In Search of a Specific, Loose Curriculum

College Search & Selection
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Hi Everyone!

I absolutely fell in love with the freedom of being able to take a wide range of courses that interest me. My three favorite schools on my search thus far are USC Marshall, Northeastern, and Brown. USC gives the option to customize a major with an incredible range of electives; Northeastern offers some really cool combined majors; Brown offers an open curriculum with a really cool program.

I’ll be a full pay international student from Canada. I did fully online school, 33 ACT, 4.0gpa. I prefer a suburban, modern campus, but the most important part is that the school is not in the south (excluding AZ/CA). Ideally, dorms would be pretty good and the people would be more laid back, but these are just bonuses. Anywhere in Canada or the US (apart from the south). Class sizes would be ideal around 30-50 people, but I don’t know enough to make a strict restriction here.

The most important thing for me is the curriculum. A strict curriculum will be rough for me, but I can flourish in a more free environment. As an online student, everything was up to me and my interests and goals-- I would like college to be similar :slight_smile:

Here’s my current list-- I would greatly appreciate it if anyone could give me any suggestions!

Stanford- Product Design
Brown- Behavioral Decision Sciences OR Business, Entrepreneurship, and Organizations
Dartmouth
Northwestern- Manufacturing and Design Engineering

Babson- Tech, Entrepreneurship, and Design
Northeastern- (I have a lot of majors I like from here, most notably the combined majors)
LMU- Entrepreneurship
UDub- Industrial Design OR Business Admin: Entrepreneurship
USC Marshall- Business Admin with a concentration in Tech development or Entrepreneurship
Waterloo: Global Business and Design Arts, or Recreation and Sports Business

UofMinnesota: Entrepreneurship Management or Product Design or Sports Management
ASU: Product Design
Chapman: Behavioral and Computational Economics
College of Charleston
Western Washington University: Industrial Design
Columbia College at Chicago: Game Sound or Game Programming or Design Management
Some Canadian Safeties

notes: I love the location of Northwestern. I love the area of Chapman. I love the program at Brown. I love the electives and opportunities at USC. I love the entrepreneurial focus of Babson. I love the Canada-like atmosphere of Minnesota.

Interests: Psych, Business (entrepreneurship), game design, sports. I like fields that have a high skill cap; e.g. in entrepreneurship, you can theoretically become an extremely successful billionaire.

Thanks all!!

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Colleges sometimes named as “open curriculum” (but with variation in amount of curriculum that has some restriction):

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21830134/#Comment_21830134

But check for updates on college web sites.

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Brown doesn’t just take kids who “love” the curriculum. It has to show that you do have divergent academic interests (this is more than taking a range of classes.) And how you got involved in those arenas. “Show, not just tell.”

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@lookingforward

Gotcha. I’m just kind of in the process of finding similar schools at the moment (disregarding the admissions process for the moment).

Ever since middle school I’ve hated taking courses that I didn’t see a purpose in. To this day I can’t really understand why there are such heavy restrictions on what courses can and can’t be taken. Brown (and schools like it) give me the opportunity to take stuff that I really want to and dive deep in the specific areas that I want to. I’m trying to find more schools like it atm!

Thanks

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Lol, OP, you’ve now given me a lot of “gotchas” over multiple threads and PMs. But over the next months, you need to apply any understanding you’ve gotten here. You want what you want, lots of kids do. That’s not how you get into a top college. You need to find colleges that want what your record shows, plusses and minuses.

About Brown. “Ever since middle school I’ve hated taking courses that I didn’t see a purpose in.” Absolutely not what B wants to hear. The intellectual curiosity many top colleges seek just doesn’t manifest this way. They want kids who already “show” what I said above. Kids with a dual (or more) focus, proven via actions. Dart will look for what you actually accomplished, despite living at the lake, ECs roughly equivalent to what other applicants achieved. That’s awareness of opps, taking action, striving to expand.

You really don’t have the pattern of ECs they want to see, as evidence of willingness, drives, openness, challenging yourself, engaging with peers and in established community service, and more. It’s lovely to help neighbors, but hard to have adcoms at a most competitive college accept those as equivalent to what other motivated kids did.

In the short time you’ve been on CC, how have you stretched? Sorry, but you could have ridden back to the city with family and done some new, relevant things. Think about it.

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The UVA Echols Scholars program gives exemption from all general ed requirements and also permits you to design your own interdisciplinary major if desired. But it’s very competitive, it’s for the top 5-10% of admits at what is already a reach school for many applicants.

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Responded to @lookingforward in a PM.

@Twoin18 Thank you for the recommendation. Unfortunately, I don’t think my parents would want to send me to Virginia (a lot different from our culture, afaik). I’ll check it out regardless:)

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Congrats on the fine ACT and strong GPA.

Though unconventional, your background may be appealing to some committees.

You will not have the same benefit of letters of recommendation as other students. The rigor calculation and the school history will be non existent.

ECs etc will be what they will be.

You are competing within the very small and wildly competitive international category for admissions

IMHO. And feel free to ignore this or prove me wrong. But honestly this would be honest advice to you if you where my child.

As you are right sizing expectations and plans. I’m not trying to rain on your parade at all. Really. But the list is way too reach heavy but to each their own. There are so many other great schools you should consider. I would also in some liberal arts colleges. They may “get your individualism”

Stanford (statistically) would not be reasonable to expect an admission.

Brown NU USC Dart NEU. Highly unlikely you will be admitted. It should be considered “winning the lottery” level .

Babson is a reach. They may have slightly smaller international applicant pool than some of the others.

UWashington is a low reach as well. Higher odds of a rejection than acceptance.

UMinn Waterloo C of C. LMU (Cali). High matches. Definitely worth your time and effort. However not assured in any way.

LMU (Maryland), Chapman, ASU, WWU much higher probability than the others.

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@privatebanker
I really appreciate your tone and all the information you gave. Thank you for such a great comment.

My plan, as of right now, is to try to pick around 5 or 6 dream/lottery schools (probably USC, Northeastern, Babson, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Brown, Stanford) and just try it out. I don’t have any expectations, but I’m thinking that it is worth a shot to test the waters. As you mentioned, I am a really unconventional applicant. I value every single comment that evaluates my chances, but I don’t think anyone can accurately chance me. All I would need is one adcom to look at and be impressed enough to admit.

The rest of my schools are likely going to consist of Waterloo, UBC (Okanagan), Simon Fraser, local province university, WWU, UofMinnesota, and Chapman.

I really want to try my best to get into some of the top schools (for me), but I have low expectations and a ton of matches/safeties!

I really appreciate the comment

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Forgot to include:

“You will not have the same benefit of letters of recommendation as other students. The rigor calculation and the school history will be nonexistent.”

I’m not too sure what you mean by this. I’m very connected with my teachers and I have shared hundreds of emails with them, often discussing material beyond the course. Additionally, my school has a history of admitting full-time students to all top schools. Granted, some of those will be athletes (lots of top athletes do online), but a lot of those are people like me. I’m not too sure what rigor calculation means. We have extremely qualified teachers and I’m taking full APs pretty much.

Is it possible that you’re evaluating me as a homeschooled student? I am doing online at an accredited American school.