Match Me - PA resident for English + History, PoliSci & Music. Classical vocalist spike. 3.6/33

I just think all these schools - Barnard, Smith - are huge reaches. Like you had UNC a target. It’s a huge huge reach.

Agree with AU if interest is demonstrated.

But I think as you look at new schools - the Rice, Chicago - are not going to happen. Brandeis type . Maybe ?

But none of these are targets imho.

Adding a Barnard, Rice - even U of Miami - will lead to disappointment admission wise I believe.

Denver, Elon is the right level. Mt Holyoke too.

Ps if you didn’t even visit Oberlin after driving there, that’s a sign of immaturity (sorry). Don’t bother with Elon.

I think that the OP’s daughter sees herself at the type of school that attracts intellectual students, and yet I agree that Barnard, Vassar, etc are all reaches due to her GPA. Looking at SCOIR data for my kids’ school (highly rated small independent college prep school), the applicants who get in almost all have high unweighted GPAs, like 3.9, 4.0. Her spike as a vocalist might help a bit in the case like Smith or Bryn Mawr, but the other low acceptance rate schools really seem to prefer the high GPA kids. My D24 with an unweighted 3.79 isn’t really even considering them for this reason (well, maybe one or two as “what the heck” high reaches). I agree St Olaf is a likely and Mt Holyoke is a match for this student.

ETA I too have a highly sensitive, intellectual daughter who had social anxiety (and other anxiety/depression in HS), now a rising college junior. I really recommend looking at schools with tight knit communities, known for “nice” kids. I know St Olaf is one of these, look for CTCL schools for other ideas. Also, it helped my D21 considerably that her college is less than 2 hours away by plane. We were hesitant to send her out of state, but the non-stop quick flight home has been invaluable, and she’s come home a few times outside of traditional breaks for needed down time.

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It’s great that your high school has Naviance data. I know that at many schools, families are not able to see whether someone has applied ED or RD to a particular school, not know if there are any other hooks such as being an athlete, legacy, etc. If your high school regularly sends students to the types of high schools on your list, I would speak with the counselor to see whether they think the schools on your list are appropriately sorted.

Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by this?

It’s great that a family member has made such a generous offer. I would just make sure the individual knows what the costs of tuition are nowadays, including at the schools your daughter is looking at and has some kind of written arrangements (including in a will, if necessary) about continuing to pay for half of your D’s tuition, should the need arise. And I would strongly recommend your family not to take any loans out. You have not asked for financial advice, but if you don’t want any financial advice from the forum, I’d urge you to speak with a financial advisor with a fiduciary interest (i.e. someone who’s advising what is in your best interests).

With respect to college recommendations, I still stand by the schools I suggested in post #20, though the private schools on the whole might be better fits than the public schools.

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Great question about her school - each year, out of say 175 students, I’d estimate 10-15% attend rigorous schools, and within that, 1-5 students attend T20 schools, 40% or maybe more of class attends Penn State/Pitt/Scranton/St Joes/West Chester/Temple local schools, and then 20% do Community College trade schools etc. 10% (possibly, I’m estimating) get athletic scholarships to schools I’ve literally never heard of. Up to 15% may go straight to work. She has friends from last year’s graduating class at Vanderbilt, Hamilton, and Carnegie Mellon, but this year, we know only one superstar student, who got into Harvard. About 2/3 of the class provided data to yearbook (pic with school logo) and top schools reported, in addition to many from the local list above, were 1-2 students at each of the following: BU, Bucknell, Emerson, Richmond, U of South Carolina, Syracuse, F&M, St. Andrews (Scotland), JMU, Ohio U, & Virginia Tech.

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The GC thinks she’s very well qualified and should calm down. She’s one of the “my job is to get you graduated” GCs, and “support what you need for college apps” GC, but not really “getting” that she doesn’t want to go to Penn State. Everything is “you’ll be fine.” For example, I have a variance in her calculated Uw gpa that I cannot understand and her response is that it’s calculated by computer so it must be right (except I last year went through the same dance and
caught an error that she had corrected), just for example. She’s not an advocate - she’s managing her workload (she’s one of 3 counselors for about 180 students).

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Seconding CTCL colleges.
If you’re not familiar with them (many different vibes& levels of selectivity) lots of people here can help!

