Mount Holyoke seems to be a good size for you…yes?
Yes, but if I did have a gap year and had other LACs as options I’d go another way. I’d be the third person from my family to attend.
Life’s hard. Don’t make it harder. You’ve got some good choices here, pick one. If you really wanted Barnard you should have applied. You didn’t. Your list doesn’t look like you really put much effort into researching colleges. Move on. Live life going forward. People have good outcomes from all of these schools.
My advice would be go to Mt Holyoake, be grateful you’ve got the opportunity to do so, lots of women don’t. Throw yourself into it, the more you put in the more you’ll get out. Aim to stand out for your excellence not because you’re there but you don’t want to be. Earn good grades, do research, get to know your professors and your fellow students. Work your butt off from day one with the intention of applying for a transfer to Barnard. Tell no one this is your intention.You might be surprised at the end of the year you might well not want to transfer. Good luck in whatever you choose but please go into it with a positive attitude. If you don’t the only person it will really hurt is you.
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So the only school you applied to that you didn’t get into was Georgetown? Which, by the way, is ALSO a Catholic school and there is religion and there are great big cathedrals and crosses all over the place. You don’t have to be catholic but you do have to respect the teachings, participate in service projects, and take the 2-3 religious classes (very broadly defined).
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Some have been crossed off as too oppressively religious for her, or too conservative for her, but a few remain at the top of her list- and she’s pretty uncomfortable with religion. I think you should look deeper into what ways religion would even effect you at the schools like Villanova and Fordham.
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Catholic schools are a nice size (usually 5000-10000), have great opportunities, welcome everyone, and some give good FA. But don’t kid yourself, they ARE catholic schools and you aren’t going to change that. Fordham doesn’t just have a chapel (it probably has 3 or 4) but it has a great big Cathedral right in the middle of campus that you will not be able to use for your wedding if you aren’t Catholic. One of those funny rules that they will not change for you. There are going to be crucifixes in the classrooms, priests sending you welcome letters and sitting on the bench at the basketball games. They are there because it’s their school. They will be your teachers, your coaches and your fellow students.
You might like U of Tampa. It is right downtown, smaller than the flagships. I don’t think you would like Ithica or MHC as they are in small towns (with other bigger schools nearby), Penn State and UF are big schools in more remote areas
Are you concerned about what everyone will think if you don’t go to college this year?
Something that I haven’t seen mentioned is the fact that some programs with a large school can make the school seem much smaller. Have you looked at that at all?
For instance, my D goes to a school with 16,000 undergrads, but her department has only 200 students total, across all majors in the dept. Her program has 30 in her year. She is anything but a number. She knows all of her professors and they know her, except for a few intro classes that were required but not in her major.
Another way to make a large school seem small is through its Honors program. Have you been invited or applied to any? My D19 will be in the honors program at her large school. One of the perks is smaller classes. For instance, the required intro writing class typically has 100 students but the Honors section is capped at 20.
These make a big school seem small, but gives all the advantages of a larger university— more clubs, more choices for dining and housing, flexibility to explore subjects or change majors and minors.
Lots of LACs are in more remote locations. You got into a lot of matches, not just all safeties. Mount Holyoke is a pretty great school, and solid for physics (my physics major D got in, and nearly attended). Go and enjoy your 4 years. You are wallowing right now. Time to get off the mat and go to college.
Yes. I’m #22/989 in my graduating class. The AP kids in my school are cliquey and exclude everyone not in AP classes as nobodies. The kids in my class keep asking me if I applied to any ivies and some questioned why I even applied to Penn State and Rutgers. People in my school have expectations for me and so I think by taking a gap year I’d let people down. But in the end, it’s my burden to bare I guess.
If you want to take a gap, you should. But Mt. Holyoke is one of the most attractive campuses I’ve ever seen. Yes, the town of South Hadley is limited and rather isolated, but the school also has free busses to other colleges and universities (Amherst, Smith, UMass + who knows what will happen to Hampshire), where you can take classes and attend events at any time. You would definitely be challenged academically (and in many other ways) at Mt. Holyoke…as well as at many of the other schools that you now think are beneath you.
I hate to say it, but if I were presented with your profile beforehand, it would have been my honest advice to warn you that UF oos and Villanova would be solid reach schools for you.
Moho and Fordham as high matches. In no way a sure thing.
They are all perfectly in line with your excellent profile.
Congrats on this success. I think you knocked the cover off the admissions ball.
FWIW. Villanova is a blast. It’s totally not conservative.
And UF you will be competing with a lot of Val’s and sals with 1500 sats going for free with the Florida bright futures and banquesto scholarships. It attracts the best students from a very big state.
I don’t know much about Fordham other than a sterling reputation.
MoHo is a beautiful and super highly regarded LAC.
I think you can be happy and challenged at all four.
One small, two medium private’s and a top 8 USA public flagship along the lines of Michigan GT UT Austin UW etc.
