<p>I have a hangup against colleges that you're going to spend the rest of your life explaining what and where they are. For $40k per year you shouldn't have to attach a map to your resume:</p>
<p>Wesleyan U: too many other Wesleyans out there.</p>
<p>Washington U: U of Wash? George Wash. U? Washington College?</p>
<p>Haverford: One syllable less, and it's Harvard. Sort of.</p>
<p>Trinity College: not to be confused with Trinity University; Trinity College, Dublin; Trinity Colleges at U of Toronto, Oxford, and Cambridge. And it's not even religious.</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon, Case Western Reserve, U of Detroit-Mercy: Mergers should be like war...one side should have to surrender unconditionally and sacrifice its name for the sake of brevity.</p>
<p>William and Mary, Washington and Lee, Washington and Jefferson. At least the latter two use the LAST names. But still...make up your mind, are you honoring this guy or that guy. A reuben sandwich isn't called a "corned beef sandwich and sauer kraut sandwich."</p>
<p>Good for you, but the majority of those accepted at Tufts do prefer to go elsewhere. Hence, Tufts is known for Tufts Syndrome (=put students with IVY-league stats in the waiting list to improve the yield).<br>
The yield rate for Tufts is about 32%, far lower than any of the IVYs. Cornell's is 68%, UPenn's is 66%, etc.</p>
<p>Middlebury - for some strange reason they admit a few dozen ppl separately into what they call the "February class". Why on earth would anyone want to go around for the rest of their lives with an "F" in front of their graduating year? :/</p>
<p>Tufts's yield rate is only slightly lower than those of Georgetown or JHU. The IVY brand name is what makes the school attractive to 17 & 18 year olds, much less so than the quality of the education.</p>
<p>Hamilton, Brandeis, Dickinson, Colby and I think ConnColl and Bates also have portions of their classes enter midyear.</p>
<p>i think it was all the rage 10 or so years ago for schools to do it, when so many people studied abroad in the spring. Now "Feb" programs basically serve no purpose. Becoming SAT optional seems to be the new fad among these schools</p>
<p>I picked it over Cornell and Dartmouth and have friend who picked it over Penn and Brown. I'm not saying this happens to EVERY cross-admit, but it definitely happens. And somewhat more often than you seem to think.</p>
<p>NYU: No campus
Tufts: 3 years of foreign language
Swarthmore: too small and it looked dead when I visited (maybe it didnt look good because i saw princeton an hour before)
Brown: too liberal
UVA: too preppy/conservative
GA Tech: i'm not going to a southern state school no matter how good it is</p>
<p>3 years of a language is too much for me. I want to learn a foreign language, but in my HS experience i really dont enjoy it. I would rather take classes that interest me my Junior and Senior years instead of a very hard language course. I think every school I'm applying to has a language requirement, just not 3 years.</p>
jPOD getting the grade you should is fine so long as Harvard and others also do that. There is grade inflation in all top schools except at BU, so the BU grads suffer while competing with others. Talking to people at BU alone is not enough, talk to your likely competitiors from other schools. Also, read the following New York TImes article:</p>
<p>Excerpts:
*...OVER the span of his college career, Andrew Lipovsky has taken summer courses at Pace and Columbia in New York, spent three semesters at Northeastern here, and then transferred across town to Boston University last year. While he has majored in business, he has incidentally performed a kind of science experiment, in which he has been the control and those four universities the variables.</p>
<p>He earned grade-point averages of 3.2 at Columbia, 3.5 at Northeastern and 3.8 at Pace, a range solidly in the A's and B's. Then, in his two years at Boston University, he compiled only a 2.4, the borderline between B minus and C plus. When he had to repeat some of the same business courses at Boston that he already had taken at Northeastern, part of the transfer process, his marks dropped by as much as two full grade points.</p>
<p>The conclusion Mr. Lipovsky drew, an extremely common one among Boston University students, is that he was the victim of "grade deflation." By that euphemism, the students mean that, bending to unofficial but pervasive pressure from the university administration, professors force marks to conform to a curves...*</p>
<p>The language requirement, is, indeed 6 semesters or 3 years. But there is also the option to take 3 semesters of a language and then 3 semesters of corresponding culture classes. Most people end up seeing the benefits in taking the language for 6 semesters and do that, though the 1/2 culture option exists.</p>
<p>Plus today there was an article in the Tufts Daily about how Olin Hall, the language building, had run out of space for classes, extra classes had to be created, and some classes had to be moved elsewhere because so many students wanted to take language classes. Though some may see it as a disincentive to apply, the students who actually enroll seem to have other ideas.</p>
<p>CB, i've read all that. Yeah, I dont know what to say about it. I guess it is there, but I wouldnt call it a reason to not apply. I've never heard anyone I know there complain about it. I'm not worried about it for when I go.</p>