I think it is also crazy to assume that this is “late in the game.” Her dad (my husband) is an ER physician who went to school in Chicago. U of C is a great school but the surrounding area, while beautiful, is also a bit dicey. Northwestern may be an option. Purdue is in IN. I keep reading about Wash U. Will have her research this school. Heading to U of MI tomorrow. This research is exhausting and overwhelming. She is vacationing most of the summer which makes me happy!! CC may drive her nuts! So many different opinions, some which are helpful while others not so much!!
I also agree that it is getting late in the game. Common App opens August 1. ED and EA deadlines are in early November. FAFSA opens Oct.1. If merit aid or financial aid is a consideration, (as it is for our family), the clock really IS ticking.
DS had an experience similar to the one described by Chembiodad. Son had offers of support from Dartmouth, WashingtonU, Chicago, Pomona, and others. Ultimately shied away from the Ivies – just to stressful. Backed away from Swarthmore for the same reason though he loved the campus and the new coach sold it really well. Ended up at Williams – the right balance between academics and sports. Fit is more important, ultimately, than prestige.
62 ironic, since back when Berkeley law's GPA adjustments became public it seemed they found Williams nearly as grade-deflated as Swarthmore.
Though that was quite a while ago…
Also I missed OP saying kid had keen, or any, interest in sports. Though it may have been said.
Regarding OP, kid can be unhappy for too much work. Kid can also be unhappy if it’s too easy and doesn’t “fit” with fellow students. Both socially and intellectually. Kid can visit some schools and decide this, herself. Desire to be challenged, or not, is to some extent internal.
Cheerleader throughout high school and competitive cheer.
@djrmom – I might have missed it in this long thread, but what is your DD’s likely major? Does she want to continue cheerleading in college? Is a school with strong athletics & school spirit important to her (not as a participant, but enthusiastic spectators are important, tool)
My guess from what you have disclosed is that your D. might be happiest at a mid-range school . (Mid-range in terms of selectivity - for example, schools that accept between 30-50% of applicants) . Vandy & WashU are essentially Ivy-equivalents – but maybe your cheerleading daughter is a very bright young woman who also wants to have fun during her college years – and there is nothing wrong with that. The point is to find the right mix.
- NOTE: I just realized that my suggestion of a "mid-range" school could mean a school very much like Purdue. I am wondering if part of your ambivalence as a parent comes from a hope that your very-bright daughter would attend a more prestigious school than her brother -- and now perhaps you are disappointed that she seem quite willing to "settle" for about the same level. If so, I understand those feelings, but at the same time I think you need to recognize that social fit is every bit as important as academic fit.
If this were my student, I would want to discuss/understand a few important issues:
- Which specific majors she is interested in? English, geography, philosophy, archaeology?
- How interested is she in grad school?
- What type of work does she image doing when she is done with school?
- How important is employability/income when she’s done with school?
Basically it is important to begin developing a longer term plan early. I would not want to start a student down a path that is a likely dead end without a lot of discussion. For example a biology major with no interest in grad school can be challenging, without a plan.
ok now I read this better…
You would ideally like a “free lunch”. Someplace with the academic reputation of a Vanderbilt without the commensurate workload. And preferably 2-4 hours from your house. (trying to find a compromise between you and D).
Sadly there is no such thing as a free lunch. Or it’s rare anyway.
Mentioned before: U Michigan, Kenyon, Notre Dame might be good to look into.
Most schools will violate one criterion or another. For some additional choices she might check out Bucknell and Boston College, for a place somewhere down on her list.
I would also encourage her to keep one or more of: Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Wash U- on the list, in case you/she changes her mind about workload. At 6% in her class these schools are not guaranteed admits IMO. Of course that depends on what her school’s Naviance and guidance counselors tell you.
FWIW my D1 decided she didn’t want to work as hard as she perceived U Chicago or Swarthmore would require.
She wound up attending Oberlin and was happy with the workload. But I don’t know that there will be a lot of fellow ex-cheerleaders at Oberlin. Or some other LACs I thought of, either (eg Grinnell, Macalester,…). But maybe check out others in the 20-40 rank range. Though I just glanced at an old list and nothing is screaming out at me (maybe Holy Cross?)
The women’s colleges on paper seem to fit, but the ones we checked out the students also had high academic demands, and were stressed. We never looked at Smith though. (Also not sure about the cheerleaders at Smith…)
Or Pitzer.
On another forum someone posted that U Michigan is becoming much more selective for out of state.
In which case she might consider one or two other big 10 schools, for someplace on the list.
If she (/you) changes her mind and decides to include the Northwesterns, then comparably competitive LACs could come on the screening list. But don’t expect them to be any cakewalk.
What about Miami of Ohio? Good academics, strong school spirit, not cutthroat, pretty reasonable driving distance for you–maybe I missed why this isn’t on the list?
I think that’s a little unfair to the OP. I think that there is a little bit of tension between what mom wants and what daughter wants, but also that it is quite normal. I think that the OP is the parent of a very capable and high achieving daughter and naturally she wants what is “best” – and when she gets feedback from others that the daughter ought to be applying to Ivy League schools, it puts more emotional pressure on the mom, because there is that big emotional question mark whenever parents worry that they are doing anything short of “best” for their kids.