You don’t have to go to college this year. Work for a year and give it another go. But when your friends are graduating you’ll be facing another hard year of papers, finals and stress. And they’ll be planning on their summer abroad before starting med school or whatever.
I cant believe that one of these elite schools with so much range of choice can’t fit the bill for you.
But it’s your life so I hope it all works out for you!
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Mount Holyoke has fewer than 2500 students, doesn’t it? How small a school do you want?
There’s nothing wrong with taking a gap year if you are sure you don’t want to attend any of the colleges on your list. It’s ok to change your mind as you have grown over the past few months and some things are more clear to you. Just make sure if you take a gap year not to take any college classes as you will lose your freshman status. Good luck!
Just Penn State and Ithaca Honors Colleges.
Go to the 'Nova 2023 thread and see how many kids with higher stats than you were rejected or waitlisted. Without a good plan, a gap year will hurt you so you really need to come up with a plan. Get excited about one of these schools or take a gap year and do something. I doubt your results next year will be any better, though. You have mostly matches here, not all safeties.
@twoinanddone, I’m guessing you were talking to me rather than the OP? Obviously the religiously affiliated schools will have religious buildings, services, etc. The main one on my D’s list, Cal Lutheran, seems very laid back and welcoming, without onerous requirements for the non-religious. She is being careful in choosing her list so that she only has a group of applications to schools where she would be content and thrive. She’s hoping to avoid the type of second guessing happening on this thread, which quite honestly seems to be the result of poor research and planning.
@Almostout2k19 , You are playing a bunch of cognitive games with yourself. You are not a good candidate for a gap year. So don’t do it. You will second guess yourself as soon as you put in the request. Then you will not be happy with how you spent the year or with the new set of schools you may gain admission to. So stop the whining!
That’s not all. There is more!
This passage was very revealing, “The AP kids in my school are cliquey and exclude everyone not in AP classes as nobodies. The kids in my class keep asking me if I applied to any ivies and some questioned why I even applied to Penn State and Rutgers. People in my school have expectations for me and so I think by taking a gap year I’d let people down. But in the end, it’s my burden to bare I guess.”
This is what it says to me. You were among the high achieving students but didn’t feel you were quite in with the clique of cliquey top students-close but not close enough to your liking. Never-the-less you worked hard to avoid the sting of their rejection and are still doing so. You don’t want to be like the “nobodies” that they “dis”. You admire them despite not liking them particularly. You feel their inquiries about your school choice are less-than-subtle digs about your choices and they are subtle discounts of you-which in turn makes you feel badly and you fear it puts you on the level of those “nobodies” (at least in their eyes); something you feel you don’t deserve because you are such a high achieving student and, besides, you did take those APs. Since you have worked so hard to be perceived favorably by the cliquy group of students, you feel particularly badly about the not-so-subtle dig that your plans don’t include Ivy schools. And you are considering a gap year so you can re-apply to gain admission to the kind of school those cliquey students would approve of. You know already that they won’t admire you for that but at least you can make your own peace with the fact that you got into the kind of school they’d find favorable. You know that they won’t admire you about that because they are motivated by meanness and will look for a reason to dis others. So even if you gained admission to Harvard, they’d find some way to dis you because that’s what they are all about. They are mean. But that doesn’t make you less inclined to find ways to gain approval from them.
So here’s the thing. You need to find a way to stop looking for approval from others. You also need to stop making decisions according to what you think others would view in a positive light. There are many reasons why you need to stop. For one, you never will gain their approval; but you will make yourself miserable trying. More importantly, you are limiting your opportunities and decreasing your chance for happiness by doing so because what they approve of is not necessarily what is best for you or what is best in general. You need to get in touch with your own moral compass and your own beliefs, values, ideas, ideals and goals. You’ve got a unique set of those so don’t waste them. I hear people quoting Steve Jobs all the time. And most of the time I think it is just PC speak. But in this case for you, well it is worth repeating Steve Job’s most over-used quote cause I don’t think you have heard it: “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice”. You have. Let it out!!!
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One thing to keep in mind is that you might not get in to some of the schools that admitted you this year for the class of 2023, if you took a gap year and applied again next year. So I would advise you not to count on any of them as “safeties” for you next year just because you were admitted this round.
Any/all of them could experience a surge of applications, get a lot more applicants from your geographic area, not feel that your gap year was productive for whatever reason, or just not need what you may be bringing to the class of 2024 because there may be more applicants in the next pool with whatever EC/achievements you have plus higher scores or better essays.
It sounds as if Mount Holyoke is generally the kind of school you want, but now you’re having FOMO about Barnard because a) it’s in a city and b) you feel like it’s more impressive.
But as others have said, you didn’t apply to Barnard, and the odds would have been against your getting in anyway. (Just as a very rough metric, the Prepscholar odds calculator gives a candidate with your stats a 16.67% chance of getting into Barnard, and that’s outdated - this year’s admit rates were lower, and next year’s will likely be lower still.)
