education. Good student:faculty ratios too.


[QUOTE=""]
Before you go whole hog on this huge list (plus the colleges she's already applied to- oh my gosh) I'd make sure you aren't slicing the bologna too thin. I'm not being critical- but she can only attend one college and this looks like a monster list even if you cut it in half.

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Like everyone is saying, the odds appear to be against her, in spite of her background. I’m not saying we’re doing this, but why not apply to all of them? Increase the odds. Then she will be free to choose later, if she has the good fortune of being accepted. Wouldn’t that be logical? However, it’s a waste of application fees, and besides, she has her favorites.


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And I'm not seeing the "match" type colleges unless she'd be happy to attend one of her safeties and you can afford it.

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Well, we shall see.


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Which STEM discipline is she interested in and what happens if/when she changes her mind which most college kids do at least once????

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She can change her mind as many times as she wants until it’s time to declare a major. That’s the point of a liberal arts college, even one within a larger university (which several of them are).


[QUOTE=""]
And recognize that grad school for a doctorate will be paid for by the school. If she gets admitted without funding, that is the universe telling her that she's not good enough to be in a PhD program. So move the financial issues around grad school aside. If you are looking at professional school-- different can of worms. But the majority of students in professional schools are indeed financially independent of their families and find a way to pay for it, work for a few years, get an employer to pay, etc.

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True, but our philosophy is to support our kids all the way through. Something our parents couldn’t afford to do, even at the beginning. We need to look at the big picture. Life is a marathon, not a sprint.


[QUOTE=""]
So I'd be very focused on trimming the list to a manageable and affordable set.....

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Yup, exactly. Thanks for the feedback.

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@itsv :


[QUOTE=""]
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.<<

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Yes, we have taken ED/EA into account. The acceptance rates are ridiculously low. She’ll give it her best shot. Remember, if the RD acceptance rate is x%, and x does not equal 0, she has a shot. I took a chance many years ago, and it paid off. Got into all of my schools. What if I had decided not to apply because of the acceptance rates? They say nothing about WHO is applying. They are artificially low.


[QUOTE=""]
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.<<

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That remains to be seen, and remember, these schools don’t require you to declare a major during application. Most go in “Undecided”. She can do whatever she wants, as far as I’m concerned, provided she has a path to a stable income some day.


[QUOTE=""]
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.<<

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Don’t worry too much. I’m not. :slight_smile:


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Whittle down the list since it is better for quality than quanitity.<<

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Working on it.


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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.<<

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She did all the interviews that are allowed before applications are submitted. She liked Haverford, but I think you meant Pennsylvania, not California. For others, alumni interviews will be scheduled post-application. Some don’t interview for admissions, e.g., Williams and Amherst.


[QUOTE=""]
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).<<

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Based on her stats, yes. Guaranteed a UC. I posted her stats in another entry. Take a look and tell me if you see any red flags. STEM is always impacted, but she is not going into engineering, so Cal Poly SLO is not as difficult for her. She applied for Physics followed by Applied Mathematics there. No point going to Cal Poly for humanities. Their architecture program is great, but she’s not interested. I would be. :slight_smile:


[QUOTE=""]
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.<<

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She won’t be upset. As strong as her background is, she is paranoid. She assumes that no one in the world will accept her, but she’ll get in somewhere and we’ll make it happen financially.

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@intparent and @politeperson : Okay, Whitman. I’m listening. Tell me more. It keeps coming up, and like I said, it has come up in my mind. Just didn’t make the list because there were already so many great schools! So first of all, they have merit aid you say? But we can’t count on that. I have no idea who they give merit scholarships too, quite frankly. Secondly, I do know they want diversity on campus, and we are…ethnic. Maybe they’ll want to attract her for that. There were some racist incidents a few years ago on campus, or so I heard from an Asian American alum. Is it a more diverse and accepting environment today, I wonder. I guess that can happen anywhere, in this age of Trump, so why pick on them? Finally, they will not be getting transcripts etc. by the application deadline. School is closed right now. Will that matter, or do they have a grace period for supporting documentation? I need to look into these things.

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@calmom and @ucbalumnus : Do you think she has a shot at the Regents Scholarship? That’s merit-based, isn’t it? Or is her record not good enough, given the level of competition? Thought you might have some historical insight.

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For top privates, it’s not all about her stats, some showcase activities, and how strongly family and friends love and respect her.

It will hinge on her application and supps…and you’re willing to let her endure maybe 20 of those?

Admits to top privates hinge on how an applicant comes across to them. Each has a sense of its identity (and the realities,) its values, what attributes work best there- what they want.

You have any real idea what that is, the differences between what, say, Rice, Carleton, and Yale look for? So she can do her darndest on her presentation to each?

Don’t scoff at holistic.

