Let me start by saying that I’m not bringing this topic us because I’m dissatisfied with where I’ve ended up. I actually love the school I’ll be attending in the fall. I wish I had given myself more viable options, however, since in the end there were only 3 schools on my list that fit the bill for what I ended up wanting.
I was looking for a liberal to moderate-liberate LAC, good research opportunities, an active LGBTQ+ community, an economics major, and cold weather (which I love!) In the end, only 3 of the 10 schools I applied to fit the bill, and though I ended up at one of those schools, I wish I would have been smarter when applying to college.
I applied to:
Grand Valley State University
Loyola University Chicago
Beloit College
Michigan State University
Denison University
Case Western Reserve University
College of Wooster
Purdue University
University of Rochester
Kalamazoo College
If I could re-do my college application list, I would apply to the following:
Lawrence University
Earlham College
Beloit College*
College of Wooster (<3)*
Allegheny College
Skidmore College
Oberlin College
DePauw University
Centre College
Kalamazoo College*
Whitman College
Babson College (though not strictly economics, it’s one of the best business schools in the country.)
Carleton College
Macalester College
Kenyon College
Is there a point to this thread? Not really. But I’m very interested to see if other people out there are dissatisfied with where they applied. If I could go through the process again, I would in a heartbeat. I find it so fun getting accepted/denied/waitlisted to colleges! I’d love to do it again, though that’s not really an option at this point.
So yes, I applied to schools all over the board as a result of me not doing enough research into what I want to get out of my college experience. If I had applied to all the schools on my new list, I don’t know that I’d necessarily end up at Wooster, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love my school.
What’s fascinating is that your second list looks a lot like the LAC portion of my kid’s current list (give or take a few we’ve considered and rejected for our own obscure reasons) and we liked Wooster, so maybe we’re on to something. A few aren’t on our list, though, so I’m curious what put them on yours.
Babson, DePauw & Skidmore are the outliers from my perspective (maybe not so much Skidmore). Can you explain why you added those in particular?
DePauw is just one of those schools where the vibe felt right. I really enjoyed everything that I saw when I visited, but seeing other people’s perceptions of it online being a heavy party school deterred me from applying. I probably would decide not to attend, but I’d like to see if I could get accepted and how much merit I would get from DePauw.
Babson made the list simply because it’s amazing for business. They literally only have business majors, so if your child isn’t interested, that would explain why its not on your list.
I hope you and your child take a closer look at Wooster! It was insignificant on paper for me, but visiting sealed the deal.
@minohi: We did visit Wooster, which had been an afterthought on paper, and liked it very much indeed. It’s very much on my kid’s list, and this is why I’m so interested in discussions like these – I want to be sure we haven’t overlooked other potential options that might surprise us the same way.
@Cosmological Also very much interested in your list. Can you give a little more information on what drove your changes? Why would you drop Brandeis and URochester? (Not suggesting you shouldn’t, just curious what your particular reasons were.) What specifically brings the new ones on to the list? Something specific about each of them, or just a generically wider range of (mostly) LACs?
If I applied again, knowing what I do now, it would probably be:
Carnegie Mellon
Harvey Mudd
Stanford (I would have given it a shot)
Cornell
University of Maryland College Park
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
MIT
Case Western
Rochester Institute of Technology
Basically, 4 different schools. A little more top-heavy, but still with reliable safeties and matches.
Hm. Not my call, @skieurope, and I’m new around here, but I’d say that a thread (hypothetical or otherwise) revisiting and re-thinking the posters’ college search & selection has EVERYTHING to do with, well, College Search & Selection … and very little at all to do with High School Life (which seems dominated by questions about HS course selection, etc.). No matter, it’s an interesting thread, and I can find it either way, but it seems out of place to me, and I’d imagine it’s missing a potentially interested audience.
@Cosmological, thanks. Sounds like your interests are similar to my kid’s. Reed sounds like a great place.
This thread is aimed at those who have already applied to college, these people typically do not lurk in the College S & S thread of forums. This particular thread probably is best suited for either here or the lessons learned section(which may be under the umbrella of C S&S ).
Admissions Hindsight and Lessons Learned is actually under the College Admissions umbrella, and while this thread could go there, it is less heavily trafficked than here.
I’d just apply to more schools…only applied to four, lol. Pitt, Penn State, Case Western, and Penn. I don’t know what I would have added. Maybe CMU or something. Or maybe I would have extended my radius of schools farther.