<p>Several of you went. So how was it? Did it convince you to attend? What did you think of the school?</p>
<p>Oops - posted this a day too early. Fill us in when you get back on Tuesday or Wednesday.</p>
<p>I literally just got home about half an hour ago, so I’m going to forgo posting a detailed response to your question until tomorrow.</p>
<p>In brief, the visit went really, really well and was definitely well worth the exhausting trip. </p>
<p>There’s good and bad things that I noticed about the school, but the most interesting/amusing thing to me is that my dad, who had previously told me that campus visits are a waste of time and can’t really tell you much about the college experience, is now extremely keen about Grinnell. He knew absolutely nothing about the school coming in, except that it was in Iowa. Both of us came back pleasantly surprised. </p>
<p>At this point, I really don’t know whether I’ll attend or not. Grinnell is the only school I’ve heard back from so far, and the situation was the same for most of the other prospies I talked to. Without knowing what other options are on the table, I can’t really be sure about what I’ll choose. But my dad and I talked a bit on the car ride back to Des Moines airport, and he agrees with me that Grinnell should definitely be a strong contender on my list.</p>
<p>@Opaline - Thanks for your reply, even when exhausted. Looking forward to your more detailed post!</p>
<p>Also, here is an article, which details how the decision was made. You may have seen it. It puts some context to the “surprise” acceptances. </p>
<p>[Top</a> applicants on campus for visit in new program](<a href=“http://www.thesandb.com/news/top-applicants-on-campus-for-visit-in-new-program.html]Top”>http://www.thesandb.com/news/top-applicants-on-campus-for-visit-in-new-program.html)</p>
<p>"The average [SAT] score for this group of students is just under 1480, extraordinarily high. I think thats one indicator of how talented this group is, but thats not where we stopped our analysisthey also had to be excellent students in their school and taken the tougher classes. But test scores is one of the things that stand out to me. Thats 120 points higher than our average enrolled student last year. Don’t neglect those 1360 kids too much, they may fall in love with someone else while you are pining after the 1480s.</p>
<p>I agree with nepop, but would like to add another point of view.</p>
<p>The quote says that students had to be “excellent students in their school” to get a scholarship. </p>
<p>My daughter’s GPA is relatively low for several reasons, including that she is enrolled at a super-competitive high school, the sections of many of the courses in which she was enrolled at her high school were taught by the toughest graders, and she did not pad her schedule with courses like AP Psychology and AP Environmental Science (both considered very easy at her high school), opting to take the tough AP courses instead. She knows plenty of students not regarded as smart as or as hard working as she is who have higher GPAs. Many of the less bright students with higher GPAs took the easy APs, were not in the honors math track, and had guidance counselors willing to switch their schedules to the easier teachers in AP English and history classes. </p>
<p>Otherwise, with her SAT scores and extra-curricular activities, I think my daughter would have won a scholarship.</p>
<p>While I recognize that Grinnell has to draw the line for scholarships someplace, I argue that recognizing “runner ups” would go a long way toward recruiting the best of those students who are more likely to attend Grinnell. Only a small fraction of the students Grinnell invited attended the event, and not all of those who attended will necessarily even attend the college in September.</p>
<p>To what degree does being in this “anointed” group change life for the students on campus? Are professors at Grinnell well aware of those students who have won merit scholarships? That’s one of my daughter’s big concerns, that is, that she would start freshman year with professors assuming she’s not as bright as some of the others. When she applies for her first job or applies to graduate school, she will never be able to list that she had won a merit scholarship to Grinnell.</p>
<p>My daughter might very well not be admitted to her dream school. Although I am not certain she will be admitted to Grinnell, judging from the Naviance graph for her high school, she has no reason not to think she will be. She might very well need to choose between Grinnell and similar schools. A runner up $5K merit scholarship, amounting to $20K over 4 years, might not be sufficient to convince her to choose Grinnell over her dream school (where she probably has less than a 50/50 chance of admission), but it would be enough to convince her to choose Grinnell over similar schools. It’s not simply the money; it’s the recognition and knowing that Grinnell really wants her.</p>
<p>neopop said, “Don’t neglect those 1360 kids too much, they may fall in love with someone else while you are pining after the 1480s.” I say, don’t neglect the top students from the group more likely to attend Grinnell. They might fall in love with another school while you are pining after the very top ones, more of whom might wind up someplace else.</p>
<p>I really hope that you do not think that the professors in any way distinguish between those students who received merit scholarships and those who did not! Offering merit aid is nothing new at the school; it’s just this early admission and early visit program that is. </p>
<p>My S did not get merit aid, and he has close, supportive relationships with his professors. They don’t have a clue what his high school background is or what his admissions picture was.</p>