100% agree on not making the kid miserable for a lottery school - and for students with real strength in art/humanities, calculus is not necessary indeed even there (I think that’s what I stated), precalculus regular and AP stats would be the usual “expectation”. And for many other universities, there’s no expectation of even precalculus.
That being said, OP mentioned a kid with “Yale or bust” syndrome and Yale wd definitely expect precalculus for a kid on the +2 advanced math track.
As for sciences, there needs to be a minimum of 3 years, sometimes 4, in a variety of fields (hence, typically, bio chem physics, or freshman physics chem bio for the physics 1st schools…)- depth is not expected for Humanities students (certainly not AP chem or physics C) but breadth&showing curiosity are. So, if not physics: astronomy, geology, physical geography (sometimes in addition to Human geo), A&P, Marine science also work, various experiential learning seminars - it really depends on the school.
I think I’ve consistently advocated along these lines on CC. AP Environmental integrates knowledge from all these fields so doing well in that class meets the points they’re looking for (breadth, curiosity, understanding of scientific phenomena).
And the more exceptional the kid is in one area, the more deviations are accepted/expected.
At the same time, unless enrolled in an Arts HS, 2 years of math+2 years of science wouldn’t be sufficient for any highly selective college. That’s not what OPs daughter is doing AFAIK though.

In short, @arewethereyet.24’ s kid will be fine overall and if these personal choices lead to a rejection, it means the college was a very bad fit for her.

That being said, there’s a dissonance btw some choices made in HS (which I find reasonable and advantageous for this student) and stacking the list with reaches that combine intensity and competitive students, as the child wanted to do. If I understand correctly, her parents know it may not be the way to go and want help in finding colleges that match their child’s intellectual profile without equating this with intensity or rankings.
Fortunately, there are intellectual colleges (from Vassar, W&M, or Brandeis, to St Olaf or Macalester to Wheaton MA and Wooster) that would provide the right environment without the problems.
And based on the above post, the GC doesn’t quite understand what it is this child wants - that Penn State Schreyer may not be the ultimate prize or that a kid who wants CMU may not be interested in Hamilton…and that OPs child is not interested in either (tech or rural) despite having the stats, on paper at least.
The good thing is that the HS is a “known quantity” in PA. Even if Guidance isn’t finely attuned in the way a high performing HS/prep school would be, with about 60% students going to selective colleges it means there’s a school profile (check though!) and it’ll speak well of the school to colleges who might not have had experience with it+ is likely to be known at many colleges your child is considering, which will be in her favor.
Does the school use “brag sheets”, for GCs or teachers? (It wd be an opportunity to customize for “intellectual” colleges.)
Note that rankings and intellectual vibe aren’t necessarily the same, just as SAT score doesn’t necessarily indicate intellectual curiosity.

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I just went back to see why not Oberlin. Have you guys visited? It is definitely in the middle of no where but the town itself is cute and fun and it is about an hour from Cleveland. She would definitely fit in and possibly get both merit and music scholarships

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Wesleyan is a traditional LAC with a hefty population of arty, musical, social justice kids sprinkled throughout. Not sure why the architecture would be a turnoff but just make sure your D is evaluating schools based on relevant criteria!

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3 counselors for 180 is a good ratio.

Most public school counselors seemed programmed for the flagships.

At $40k check out College of Charleston too. You have some solid in the Midwest - a Butler, Dayton, DePaul. Ithaca College due to music. It’s rural getting there but the town isn’t.

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Lots of good advice here. I couple of things stood out to me.

“she has a deeply embedded sense of herself as an intellectual and Ivy-league quality student.”

“Her family is full of people who have attended Ivies for undergrad”

  • Don’t focus on prestige and don’t apply pressure. Focus on fit. Attending an elite school is small chance for everyone and you don’t want her to think of herself as a failure if she does not get in.

“She absolutely detests PA and wants nothing to do with Penn State and the like (informed largely by the anti-intellectual academic environment and the percentage of her HS that attends these schools)”

  • An attitude like this and the fact she wouldn’t even take the tour at Oberlin shows that she is still a kid and not quite the mature intellectual and Ivy-league quality student she thinks she is just yet. (Please correct her when she makes statements like this - there are plenty of super smart, super hardworking kids at these schools. Those kids should have no impact on her performance.)

“family member has offered to cover half of annual tuition”

  • What a super-nice offer! I, of course, know nothing about this relative/situation, but consider what happens if for some reason this person cannot continue to pay (serious illness, death, etc.)

Your daughter sounds like a great kid - best of luck to her!

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We went there to do a tour, and it is very isolated. The school is a huge center of a several block downtown, and it makes her feel claustrophobic (her term). I don’t understand her, or it, but I have to respect that it’s her future school environment and she wants/needs to feel like “civilization” is nearby enough to be readily accessable. When I say it was a drive around “please can we go home because I so completely cannot imagine myself here that I don’t want to waste our time” experience… it was. My husband and I are practical people, and whilst irritating to us to have arrived there and have her not give it a chance (it was on our way home from Michigan so not a “wasted” trip), it just was very out of sync with what she wants her imagined college experience to be, and I have to respect that, and that she knows so well what she wants. I also have to guide her to be open minded about where to find that.

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The architecture wasn’t the issue, but it mirrored a chaos she didn’t enjoy.