You may feel a bit “familiarity breeds contempt” about MoHo because of your family members who have gone there and so on… but it is a phenomenal school whose admit rate dropped precipitously this year, from 51% to 36%. You did well to get in! The “maybe I could have done better” questioning is not a good reason to walk away from a great opportunity.
As for the “I’d prefer a city” aspect - okay. I hear you. But as others have said, the 5-college consortium and area is bursting with stuff to do. It’s not a wasteland. You will have plenty to do, and students make trips to Boston and NYC.
I really feel like you’re just psyching yourself out. And I feel like this is, truly, a great opportunity to take an unflinching look at why you are psyching yourself out… because life will give you more opportunities to feel this way. Do you want to be that person who lies awake on the eve of their wedding wondering whether they could have done better? Seize the moment and deal with what’s making you feel this way, now. Seriously, meet with a counselor or a life coach, and let them help you get to the bottom of these feelings - that will be the greatest gift you could possibly give your future self, even better than an acceptance to Barnard!
Beyond that, here’s what I would suggest. Commit, in your mind, to making the most of three semesters at MoHo. And, start right away planning your ideal semester abroad for the spring of your sophomore year. To make that happen, you’ll need to visit the study abroad office and do an initial orientation by January of your first year. Plan your dream urban semester in a city like Madrid or Barcelona, if you want to use your Spanish, or an English-speaking city like London, Dublin, Sydney, or even Singapore. Focus on doing well your first year and on getting the study-abroad ball rolling. In the fall of your sophomore year, if you feel like “enough is enough” with MoHo, then submit transfer applications before you leave on your semester abroad, and plan to come home to a fresh start with a full two years to complete your degree at College #2. By sophomore fall, you’ll be much clearer on what exactly you do want in a school, if in fact you determine that you don’t want to stay at MoHo. You could transfer to a larger university, where the upper-division classes will be much smaller than the freshman and sophomore classes would have been; or you could make the change to a different LAC if you still feel that there’s a better option for you. But table that for the first year, and structure your sophomore spring as a break to look forward to, and a time to either make a transition, or recommit to MoHo.
JMHO, but if your best conceptualization of your “dream school” is a women’s LAC with an affiliated coed university right nearby… you have a bird-in-the-hand that meets those criteria. You’re just looking at a little delayed gratification on the urban front. That’s not the end of the world. You’ve done well; embrace it and move forward.
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Is this whole thread a joke? For every response that is well thought out, insightful and full of great advice, the OP has been dismissive of just about every suggestion.
Out of all those colleges to choose from I find it hard to believe you couldn’t be happy at one of them.
Agree with others: yes, you had good grades but not necessarily stellar and your SAT score, although good, is not exceptional. I’m not trying to be harsh but am encouraging you to be realistic. In all of the schools you’ve been accepted to, there will be kids who had both higher and lower grades than you.
Please try to keep an open mind, not only about the schools you’ve been accepted to but also about your options. College is a time to open your eyes to new possibilities. You seem to be looking for reasons as to why the schools will not work for you instead of looking for reasons as to why they would.
Here’s an idea. Every year on May 1, a list comes out of schools that still have space available. The list also includes information about whether financial aid is still available. Here is a link to last year’s posting:
https://www.nacacnet.org/news–publications/newsroom/press-releases/collegeopeningsupdate/
Typically, there are a few hundred schools. Some will be places you’ve never heard about. Historically, there have been LACs listed that are quite decent but not at the level of Mount Holyoke. Most of them will be in small towns/somewhat isolated locations. If any are of interest, you should act immediately because the remaining spots at the best places will fill quickly.
I do recommend that you deposit at the most desirable option you currently have, in case there is nothing on the NACAC list that appeals.
If it matters, back in the day, I was valedictorian, NMF, and all my family could afford was Rutgers. I got into honors, and I can assure you that an honors program can make a larger place feel much smaller. I would give Penn State Honors and Ithaca Honors a serious look before dismissing them out of hand.
When I look at your list, I see a few things. First, a well-balanced list that includes matches and reaches. Second, a variety of options with respect to location, size, and student culture. Third, a list that fits your stats. Take a look at the threads for schools that now interest you, like Barnard, and check out the stats of students that were denied. Do the same for Penn State Honors. You may feel better.
Of the smaller options on your list, I would consider Ithaca (located in a vibrant college town) and Mount Holyoke (you also will have Amherst and Northampton nearby to explore). Penn State Honors is extremely competitive and I am quite certain you would find intellectual peers there if you were to give it a chance.
Finally location: college students usually find everything they need on campus. Being in or near a city is often more of a theoretical advantage than something people actually enjoy on a regular basis.
As for those classmates, are you ever going to see them after you graduate? Why do you care what they think? If you took a gap year and did manage to get into a higher ranked school, would they be around to notice or care?