Back to the original question: each college has its own FA formula, policies, and its own available resources . Before the NPCs were available, many of us saw around a 30-35% net price over the Fafsa EFC. Sometimes more. Don’t confuse the Fafsa “EFC” with the colleges’ use of the same acronym . Think of it as net prices varying.

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With her stats, the odds aren’t really against her at all at good fit colleges, except to the extent that at the mega-selectives odds are pretty much against everyone. But colleges on her list like Smith (36% acceptance rate), Bryn Mawr (40% acceptance rate) are not mega-selective. Given her stats and everything else, you can probably consider any college with over a 35% acceptance rate to be a match (not a guarantee, but fairly strong likelihood) – and even digging down to ~20% rate it is a good bet for admission.

I think where confusion comes in is that if you have 50/50 odds of admission at a college, or even 70% odds of admission-- that’s not a guaranteed admission. That doesn’t turn the odds against a candidate – it just means the odds aren’t strong enough to call the school a “safety.” But your DD doesn’t need a safety if she is happy to attend a UC.

But this isn’t a coin toss or like throwing the dice. It is not a random process. You will NOT increase “odds” of anything other than rejection/waitlist by throwing out more applications. To the extent that your daughter is less able to produce a high quality application tailored to the college because she is doing many applications (with presumably identical essays and recs to most) … it weakens chances because she just isn’t targeting well.

You say she has done a lot of research but her list really looks like it someone checking all the boxes for the US News top 10 LAC’s. (I mean it definitely is NOT a distinctive college list – it looks like the first step list of possibilities an applicant might come up with before the winnowing down process.)

Answering only because you asked – I don’t have a clue. But you said that the COA for the UC’s is below the FAFSA EFC – meaning that you have no financial need in the UC’s eyes – so monetarily, the Regent’s scholarship isn’t worth much to you. (Without need, it’s $10K over 4 years, so $2500 a year – my kids were offered $2000 merit awards from UCSC without the fancy title, in combination with need based aid) Obviously there is no such thing as a scholarship that is too small – but probably not worth worrying about at this point either. There is a selection process that may involve interviews or essays, so you would probably have a sense of whether she was in the running ahead of the time of receiving formal notice of admission.

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If she wants what a LAC offers - small interactive classes, contact with professors, intimate environment - she won’t find it at a UC. Even in a less popular major, she’ll have large lecture halls not discussion-based classes with 16-20 students (even 'sections ’ will be larger than that) and multiple choice tests not papers with multiple drafts. Academically it will be demanding but the format of delivery will be different than what she wants. So, finding a 'safety lac ’ sounds like something worth looking into. As for merit, it goes to the top of the applicant pool that has also expressed interest (visit, request info form, emailing admissions, applying to any merit still available); any LAC ranked 40-60 will work considering her stats, so find one that’s a great fit, have her dig and express interest, and if after acceptances come she doesn’t need that one, all the best. But if her choices are ucsd, ucsb, and the safety LAC, at least she’ll have real alternatives to choose from.

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@calmom : Thanks, just curious about the Regents. I get what you are saying now about what is a “safety”. I guess these are matches and reaches, then! The UCs are her safeties. :slight_smile:

Yes, we did begin with various top X lists. Not just USNWR. Forbes, Washington Monthly, Kiplinger’s, many others. Reputation is very important to me. When you apply to graduate and professional schools or look for a job, it helps when they have heard of your school and have a clue about the academic rigor there. I also wanted to make sure these schools have lots of resources. A healthy endowment and loyal alumni go a long way. From there, we moved on to everything else. The problem is, my daughter has so many diverse interests, and she is so adaptable, that she likes ALL of these schools. The ones she didn’t like are not on the list. (Yes, there were MORE.) With her positive attitude and open mind, she can be happy anywhere; she’ll find a home. She has visited them, sometimes in the dead of winter. Eaten in the dining halls. Attended class. Hung out in dorms where friends live. Watched orchestra concerts. Spoken with random students on campus and met with faculty. Talked at length with H.S. classmates and family members who are already at these schools (again, she’s in her gap year, so that’s an advantage). Interviewed on campus everywhere she possibly could. Spent countless days researching every database, article, and online forum. Made a spreadsheet of pros and cons. The only thing she hasn’t done is attend the colleges. She has these schools prioritized. We just have to cross-check them against the list ranked by our estimated net price. We do have a system. Really!