But just because the daughter is smart does not mean that she is a scholar at heart.
The top, elite colleges are focused on educating scholars. Courses are taught with the expectation that students will go on to become academicians – they are laying the foundation for future PhD’s.
Given that the OP is a university professor, it may be hard for her to recognize that her daughter may have very different life goals, which may be well-served by attending a “good enough” college rather than the “best”.
I’m just trying to get a sense of whether this cheerleader-daughter would be happy at an LAC, or whether a larger university campus would be a better fit. It’s not that there are no ex-cheerleaders at Oberlin – there very well may be. And George W. Bush famously was a cheerleader at Yale.
Rather, it is simply that the cheerleading detail is one of the few bits of information the OP has shared about her daughter’s interests and personality. It suggests that she is outgoing, social, and enjoys athletics. So those are fit factors that need to be weighed along with issues of academics and college reputation. Now is also probably a good time for the OP and her daughter to figure out how they feel about sororities (good, bad, or indifferent?)
We know top 6% and AP courses and high SATs (“high” being a relative term).
Do we know GPA and the SAT score? Did I miss that?
There are a lot of suggestions being thrown around but without knowing the stats, it is hard to judge.
I’m saying this because my D is above 5% with a perfect gpa but would not likely get into many of the schools mentioned.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t recall anything that suggests this mom is tiger-parenting. She’s got a top performing kid and questioning directions.
And sorry, but she may cheerlead, but I don’t think her college interests are driven by cheerleading, the need to continue that, nor that we should see her as cheerleader girl, when she’s more than that. Sorry folks.
My daughter did not apply to any IVY league schools. She had other criteria and (from her perspective) “pressure cooker” was not one of them.
She considered them early on, but after visiting a wide range of universities, D17’s criteria narrowed quickly as follows:
-She wanted a campus in a big city with no campus feel
-A University strong in the sciences and one with a good enough name to be considered at a top grad school
-Diversity and acceptance on campus was very important to her
-Opportunity to travel abroad
-A campus with students that would work hard but also have fun - a collaborative feel (not competitive)
-A uni that would provide plenty of opportunities to work as a theatre tech in her spare time
Every kid is different and your daughter will come up with her own list very quickly after visiting several schools! And who gives a cr-p what anyone else thinks 
Check out these two funny threads:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/926354-just-smile-and-nod-smile-and-nod-p1.html
@Fishnlines29, love the “just smile and nod” thread. Our XC/Track DD is headed to Hamilton and we already hearing people say “Hamilton the musical? Those tickets are still so expensive” - I just smile and nod.
@calmom , thank you for your very thoughtful post. My D doesn’t really even feel like talking about colleges but we have started touring them. I realize when I posted this, it is impossible to truly respond as no one in CC knows my daughter. We have not discussed Greek life. I think she (and our family) are simply exhausted after only a few college tours:). Again, thank you for your response.
@drjmom, having just finished the process with our DD17’s, we found a tour/information session grouping once a quarter of no more than 2 schools at a time was palatable for them and then by extension for us - we tried 3 school tours at a time once and they mentally shut down on the third tour.
Agreed, but that’s the only tidbit of information we’ve been given about this young woman’s interests and goals.
That, plus, “She has no interest in Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. as her friends have been pretty stressed at these universities”.
So pretty hard to give guidance without more info…
I’d add that if this were a chances thread, with the info that’s been provided so far, I’d think the Ivy question was pie-in-the-sky in any case. “Top 6%” typically is not going to cut it for Ivy admissions, which is more of a “top 2%” competition. (Would she really be accepted over all of those valedictorians that the Ivies will reject next year?) The mom has every right to be proud, but the flip side of that statement is that the kid has missed the cutoff for top 5% at her high school.
The daughter may very well have the extra qualities that could win her a spot at HPY if she were interested… but the OP didn’t share that info. She doesn’t have to, obviously – but my gut level sense is that even Vandy is a reach and the mom & daughter really need to focus on match schools. In the meantime, I think it is fair to expect that other CC parents are going to respond based on whatever info the OP decides to share.
@calmom ““Top 6%” typically is not going to cut it for Ivy admissions”
This could be a case of the OP not realizing how times have changed. I think 30th out of 500 students would have been a solid Ivy applicant many years ago, but today it is a stretch.
Even with “Crazy High SATs” the Ivies are very likely looking for something more to find a place for her, with the possible exception of Cornell where a near-perfect SAT may give her a decent shot. She may have something more, I just can’t tell from what the OP has said so far.
@drjmom
One more important thing that you will find with some of these top students is that while many of them will say that they do not want to work so hard in college, they may also be bored in classes where they are the top student and are not really with peers. This is a bit of a Catch-22. How will she react to not feeling as challenged? It depends on the kid.
Another possibility is that a student like this could be a good fit for a school like Purdue, which in my experience seems to have a sort of bi-modal distribution of students where by just looking at Purdue’s average student data, you are likely to significantly underestimate the quality of the top students. That broader range of students could offer some lower stress courses, but also let her find peers and challenges in areas that interest her.
I would suggest that any of the top-50 schools in the country will be successful in pushing a student as hard as they can stand…