<p>Personally, I was a bit put off by the emphasis on high scores, etc. in the newspaper article, and hope that Grinnell is going by perceived fit as much as achievement. That article may not tell the full story about what attributes the Admissions Committee determined were the tipping point in awarding these early replies. It would not be the first time that there were more sides to a story than appeared in the press…</p>
<p>I hope that those who attended the early program enjoyed it, and that those of you who have not heard yet take this whole admissions process with a grain of salt. It is a bit of a game, and it would be too bad if a perceived slight in the courting process put too much of a damper on what might be a potentially beautiful relationship!</p>
<p>i also wonder if some of the visitors are getting a longer than anticipated stay with the midwestern snow storm…</p>
<p>Nepop and nosering: I really hope this new early write program won’t sour you on Grinnell, since it sounds like Grinnell may be a great fit for your kids. I agree that Grinnell should not neglect the also-excellent students who are most likely to attend in favor of those who are unlikely to go there – though I can understand admissions wanting to get some of these students to visit and consider Grinnell before the students run out available weekends in April. </p>
<p>My D, now a junior at Grinnell, was in a very similar situation to nosering’s daughter – attended a highly competitive, academically rigorous selective-admission public school, and her grades were definitely lower than they would have been if she’d attended regular public high school. I think her lower GPA definitely hurt her admissions chances at some schools (lots of WL’s), and it certainly made March a very stressful month while we were waiting to hear results. Fortunately, she got into two of her top 3 choices - Carleton and Grinnell - with Grinnell offering a $5,000 trustee scholarship in addition to NMF. I suspect she would have been offered more if she had a higher GPA. While the extra $5,000 wasn’t the reason she chose Grinnell (it was just a better fit for her for a lot of reasons), we were certainly grateful to have some relief since we didn’t qualify for need-based aid.</p>
<p>I hope and would expect that Grinnell will still be offering some merit awards for students who will be admitted later this month. In any case, I’m sure professors won’t know or care who got early writes. Good luck to you all!</p>
<p>First time poster here, but I’ve been lurking for a while…</p>
<p>nosering, I hope I can reassure you. I would be very surprised if professors at Grinnell or anywhere else would be aware (or even care) what scholarships students have received. After all, if your daughter attends Grinnell, her professors will get to know her far better than any admissions committee would. My oldest is a college freshman (elsewhere), and it’s amazing how quickly the things that mattered a lot during the college application process fall away once they’re on campus. We parents are probably the ones most aware, as we write the tuition checks. </p>
<p>If it’s any consolation, it sounds like many of the early admit students didn’t get to go last weekend, because Grinnell invited far more students than they could accommodate. My youngest (a HS senior) was excited to get an early admission and invite for the March weekend, only to find out a few days later that they were out of space. He was encouraged to register for one of the April admitted student days, which will be open to all accepted students. In the meantime, I hope those students and parents who visited will let us know how it went (but get some rest first, Opaline!)</p>
<p>I’ll add my voice that I’m sure the profs will not know or care who got early writes or merit scholarships. They will only care about how students perform in their classes at Grinnell. Any student who is admitted will be able to do the work. Those students who have attended very rigorous hs programs will be happy to find out how well they’ve been prepared for college work. I can’t*imagine a future employer would care about scholarships either. They’ll be interested in college GPA, not high school GPA.</p>
<p>Thanks so much, applemath. I am also waiting to find out what opaline has to say.</p>
<p>As you can probably appreciate, applemath, my daughter attends a high school where the teachers talk about how wonderful it is because of all the wonderful teachers. Only one teacher, one of the best teachers she has ever had, regularly tells the students that the school is wonderful because of them and not because of the teachers or the administration. </p>
<p>A lot of her angst has transferred over to me!</p>
<p>Her school is not a magnet school, but many of the students are of magnet school quality. It’s just that kind of a community. Otherwise, our situations are similar. We don’t qualify for financial aid, but even a small merit scholarship of $5K that adds up to $20K over the course of 4 years would be extremely helpful. Otherwise, she’s looking at partial loans for the last two years of college. (Even small homes in our area are very expensive, and we have a large mortgage we are paying off.) But getting even a small merit aid package would make her feel that the school really wants her, something she needs emotionally right now. Like many ambitious students, she has been on a treadmill for the last few years. </p>
<p>Thank you, SdonnCC, for your clarification of the situation. Some schools continue to bestow special privileges on their merit aid students in the form of special programs on campus. I take your message to mean that this is not the case at Grinnell.</p>
<p>But, SdonnCC, how do you expect schools to compare students attending different high schools if not for standardized tests? Why can’t you use the SATs to compare two students from the same socio-economic background?</p>
<p>Oh, I know that the SATs play a huge role in things. I was reacting to the article that made it sound like they were awarding the merit primarily based on test scores when I thought that Grinnell’s admissions – like many LACs – was more holistic than that. But, maybe the test scores were the deciding factor among applications where kids presented strong in all other areas. </p>