Regarding the odds, I actually beg to differ. The admissions process is highly subjective and arbitrary. Human bias always comes into the picture, unless a school is primarily grade and score-driven (like Cal Tech, except they do have to balance gender). A few of the most highly-qualified candidates get into most of their choices. However, many others have random results. I am a Harvard alum. (Sorry, I didn’t want to disclose this because I feel stupid about my lack of knowledge of financial aid. We’re supposed to be intelligent people, but there are exceptions.) I interviewed applicants for many years. (Not this year - conflict of interest; have to stay FAR, far away from the process.) I know kids who got into Harvard but not “easier” schools with higher acceptance rates. And Harvard’s regular action acceptance rate was 3.2% last year (or something like that). I interviewed kids who I thought were a slam dunk. Nope. But they got into our rival schools in the Ivy League. Like Yale !@#$%^. Go figure. (I can’t believe my daughter wants to apply there, but one of her best friends since childhood goes there, and she actually liked the place.) This unpredictable nature of admissions applies to LACs and UCs as well. Berkeley - yes, Irvine - no. We live in a highly educated city, with one of the best public school districts in the country. We see the statistics on our graduates: what they had, where they got in, how they got in, and where they ended up going. Provided you have met or exceeded the minimum standards that would motivate an admissions officer to delve into your application and read your essays, your chances are indeed higher if you apply to more schools. That assumes you are not out of your league. Some schools will consider my daughter more of a “fit” than others, but we cannot predict which ones. She loves school A, but school B may actually want her more. Let’s hope school B is one of her top five. (And she has a top five, in ranked order. I swear.)

She will be happy regardless. She’s a good kid. And we will do whatever it takes to put her through college. Nice chatting with you. Are you literally a Cal mom?

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@MYOS1634 : Regarding UCs, that’s what we’re afraid of, but I am told that in certain departments, class sizes are smaller, especially when you get up to upper-level classes. Also, at UCSD, they have that college system. Is that similar to Harvard’s house system and Yale’s college system, but on a grander scale? Have to learn more about that system. I also hear that the honors programs at schools like UCLA allow for more faculty attention. Not sure if this is true. Cal Poly’s physics department is supposed to be pretty small and a fun social group to boot, if you’re the nerdy type.

I am seriously considering Whitman now, after what I am hearing from people. I asked my daughter to check it out, and she is reading about it. Apparently, three people from her high school class went there, so she is going to call them. They had lower GPAs but similar test scores, and two got in regular decision. Others were admitted but chose to go elsewhere. It sounds like a good school. Whitman’s deadline is 1/13, I think, so she has a little bit of time to learn about it. Thanks.

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Read this thread…it’s old, but it should be required reading for anyone applying to selective/elite/competitive colleges primarily…and is expecting to get accepted to one of them.

Sure, your kid applied to the UCs. That’s great. But it sounds like she wouldn’t be happy at them…because she wants a LAC experience. If she is happy with the UCs…then why is she applying to 20 or so other highly competitive colleges…that are all over the map in terms of personality, location, etc.

Anyway…read this whole thread.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/192395-no-acceptances-one-kids-story-a-year-later-p1.html

This kid didn’t have a firm safety the first time around just like YOUR kid. (I’m saying your kid doesn’t have a safety on the LAC list you have crafted). He had some very likely schools…but he didn’t get accepted at those. To be honest, everyone was VERY surprised…He is a brilliant kid who actuallly graduated from MIT…but he took a gap year, retooled his list of colleges. No, MIT was NOT his sure thing. But he added some sure things the second time around.

You don’t want to make assumptions about acceptances at these schools on your daughter’s list. They are all reaches. They will have a LOT of similarly well qualified applicants. And their acceptance rates are very low.

Oh please. People,from lots of excellent colleges outside the top 30 get excellent jobs.

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[QUOTE=""]
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.<<

[/QUOTE]

That might be the case in California, but, back east, where most of the big name LACs are located, STEM is still considered a hook. That is because far too many people still equate the term “liberal arts” as tantamount to pottery and basket weaving. Yet, walk onto almost any small college and the second largest cluster of buildings you will find (after the athletic center) will be the science center. Most of the eastern small colleges have to strive to recruit potential STEM majors a little more heavily against their better known neighbors, the Ivy League, and some will pay particular focus on potential women majors. Wesleyan, for example, has doubled the percentage of each graduating class with STEM degrees over the past ten years to 21% which is not bad for a college known primarily to the general public for its film and theater programs. The same is true for Amherst. And, in each case, the biggest growth has been in the number of Math and Comp Sci majors.

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I did not mention Whitman. Primarily because it sounds like you are concerned about affordability. I mentioned Lawrence; it a bit less expensive than a lot of the schools on your list and gives decent merit. It turned out to be my D2’s least expensive option. She didn’t attend there; she actually ended up getting in everywhere she applied, and we were able to make her favorite on the list work financially. I think Whitman is fine, but still pricey.

Is Mount Holyoke on you kid’s list? Expensive, but they give slightly larger merit awards than most LACs.

