Thanks to everyone for your thoughts. This is a great resource for our first rodeo!
She is willing to widen her geographic scope for more safe schools.
She will sit for the ACT again in September. She is taking practice tests at Sylvan and hoping to realistically boost her score by 1-2 points. She thinks she is better than a 30.
American University - We did visit during one of their “Preview Days”. It was much more suburban than she expected. At the conclusion of the day she was not super excited about the school. She didn’t feel the fit/vibe she was hoping for.
Jesuit/Catholic Schools - She is against schools with any religious affiliation.
Fordham, Macalester, Temple, Drexel - Definitely need more investigation into these schools.
NYU Global Liberal Studies - Very interesting.
She plans to open her Common App account this evening after work. Here we go!
Northeastern will be a reach with her ACT scores, but with her interests and travel history she could increase her chances by applying to NU.in where students travel abroad during 1st semester. https://www.northeastern.edu/nuin/
Did something happen between 2017 and now that drastically changed BU’s admission statistics? My D17’s high school “bestie” got into BU regular decision with a 3.6 GPA and 29 ACT, and similar kids also got in there that year as well. In the span of one year did it suddenly become much harder to get into?
@JenJenJenJen I agree that admissions standards changed at BU. Daughter’s BF was a really good student and was offered something new I believe for BU…guaranteed sophomore transfer. She had very good grades and test scores.
She needs to rethink the choice not to take the SAT, unless she took a practice test that was unimprovably low. (Some students’ brains are simply not wired the way the test creators’ brains are.) I think her ACT score may hold her back.
More safeties are the way to go. You are lucky in NY with a good and varied state higher education system. Insist on visiting them!
@TomSrOfBoston Actually, I don’t think so – something to do with international relations? I’m not that familiar with it. It was not her top choice, but she’s having a medium-okay time there now as far as I can tell. Joined a sorority to feel like she was part of a group.
As an exercise we looked up the middle 50% ACT range scores for some of the colleges that have been discussed. These numbers are from the school’s most recent CDS. We were surprised Northeastern was slightly higher than Cornell. She has reaffirmed her desire to be in a more urban location. She did visit Bryn Mawr/American and described it as a more suburban campus than urban. She states she wants to be in a city, not take a train/bus to the city. She included Cornell because of the Global Health major in CALS, realizing it’s location is an outlier. Her ACT currently stands at 30 but she will retake the test in September.
Northeastern University 32-34
Cornell University 31-34
Barnard College 30-33
Tulane University 30-33
Bryn Mawr 29-33
New York University 29-33
Macalester College 29-32
Boston University 29-32
George Washington University 29-32
University of Pittsburgh 27-32
Fordham University 27-31
American University 26-30
University of Vermont 25-30
Drexel University 24-30
Temple University 24-29
Northeastern’s admitted student stats are high, but their yield is under 20%, so I would guess that the stats of the matriculating sub-group aren’t higher than Cornell’s. Also, NU has the whole NU-in cohort which is treated as spring-admit for stat purposes and doesn’t count toward the stats. (Though Cornell also has their share of alternate admit pathways including both spring-admit and guaranteed-sophomore-transfer.) Maybe your daughter would actually like the NUin program with the first semester abroad, given her global focus? The kids who do that programs seem very happy with it - since they’re with a whole NU group overseas, they have a friend-group to enter the main campus with and they seem to make a smooth adjustment. Your daughter’s chances of getting into NU are higher if she keeps that option open.
Pitt’s application is rolling, so hopefully she can get an acceptance nailed down early and not have to worry about other safeties unless she wants to.
Additional ideas:
Johns Hopkins (reach, but great for IR…)
Tufts (maybe too suburban, and a reach but also great for IR)
U of Richmond (high match)
U of Rochester (high match)
Syracuse U (low match)
College of Charleston (safety)
SUNY at Buffalo (safety)
CCNY (low match/safety)
The ACT is low for Hopkins and Tufts but the GPA is very good. I know you didn’t ask for reaches, but if she likes Tufts it Hopkins, an app couldn’t hurt (provided she has the time for it…). The rest are more what you asked for – matches/safeties in cities.
Would she consider McGill? - Location in downtown Montreal, good opportunity to practice her French in a bilingual educational environment, above 40% admit rate, median ACT for US admit of 31, but they put this note on their website for people who are unaward of what the word “median” means: (****50% of scores of registered students were less than or equal to this score). See https://www.mcgill.ca/es/admissions-profile
And as long as we are discussing the math behind “median” scores or score ranges: up to 25% of studens who enroll in US college have below median scores. All of those students got accepted. At Barnard, the breakdown from the common data set for 2017-2018 is 77% ACT 30-36, 22% ACT 24-29. For ED acceptance, “median” is good enough-- because they know she’s a lock for attendance and admitting her won’t hurt their numbers in any way. Also, if her ACT composite is being brought down by a weaker math score, definitely not a problem at Barnard-- the ACT math median range is 27-32 / English 32-35. (From the academic profile you posted I’m assuming that’s the case).
