Match D24 - “Average Excellent” Artsy Classics + Anthropology major for mid-sized Northeastern schools

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Are you using the list in post 1?

I think your targets there are also likelies

Most are big but maybe Brandeis or Connecticut will fit.

Has anyone mentioned Lafayette ? It has a minor but combined with anthro. I see it more like Richmond although without business.

I don’t see similarities from Richmond to W&M. I do see W&M and Miami Ohio as similar but one far more esteemed. To me Miami is a big W&M. Both are sort of isolated and the campuses are similar. Richmond is more rich kid, preppy, and has a large business focus.

I think given you are full pay and the student is in a less popular major plus is studying Latin - I suspect you’ll do better admissions wise then you think given the profile.

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I mean, if you tell her College Confidential agrees with you, I am sure that will persuade her . . . .

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Most kids over-emphasize the importance of the flexible curriculum and small classes.

I can virtually guarantee that as a classics major, other than the occasional “Architecture of the Ancient World” lecture course which is popular for tons of non-Classics majors (architecture, engineering, history, philosophy) ALL of her classes will be small. So the overall faculty/student ratios, average size classes, etc.- completely irrelevant to her academic experience. Does she care that there are 500 kids in Organic chemistry, all gunning for med school?

And flexible curriculum- it’s great in theory. Truly. But even the MOST flexible (I went to Brown back in ancient times) is less practical in practice than in theory. Why? Every department has its own requirements. You want a degree? You fulfill their requirements. You want grad school? More requirements. So sure- it’s nice to know it’s there, but it doesn’t really impact your own scheduling all that much.

Classics at Brown when I was there- fluency in one ancient language (although the top students in the department who ended up in the top grad programs had both Latin and Greek). Reading fluency (established by a test-- you could definitely test out of it if you were a strong HS language student) in either French or German. And then your own program, emphasizing art, philosophy, literature, history, depending on your interests. But even in the most “open” curriculum (which it was at the time) you had a bunch of boxes to check off if you wanted a Bachelor’s degree! Most students took at least one course in ancient religion, which led many to study Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, etc. which would require at least two semesters to pass a reading fluency test.

So lots of classes which are only kinda/sorta “open”.

I would encourage your D to go through course catalogues to see a few sample “this is what my program would look like”. She might realize that her courses will be remarkably the same, whether at a place with flexibility or not!!! There’s just a certain expectation in every field about what a Bachelor’s degree needs to cover.

My smallest class? 12 students and TWO professors. It was a nightmare. It was a seminar which met once a week for four hours; you couldn’t even yawn or shuffle your papers without a professor noting it and nodding at you (as if to say, “Blossom, are we boring you?”)

Such a thing as too small!!!

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Thank you! Yes, Connecticut College and Brandeis currently are two of the favorite schools that are slightly easier admits. She may apply to W&M, but she is not interested in Richmond. I wish she would consider Davidson. I will look into Lafayette as well.

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Thank you for this incredibly helpful post! I truly appreciate hearing about your experience as a classics major. One of the reasons she wanted a “flexible” curriculum is because she does want room in her schedule to study multiple languages and she will be excited to pursue a program like you described. Mostly it is a strong dislike of a rigid “core curriculum,” such as the core at Columbia. We do hope that her fields generally will have small classes. She is used to VERY small classes. I think 15 is the biggest class she has had in high school. She likes intense discussions and getting to know her teachers.

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Notre Dame

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I think @randommom1 mentioned it before, but has your daughter thought about Hampshire at all? Your last post in particular made me think of Hampshire. It’s part of the 5-college consortium with Amherst, UMass, Mount Holyoke, and Smith. It’s small, but with the consortium (and a location IN Amherst, so easier access to Amherst and UMass classes than some of the other consortium schools), it may be of interest.

Here’s the Colleges That Change Lives profile on Hampshire: Hampshire College – Colleges That Change Lives

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Intense discussions are great. But a dimension in college which doesn’t exist in most HS’s- the opportunity to take classes with some absolutely incredible lecturers. A professor with a stellar reputation is likely to fill a lecture hall- with a waiting list- and that’s what you are paying for.

A diet of small seminars gets old pretty quickly if your roommate and friends are raving about professor ABC’s lecture. I took several classes in things I wasn’t all that interested in just on the basis of the professor’s reputation (only one of them was Classics-adjacent) and I can still quote from some of those lectures 40+ years later. And it is a CC myth that large classes mean that you don’t get to know your professors. That’s on the student, not a function of the size of the class.

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Re; Tufts, maybe ask your D to think about how often she will actually visit Boston (even with the new T stop), particularly in the cold weather. My artsy D also loved the idea of SMFA, but she realized that it’s a 45 min (90 min roundtrip) ride on the bus and if your D is not an SMFA student, it just might be quite difficult to fit a class or two into her Tufts schedule, especially with the length of the arts classes and the commute to the Fenway campus. Hope this helps. Tufts is a great school and not trying to take away from it. When my D said no to Tufts, it was after a very long, hard decision process. Just explaining a few major conclusions that contributed to her decision.

