Need Advice about LAC admissions - another Average Excellent kid

My daughter has stats a bit lower than your daughter but still competitive - we are in the TE program. DD also applied to Tulane, Richmond and Lafayette among some others this past year and I think based on our experience that your daughter has a very good chance of getting in and getting TE from them. DD is going to Lafayette with TE. My other daughter goes to (and got TE from) American U - they are a bit bigger (about 6,000) but compact campus and it feels small. They have a good and active theatre program.
Richmond, Tulane and Lafayette also have full tuition scholarships that your daughter should try for - she may be competitive based on her scores so even if she doesn’t get the TE she may get even a better deal that way.
Best of luck!

Agree 100% with the suggestion of having your D get her dad involved. Not just because of the money-- but because he is her father, as someone who works in higher ed he may have a perspective on college life that will be loving and helpful to her, AND because she will need him/his cooperation down the road, not just for finances. I know divorced dads who do the move in/move out for the new apartments after graduation when the kids seem to relocate every 8 months as subleases come and go, I know divorced dads who store all the college stuff in their garages when the kid takes off to teach English in China for a year after graduating from college, etc. And then dads who honestly don’t know what the kid is majoring in or if the kid has a summer internship lined up.

Secondly- the small school thing sticks out at me. Encourage your D to keep an open mind. There are lots of ways to cut a large university down to size- especially for a kid with a passion for theater and a lot of interests. There are few ways to make a small college bigger other than a semester somewhere else. Don’t let a preference become a fetish (which it is on CC). Especially if an affordable, geographically desirable admissions safety is staring you in the face except for size.

A lot of U’s have a law school located elsewhere- so take out those students, your D will never interact with them. Ditto the med school and the business school and a graduate program in forestry or what-not. Don’t discount a university which is a thousand or two thousand more undergrads than what you think is optimal for her… it might “feel” a lot smaller in actuality.

Creative writing, political science and pre-law… Muhlenberg. I know you mentioned the ED consideration but I would give it a serious look. Best of luck to you!

@myjanda - Congrats to your daughters! I would love to talk to you more about TE at some point and also hear how your D likes Lafayette once she is into the school year. We were there last week and it was great. My dad lives outside of DC so we should have looked at American while we were there. Does it have a distinct campus in the city?

@blossom - Thanks for you thoughts. They make a lot of sense and it seems worthwhile to look at schools a little larger. We visited Villanova last week and I really liked it. I think D thought the size was fine, just maybe a little too religious for her. Do you have any suggestions for larger schools? It seems like the larger state schools that border us might not be the best fit for her and she might not be competitive enough to get the really big scholarships. But I do like your idea of keeping a more open mind.

@elena13 - thanks, and happy to talk to you about TE - PM me at any time if you want to set up a time to talk, or wait until my daughter is in to her first semester.
American has a great campus - small but distinct. It is on the edge of DC, next to Friendship Heights and Bethesda, just outside of Tenleytown. It’s a more traditional campus than GW, but not as close to the city at Georgetown.
My older daughter goes into the City all the time, even during the week - via bus or metro, and the kids also go to the three areas mentioned above - which are even closer - for dinner and shopping. We found the campus grew on us - the more often we go back the better and better we like it and my daughter, now absolutely loves the campus and location (she’s a rising junior).

Feeling a bit overwhelmed about narrowing down schools that would fall in the safety, match, and reach category. We know the ones D likes (mentioned above) but feel like I need to add some to the list. I had included Wellesley and Davidson in the reach category and am wondering about any others. Will she have a better chance at a selective northern LAC coming from the south?
Diversity and a liberal atmosphere are important to her so not sure Furman will really be the place for her (but would like having her closer). She loves other artsy people and I think it would be good to be around fairly serious students.
Does she have a serious chance at good merit aid at Richmond, Lafayette, Tulane? Several of the visits we’ve made have been in the summer when students weren’t around so it’s hard to make decisions. And now I feel like we’re running out of time. How does this feel so stressful and it’s only August?

Also trying to think of any other safety schools, but maybe they are just our state flagship and her dad’s college.

Don’t let yourself or your D get stuck on “pre-law” because you can essentially major in anything and go to law school. For law school admissions, it will mainly be about LSAT and GPA. However, you can look at their career services to see about advising what number of students attend law school and the school’s mean gpa and LSAT of those that did go to law school.

Thanks @sybbie719, Yes I agree - not really focusing on that as I’m not sure I really see her going that direction anyway. I mainly want an overall good LAC (they all seem to have good English professors I think) with some good options for getting involved in theater as a non-major. I know we need to look at some schools that area little larger too.

What do you think @OHMomof2, would Ohio University be a good match?

@mommdc - It’s certainly a safety for this student but it’s also pretty large state university (30K, just more than half are undergrads)), not a LAC at all. I am not sure how large the honors/scholars program is, though.

I’d think better fits in Ohio might include Wooster, Denison, Kenyon, Oberlin, maybe OWU.

OU has some merit but it’s not guaranteed for stats as it was a few years ago.

Thanks @mommdc and @OHMomof2 for your thoughts. Yes, we’ll probably stick to our state flagship for the large school (have a visit next month to visit the honors college). Otherwise, the smaller schools are ideal for her. Kenyon, Oberlin, and Denison sound great. I haven’t looked at Wooster much. Hoping for merit aid and I know that is very competitive. Thanks again!

Also, @OHMomof2, can you give your thoughts about Amhearst? It seems wonderful, but I know very hard to get in. What did you and your daughter like most about it?

For an LAC-like environment w/ excellent merit, Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College would be a good option. Acceptance into the Honors College waives tuition (so my friend who is in the HTC is only paying for about 8k a year for room/board) and the HTC is structured in an Oxbridge like style of one-on-one instruction with professors. Your daughter’s stats would make her a shoo-in.

@elena13 - She’s having an excellent experience there in many ways. For her, coming from here (midwest small town), the experience of getting to know kids from far and wide has had a great impact. She loves her professors, and knows them all well, from class and from outside of class too - that’s a small school feature I think. There are tremendous resources for study abroad, summer internships, help with anything, grants for outside activities and of course incredible financial aid - those are large endowment school features, I think.

She hasn’t chosen a major yet but isn’t expected to until late next year, and has been getting excellent advice from her official adviser and an alumni mentoring program, as well as from profs she reaches out to and who respond to her, as they do, there.

She’s never been unable to register for the classes - even the particular sections - she wants, through 3 cycles so far.

The campus and area are beautiful, the town has tons of coffee & tea shops, restaurants, parks, hangout areas, bookstores, little hidden shops and food down alleys (“walks” there). It’s a great college town (that’s largely thanks to UMass being there too which is so much larger). 2 hours to Boston and 3 to NYC, and she actually does go to both, the school runs shuttles at breaks and there are buses and trains, though this year she will have a car.

Glad to answer any specific qs I can.

College of Wooster is a school both of my kids applied to and I really love. My S was waitlisted but then accepted, by then too late for him. D was accepted early. Beautiful campus, every senior does a major project of some kind. Also a cute town. Visits are great - you get your own tour guide who tailors it just for you. Great merit money and not bad need based aid for a school that doesn’t promise to meet need.

Thanks @extrapeppermint ! That sounds good. We definitely need to expand the search a little to larger schools. Thanks for your response.