From everything you write, I think that Barnard is your daughter’s best fit college and ED offers her best chance for admission at Barnard. She can also apply non-binding early action to Northeastern at the same time.
My daughter is a Barnard alum but was also admitted to NYU Gallatin with lower end test scores. (1 point below Barnard’s then mid-range, and at the very bottom of NYU’s then-midrange). The decision to apply to Gallatin was made in part because of the perception that they would be less score-focused for admission.
For other possibilities for safeties in NYC, look at New School & Pace. Both schools offer Global Studies majors. But your daughter can add these to her list for now, and wait until the ED/EA decisions come in December to decide whether she needs to look more closely at them.
@aquapt - the reported median score ranges for student are for students who enroll in the fall, not for admitted students. That’s why colleges can manipulate the numbers by admitting some students for the spring or rerouting them through different programs. So with a 20% yield, that would imply that Northeastern’s admitted students have an even higher than reported range – but like NYU, Northeastern now shifts some of it’s lower-stat admittees off into an overseas location for the first semester. All of those first-semester abroad programs are ways for the schools to pull in $$$ from lower-stat students and support their overseas campuses – but also might appeal to students like the OP’s daughter who clearly would enjoy opportunities to spend time abroad. Good article here about how Northeastern gamed the rankings: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2014/08/26/how-northeastern-gamed-the-college-rankings/
That article has good info but a rather inflammatory title - many of the ways in which Northeastern “gamed” the rankings involved investing in real improvements, even if the outcome metric was rankings. For the most part I totally respect what NU has done to earn their ascent in the rankings; what I find a little less appealing is the way they “game” financial aid by using unfavorable formulas to “meet full need” according to a stingy evaluation of need, and then absorb any outside or merit aid the student obtains into the aid package without even reducing loans. It’s hard to say how many students decide against NU because of the poor affordability rather than actually preferring another school they got accepted to, but anecdotally there seem to be a lot of students who walk away for money reasons even though it was their top choice.
I guess you’re right about the entering student stats. It would be interesting to see how they compare to admitted student stats. On the one hand, a lot of high-stats admits go elsewhere, having also been admitted to super-elite schools. On the other hand, a lot of lower-stats admits go elsewhere because NU is not affordable without merit. But yes, it’s a very stat-focused admissions process, with the numbers climbing every year.
The Boston Magazine article also mentions in passing how other colleges have historically simply lied about their stats. I have no reason to believe that the practice isn’t continuing or even more widespread than indicated. I’m not saying that any particular college is necessarily fudging its numbers – just that the incentives for doing so, as well as the history, is clear. (Just because a bunch of colleges got caught at it in 2012 doesn’t mean that the practice has stopped – if anything the current “arms” race for stats only increases the motivation.) But probably some of the rise in score ranges also comes from the pressure on students to repeat testing to improve scores, along with the practice of superscoring.
I mean, I have to shake my head when a CC poster is suggesting a rural test optional college for a kid with a 30 ACT who is dead set on urban. My D. would have been turning cartwheels if she could have scored 30-- she had an ACT 27. She graduated summa cum laude and I am quite sure that the academic expecations at Barnard haven’t gotten tougher – actually they have gotten easier, because Barnard’s current Foundations requirements are less demanding than the previous Nine Ways of Knowing; and the senior thesis requirement for my daughter’s major has been significantly relaxed as well. So the point is simply that the driving up of scores of admitted students is probably not having much of an impact on overall quality of college level academics.
I think the OP’s daughter is likely to get accepted into most of the colleges on her list-- her scores are clearly in range for all but Cornell and Northeastern — and NEU probably would accept a student like her into their “in” program, which keeps the test score numbers off the books. I think NEU probably also fudges data by pushing lower scoring students into its General Studies program.They have a whole page on their site titled “Specialized Entry Programs” which might as well be titled, “students whose test scores we don’t report.”
In-range means exactly that – it is not a disadvantage. Only on CC do people believe that a student has to be above-range to be accepted.
Full pay is always an advantage whether the college claims to be need blind or not. The need-blind colleges simply use programs like ED as a way to increase apps from full pay families.
@calmom – as a counterpoint, my D. had 33 ACT, NMF, 4.0 unweighted in a top 10 public school in our state plus took extra class through the gifted STEM high school as a junior and senior, somewhat of a geographic diversity pick (i.e., not from NE), strong leadership and ECs (but no big state or national awards and hasn’t cured cancer), excellent recs, blah blah – and she was WL at Barnard this past year as part of RD.
Fort., overall she did really well and was accepted (with merit and w/o) at a lot of great colleges on par (or ranked even higher) than Barnard. I think it was partly fit – her whole common app essay was about the outdoors and plants and stuff – so it didn’t scream Barnard/NYC at all. But still - just had to put it out there. . .
OP – if Barnard is first choice and you are okay with full pay, your D. should def go for ED which will make a difference. But take it from my D and make sure that common app essay is good fit!