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I can’t keep track so this is likely geographically off and it’s not a name your daughter will know. In 129 posts, it may have been mentioned.

Everyone on here raves, raves raves about Beloit College when it comes to anthropology - and they have Classics too - although it looks more like Greek Civilization.

Great merit, lots of personal attention I’m guessing - and when people mention Anthropology - you can see the excitement when they yell out - BELOIT.

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Brown and Bryn Mawr are two others that are strong in classics. Brown has been mentioned and is super selective, but BMC could hit a lot of the right notes. Extremely strong in classics.

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Bryn Mawr is such a great suggestion you actually made it already in this thread!

Apparently, though, it has been ruled out because it isn’t in New England:

I will just note that Bryn Mawr is such a great suggestion that I think it has raised Haverford as a possibility for my S24. Haverford is good in its own right, but being able to take courses at Bryn Mawr (and Swarthmore and Penn) really elevates all of those “Quaker Consortium” schools in my view, generally but not least in Classics. And I note Haverford’s Classics Department specifically promotes some combined programs with Bryn Mawr (see under “Related Programs”):

So it is pretty unfortunate her D24 has apparently ruled out that location, because both Bryn Mawr individually and the Quaker Consortium generally seem otherwise pretty ideal.

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So sorry for the repeat. I thought that was someone else!

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Yes. I completely agree that Bryn Mawr and the Quaker consortium are wonderful and could be an excellent fit. When we toured Swarthmore I loved it but it was not her favorite. Schools in the Claremont consortium also are wonderful and could be a great fit but California doesn’t excite her and I prefer to keep her a little closer and in the same time zone. She prefers New England and currently is more interested in the 5 college consortium and probably will apply to UMass, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and/or Hampshire in the RD round (EA for UMass) if her ED choices don’t work out. Discussing RD with her can be fraught; when I suggest those options it sometimes makes her feel like I don’t believe in her or her ability to get in to her ED schools. The balance between support and practical realism is not easy.

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I guess this shows how nothing is costless–you have identified two excellent and pretty realistic ED options, which is great in isolation, but I can see how that would then make contingency planning more stressful.

For what it is worth, though, I think a Five College-focused Plan B is something to be excited about! At least in my mind, that is not really a lessor version of Plan A, it is actually just a different path that some people could reasonably prefer to Plan A.

But again, the feelings of random strangers are not probably persuasive. Still, from the outside, I think this is all shaping up really well.

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I know it has come up multiple times, but I really think your daughter should visit UVM. My very similar kid looking at many of the same schools as your daughter LOVED UVM when he visited: queer, artsy, welcoming, great vibe from Burlington, smaller than most state flagships. I’m so relieved that he’s excited about this likely. It’s a place that really benefits from a visit.

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I know it is already on your list – but I second Brandeis as a great option to visit/consider. It doesn’t check all the boxes- but it checks a lot of them. They have a lot of pre-professional students but I think they are pretty aggressively seeking Humanities majors. They offer Humanities Fellowships that sound fantastic (20k+/yr, opportunities for private tours, dinners with professors, mentorship etc.). They are definitely liberal/quirky and very easily accessible to Boston.

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This is so hard!! The reality is that if you get deferred in the ED round, you will have a relatively short time to turn everything around for ED2/RD submission, and at that point, it’ll feel that much more important that those apps be good (having not had the dedired outcome from your polished ED1 app.) This will also be over the holidays when access to your counselor may be limited. Ask me how I know!!!

I think it’s fine for you and your D to plan for the ED1 acceptance with the understanding of what will happen if it doesn’t pan out. It could behoove her to write an essay or two for the ED2 choice just to see if it sparks anything for the ED1 app. But having a plan, just in case, isn’t showing lack of confidence, just good planning. And picking schools has to be part of that.

Good luck to you. Fine line indeed!

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We went way further than that and my daughter had all her apps for her complete list done before ED decisions were out. She’d submitted probably half of them that were either EA or needed early apps for particular scholarships. She was sitting on the rest to not spend the application $ if it wasn’t needed. It was a ton of work, but I think trying to scramble to put together GOOD applications when dealing with the disappointment of an ED rejection, end of term, holidays - and in her case a heavy performance schedule in December was just a recipe for misery.

ETA and I will say her application to her ED school was much, much stronger having done all that work as it really fine tuned things.

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Yes to all of this and thank you all for the graciously and kindly offered advice and encouragement. The (very flexible) working plan is ED1 Barnard ED2 Tufts and she is currently working on both of those applications. RD will include schools from the 5 college consortium, Vassar, Brandeis, Wesleyan, Connecticut College, U Vermont, and possibly FSU for a in-state fall back with the plan of maximizing FSU’s abroad campuses. Her college counselor feels pretty good about this plan and I think I feel ok, too.

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