Late Junior Year and I Need Help. NESCAC schools and Ivies...

College Search & Selection
1

To begin, my list is as follows: Williams, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Amherst, Kenyon, Davidson, Dartmouth. This is pretty tentative, though I am happy with it. I have a couple of concerns and any help would be much appreciated.

  1. Will Dartmouth give me the same small-LAC experience as a Williams, Middlebury, Bowdoin etc...?
  2. Should I add any other schools to my list? I do want to retain the small class sizes and close relationships with my teachers, but beyond that I do not have many restrictions.
  3. I currently have a 33 on the ACT. I am planning on taking it again, even if only for piece of mind. How competitive is that? I have pretty solid extracurriculars and grades. I will have greats recs. I am white...

Thanks again!

2

1 - Dartmouth is the size of a large LAC. I don’t see why it wouldn’t give you a similar experience.

2 - Do you have a safety? I don’t see one.

3 - Have you looked up the Common Data Sets for each school (section C)?

3

I would replace two of your first 4 with Bates and Hamilton to balance it better.

Then add a school where you are very high in the top 25%, like Lafayette, Skidmore, Conn College.

4

If geography isn’t an issue, consider adding Pomona, Carleton and Swarthmore. All are reaches, all are excellent.

What do you plan on studying? If you are going into economics/poly sci/government, I’d add Claremont McKenna too.

5

Your lists consists of schools that are pretty much reaches for everyone. The top schools can fill up many times over with students with amazing stats, recommendations, ECs etc. I suggest that you develop a more far-reaching application list to include those reach schools and also some schools that are more of a match as well as some safety schools that are affordable and that you would be happy to attend.

6

Yeah I’d definitely look at the Claremont Consortium schools.

7

Safeties might include: Wooster, Earlham, Kalamazoo. Matches include Denison, Dickinson, F&M, Trinity in Hartford, CT. Schools with holistic admission, small class size, which value fit – such as OP’s original list – are reaches for everyone.