The fact of our family’s academic pedigree weighs heavily upon her, despite the intensive work we have done (and continue to do) to deprogram her. Learning for learning’s sake - do your best and no cares about outcomes (but her poor outcomes, where they occur, are always correlated to a lack of ability to do best - due to absence, circumstance, anxiety whatever, so encouraging her to put the effort in can look like outcome focused pressure). But I have never cared about her grades other than as a reflection of her pushing herself to grow and be her best (whatever that looks like - taking AP Bio and Calc wasn’t going to enable her best so we made a different set of decisions, taking honors bio and physics, for example). Know your strengths and so on. FWIW, her parents are not putting pressure on her to do anything other than be smart about applications and ensure that there are targets and safeties that she really would be happy to attend. For good or ill, this child derives huge identity from academics and it matters to her where she goes. We discuss, incessantly, flipping the script to focus on what she is getting as a consumer at these schools, what it might feel like in various circumstances, etc. Parents are not pushing for T20 schools. Repeat. Parents are not pushing for T20 schools. Parents are not forbidding her from applying, and are researching and data gathering to try to decide whether things are reasonable enough to make sense. Hence this post.

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We love Charleston (she loves history and was enamored of the preservation they had the foresight to provide in the midst and aftermath of such civil unrest) - that’s a good school for us to check out. Ithaca is on our list!

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Goucher? Shares many elements of some of the other schools on your list but much easier for you guys to get to (and from, if need be) and a kind and accepting student body…

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I hear you that the parents aren’t pushing t-20s, but please make sure you and/or others aren’t saying things like ‘academic pedigree’ in front of her. The highly rejective schools of today are much more competitive and have overall stronger students, on average, than when parents and those older attended these schools. Not comparable, full stop. I am saying all of this gently, but also watch things like ‘we took trig’…your D is the one applying to college.

I agree with the others about the reachiness of the list. Have your D do research at NU (before ED’ing) about the opportunities in opera for non-majors. She needs to talk with someone to get the real deal, beyond what they say on the website. Same for any other schools if access to music is critical.

There are a number of schools on this list where I would hesitate to send a student who has experienced social anxiety, finding their peeps, and being sensitive to mean girl behavior.

NU, Richmond, Bucknell, Barnard, and WashU all would give me pause for a student like your D. Richmond in particular is hard to avoid this social influence because of its size and socially accepted behaviors there, such as only certain groups or type of people can sit at certain cafeteria tables. No joke.

NU, Barnard, and WashU all lean towards a more intense college experience…both socially and academically.

If Oberlin was too rural being 30 mins from downtown Cleveland, and a bit less to the airport, Bucknell needs to come off the list too…it is very isolated. Add in the social scene, and nope, unlikely a good fit.

Lastly, run the NPCs (which aren’t yet updated for 2024-25) to see if they look affordable. Have you run NU’s? Net Price Calculator

It’s critical for list building that you understand how much need based aid you might qualify for at schools with little or no merit.

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Interestingly, my daughter actually liked UMass Amherst, was the only state school she applied to (after also having visited UVA, UMD, and others, to get a sense how those felt). Despite its obvious size, somehow the campus seemed manageable, and the vibe spoke to her. So hopefully your daughter will take a liking to it.

My daughter was also accepted into URichmond, but after revisiting decided against it. I liked it a lot, but we definitedly needed any criteria to whittle down her list. So her not getting a strong feeling about the importance of the English department vs. others was a welcome, subjective reason.

If your daughter liked the urban location of Columbia/Barnard, then maybe Emerson (already on your list) will indeed speak to her. The campus is less contained, but we just had a friend (similar stats as your daughter) graduate from there, and she has nothing but praise about their creative writing programs. Emerson was very inclusive, and professors seemed genuinely caring - but they don’t have the means for generous financial aid.

A second friend just graduated from Bucknell. She too was a very good, but not first decile student. She was definitely seeking a sorority experience and, indeed, she became very active and her social life revolved completely around that. She too had a great outcome with her literary studies, and is now pursuing a masters elsewhere.

My niece is a rising junior at Richmond (legacy), she’s had a tough couple of years socially there, despite being kind, smart, pretty, and from a wealthy family. Her experience with Greek life (social and business) was not good.

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Mine had the same reaction to a Wesleyan. Walked up to the start of the tour and just walked out. Glad that she at least gave it a look since it does seem to check all her other boxes.

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That’s validating - people make her feel like she’s crazy for caring about her learning environment. She struggles with super creative “extra” teaching styles - the “fun for fun’s sake” - type of environment and Wes struck her as feeling like that. She wants to roll her sleeves up and debate and critique literature and poetry, or write a paper, but not have a group project where everyone contributes to a gigantic mural with hidden words in it that is then created on the countryside with color coordinated plants (just as an example). lol

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