<p>I also thought that colleges looked at students in the context of their high schools, and so an A at one school might be the same as a B at another. Certainly, our HS is much stricter with grades than what I see here on CC. A student with 3.5 or above is in the top 10% at our HS. But our school sends a profile with a grade distribution and other information, so the colleges understand what the GPA means.</p>
<p>There are no special programs for merit kids. Not at Grinnell.</p>
<p>All the comments above make sense from outside the Grinnell campus, but I can see where the college is headed. This is not an endorsement of the policy; I simply see the landscape.</p>
<p>In short, the college cannot have it both ways - wanting to be understood and known in the top ranks of LACs and then not courting and accepting students who would go to those other top ranked colleges. No matter how ones dislikes it, the other LACs, so often mentioned, do have average higher SAT scores, and more students, who after graduation, donate back more money. </p>
<p>Additionally, SAT scores and fit are mutually exclusive - no reason to think the college cannot get both high scores and excellent fit in the top applicants chosen. However, the admissions director is rightly pointing out that outsiders (potential applicants in future years) see SAT scores first and use it as a way to judge and rank the college. This does not mean they sacrificed fit. It means only the college acknowledges the effective marketing aspect of high scores vis a vis the higher ranked schools.</p>
<p>So, I completely get what everyone is saying, but no one can expect Grinnell to get back where it was in the ranking just four years ago without attracting the talent that puts other schools ahead of it. Standards are standards and to expect Grinnell to be fully respected and play in the big leagues without clearly identifiable big league players just is asking for the impossible. The school recognizes this and is just trying to attract the type of students that, by definition, make the other schools ahead of it be ranked higher.</p>
<p>Absolutely, no special programs on campus for merit scholarship students. I’m sure the students don’t know or care either who got them or who didn’t. The only special program I can think of is the Posse Program for a small group of first generation college students. It’s 10 students per year and they do have retreats and things but they also invite non-posse students. It’s to offer extra support for students who might not have been exposed to college-y things, mostly social support. Oh, the international students get local host families, but that’s not based on merit either. They just want students to feel comfortable enough to stay and graduate. This is small school. It’s basically all an honors program.</p>
<p>Hey guys, I’m back. Advance warning: This is probably going to be a very long post.</p>
<p>So the program technically started with dinner at 6 on Sunday, but I arrived there a few hours early. It gave me some time to walk around campus and talk to some of the other prospectives. Most of them are like me: undecided, and Grinnell was the first school they heard back from. There was a lot of pageantry throughout the visit: fancy dinners, speeches, presentations on college offerings, student performances, free stuff, etc. The administrators were very clearly trying to court the prospective students, but I can’t be sure of whether they extend the same welcome to all admitted students or if it was because we were apparently their top choices (it was mentioned more than once that we were “special”).</p>
<p>Being from the DC area, I was a bit apprehensive about traveling all the way to Iowa. I prefer open spaces and I can’t imagine living in a big city for four years, but I was also worried that Grinnell might be TOO remote for me. It really is out in the middle of nowhere - the town is bigger than I thought it would be, but still tiny and the university’s campus is also quite small. Current students I talked to were quite adamant that they are never for want of something to do; I would tend believe them, but only because the college makes an effort to import its own fun with parties, concerts, etc. “Community” was a buzzword that kept cropping up throughout the visit, and I think it’s in large part because of the small size of the school and the campus-centered social life. The students were all quite friendly and very enthusiastic; I lost count of the number of times people yelled, “You should come to our school!” as I was walking around campus. It was great to be welcomed that way.</p>
<p>Grinnell obviously considers itself to be a peer institution to other prestigious LACs like Middlebury, Williams, Swarthmore, etc. Whether it actually IS a peer institution is debatable, and one thing that went mostly unmentioned were the limitations of going to a small school in a small town. I talked with an administrator after a panel discussion (he had mentioned pre-health counseling and I’m interesting in veterinary school) and he told me that while Grinnell did have some past success sending students to veterinary school, there were some prerequisite courses that weren’t offered at Grinnell and had to be taken at other colleges. I imagine it would be the same for students wanting to go to other specialty programs like medical or engineering school. And since the town is so small, most students who want internships or volunteer experience would probably have to pursue those opportunities either during the summer or during off-campus study. </p>