Take the word of those of us who have been doing this for along time. Admissions is not a crapshoot. But an application has a lot of components, and having them all be strong, fit together well, and be compelling to a given school is not easy. And picking an appropriate list of schools to start with, and knowing how to offset any weak areas are critical. An applicant who has one or more weaknesses (that they may not even recognize that they have) can be shut out from many schools for that same reason. Admission to schools are not independent events – for example, a lukewarm rec or a mediocre Commom App essay can hurt an applicant at multiple schools. It seems mysterious and arbitrary to people who are new to it. And there is an element of luck for the very tippy top schools. But an applicant can hurt or help their chances in many ways.

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Information on scholarship selectivity is harder to come by than information on admission, so it can be hard to predict. But it look like she has close to the maximum possible GPA (4.00 unweighted including college courses taken while in high school), so that has to count for something (UCs tend to overweight GPA over test scores, but her 35 ACT is top notch there as well).

At less selective UCs, the Regents’ scholarships are presumably easier to get than at UCB and UCLA. However, note that the Regents’ scholarship differs (in money and perks) by campus.

For admission rates by GPA at UCs, you may want to see:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1903428-faq-uc-historical-frosh-admit-rates-by-hs-gpa.html

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You can go to a college’s web site and see if its online class schedule shows class sizes (or if a lecture is associated with several discussion or lab sections). A student who has taken college courses in high school may be able to go directly to the smaller upper level courses if the previously taken college courses cover the lower level courses. Also, sometimes honors courses that tend to be much smaller are offered by some departments.

The UCSD residential colleges have different themes, which are mostly manifested in different general education requirements. Students living on campus (mainly frosh) live in housing associated with their residential colleges. See http://provost.ucsd.edu/colleges/compare.html . UCSC has a similar system. See http://housing.ucsc.edu/colleges/ .

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I am just going to put it out there straight no chaser: your child is a female white or Asian BWRK with no truly distinguishable hooks so all of the Ivies and AWS are all going to be reaches.

She is one of many bright young women looking to go into stem. Coming from CA does not make her geographically diverse because most of the schools on your list are not at a loss for kids from CA.

While there is a lot of overlap between kids who apply or are accepted to and attend Amherst, Williams and Dartmouth there is a totally different vibe on each campus.

You definitely feel the difference between 2000 undergrads at Williams and 4000 at Dartmouth. And the vibe is very different from these schools, Middlebury and Wesleyan.

Even at the tri-college exchange; Bryn Mawr, Haverford and swat you feel the difference between the 3 schools.

I see that you have a number of schools in the Claremont exchange where there are also different vibes within those schools
Also, gender balancing is real and LACs tend to already have more young women than men.

I would recommend you look at this years ed/EA decision threads on the Ives AWS, etc. you will see that there are many kids with similar profiles to your daughter’s who were waitlisted/denied.

Maybe you should look at STEM schools that are liking to add more women; your D would have an advantage.

We sincerely wish your child all the best but a safety is not a true safety if when all the dust settles and it is among the last schools standing and she is not happy to attend ( or you feel that it is not “worth” paying for).

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Nope, you don’t increase the odds by applying to more. (That’s scattershot.) You effectively increase them by knowing more about how each is a match, *from that college’s perspective. * Not hers or yours, just her record/stats, her ideas about which she liked, and what schools you’d be willing to pay for.

They hold the cards. Look at what Princeton, Stanford, Brown show about the number of “top performing” (stats) kids rejected. They weren’t lacking some good ECs or nice personalities. They failed to show their match in the ways that those look for. They assumed. Or they got x-ed out because of the sheer volume of applicants from certain geo areas (especially if your area is academically highly competitive, since they want geo diversity.)

Female stem doesn’t have the same pull it did, a few years ago. You don’t mention what she’s done in her field, if she’s got the experiences. Many gals not only have this, in and out of their hs, but can present their interest and understanding quite well.

You’re presenting this as a WTH, but missing what it takes, how fierce the competition is, assuming she has some uniqueness that will pop out. And a thread full of posters who’ve been at this for a while are disagreeing with you. Some with experience down to the app and supps level, what’s really impact.

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@BobShaw - I don’t think you’re delusional at all. I think the closer to the sunbelt states you get, the more DD may look like a BWRK, but, that’s not necessarily the case in New England. I absolutely think the OP has a shot at Bowdoin, Middlebury and Williams (in part because they are so isolated), a shot at Wesleyan, and Haverford, too. They are all top-notch LACs with heavy investments in STEM program and facilities that still need to recruit widely in order guarantee their fair share of talented science majors. The research unis have been over-sold for years, IMO, but that still doesn’t make you delusional. It just makes you a normal parent. :slight_smile:

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The “female in STEM” thing depends on which major. Engineering and physics have relatively few female students, but female students are a clear majority in biology and as numerous as male students in chemistry (undergraduate level).