<p>That said, the college does seem to put its giant endowment to good use by trying to mitigate these downsides. It subsidizes student groups and activities to an enormous degree. There was a big emphasis on opportunities outside of the classroom: research, study abroad, studying at other universities, etc. The professors also seemed very approachable and engaged with the students - there’s clearly a lot of faculty/student interaction, which is another positive point. And the number of award-winning students (Fulbright scholars, Rhodes scholars, etc.) was downright impressive.</p>
<p>One thing I noticed was that while the campus is quite racially and economically diverse, the political ideology seems to range from staunch Democrat to Marxist. I think the college and the students sincerely try to be accepting of everyone, but I’m not sure that a student with conservative or deeply religious views would feel AS comfortable there. As for me, I would prefer a school with a little more political diversity.</p>
<p>In addition, the college has a reputation as a “work hard, play hard” school and I’m a bit concerned that the party scene may not be for me. Since we visited on Sunday night, there wasn’t much going on. Grinnell doesn’t allow prospies to stay overnight on Fridays or Saturdays, and I’m not sure whether this is because the administration wants to protect prospective students or whether it’s because they don’t want to scare them off (or both!).</p>
<p>Despite that, Grinnell did leave a great impression overall. The students all seemed extremely happy; they, along with the administrators and the faculty, clearly wanted us there. It’s a much stronger contender on my list now, but I still can’t say whether or not I’m going to attend. It’s a possibility, but I’ll have to see what my other options are first.</p>
<p>To any other prospies who visited: did you guys get the same vibe as me? I’m a bit curious.</p>
<p>Also, if you guys have specific questions on the program or my experience, then ask away.</p>
<p>@opaline - Thanks for the detailed, informative review. Much appreciated. I have no questions right now, as you seemed to have answered them all.</p>
<p>opaline–that sounds pretty accurate and I think it’s a great idea to reserve judgment until all of your options are in. That’s just smart. I’m a Mom of a Grinnell student, but spent a lot of time on campus, so I got impressions. Of course My H and I didn’t go to any of the parties, except the final Block Party, but they did sound like fun traditions.</p>
<p>I’m not sure when early writes started, but my son got his 6 years ago and I’m pretty sure they were happening before then. I’m no mind reader, but I’m guessing my son was positively influenced by being accepted so early and given a great merit scholarship. Nothing like being wanted!</p>
<p>When my S attended Admitted Student Weekend in 2010, it was on a Friday and the students stayed over that night. At the time, he was not at all a partier, and he did fine. There certainly is a strong party culture on campus, but there also are quite alot of students who don’t party, and there is alot to do and no judgment. However, Grinnell has a new president since then, and he has done alot to the recruiting process, so the Admitted Student Events might be different. We didn’t have a dinner, but we did have alot of panels. </p>
<p>You have captured the political climate, but to say that people can’t be deeply religious on campus is totally inaccurate. Don’t conflate political liberalism with anti-religion please. Not true. My S is very involved with religion on campus. </p>
<p>I think that you will find the course offerings comparable to many LACs in terms of preparation for grad school. I’d be shocked if students from Grinnell weren’t fully prepared for med school. I would think that the advising services would be well equipped to help students get the preparation they need for whatever they want to pursue post-grad opportunities.</p>
<p>There are quite alot of local volunteer and internship opportunities, and in fact, the Social Entrepreneurs of Grinnell were one of a few schools to win a contest to visit the White House. This involved micro-finance in the town of Grinnell. </p>
<p>[Volunteer</a> Opportunities - Community Service Office | Grinnell College](<a href=“http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/communityservice/volunteer]Volunteer”>http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/communityservice/volunteer)</p>
<p>[Student</a> Apprenticeships - Community Enhancement & Engagement | Grinnell College](<a href=“http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/communityenhance/student-engagement/studentapprenticeships]Student”>http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/communityenhance/student-engagement/studentapprenticeships)</p>
<p>[Volunteer</a> Initiative Program for Students - Community Enhancement & Engagement | Grinnell College](<a href=“http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/communityenhance/student-engagement/vip-students]Volunteer”>http://www.grinnell.edu/offices/communityenhance/student-engagement/vip-students)</p>
<p>[Social</a> Entrepreneurs of Grinnell ? Grinnell, Iowa](<a href=“http://www.segrinnell.org/]Social”>http://www.segrinnell.org/)</p>
<p>More about the party scene: one) the big parties are inclusive - - every weekend there is a party in the student center with a theme. two) if you don’t like big parties, you will do fine. Plenty of students never go to Harris parties. three) alot of students just hang out with friends and play cards or board games, bake, etc. Depending on the student and their friends, this might be accompanied by substance use – or not. four) as you noted Opaline, there are a ton of events on campus (arts, speakers, etc.)</p>
<p>What I said above is not unique to Grinnell, but common to LACs. The unique part of Grinnell, though, is the Harris parties. (maybe other schools have this, too, but my sense is that most don’t have one option like Grinnell on campus designed to have a party open to every student on campus and organized as a special event each weekend). This is because of the importance at Grinnell of community.</p>