<p>The good news is that it should remain mostly the same. My GC made us fill out a Common App back in January and print it out to use it as a reference to make the application process faster this year. You can do that as well.</p>
<p>OP, you’re not hearing me. There are by my count at least eight "Stanford"s on your list.</p>
<p>In your original post, you asked for help narrowing down your list. Just sayin’</p>
<p>@jkeil911 what am I not hearing? I understand that I have some really selective schools on my list. Yes, my objective is to narrow down my list to 10…How do you recommend I do that?..Sorry if I’m missing something here</p>
<p>@430ktk oh that’s a good idea, I will do that. Plus, at least I’m familiar with the process now</p>
<p>While you’ve got the Common App up, you should take a look at the supplements for each of the colleges on your list. If you can’t come up with a tie-breaker between the colleges, you might just take off the schools that have the longest supplements or ask questions that you can’t reuse essays for. I know someone who did that last year, and it made his application process go much more smoothly.</p>
<p>But I wouldn’t use that as your first way to cut colleges. I’d only do that if you absolutely can’t cut any more colleges and you still have too many.</p>
<p>OP, my advice is that you either go with a top heavy list such as you have and stick with one safety where you will be happy, or you try to follow my advice and come up with a new list of 2 or 3 reaches, 3 to 5 matches, and 1 or 2 safeties. For instance, I would not call Stanford, WashU, Pomona, Dartmouth, Amherst, Bowdoin, Williams, or Brown a match for you or almost anyone else. I’d have you pick two or 3 of them. Then 3 to 5 matches from what’s left, and then your safety Wheaton.</p>
<p>There’s another way to do this if there’s an ED or EA that responds quickly to your application. If you have an acceptance from one of these, you can then adjust any other applications you might make in response to the acceptance(s). I’ll leave it to you to see which schools accept EDs and EAs, not my forte.</p>
<p>@kmart19 I would recommend applying to the University of Illinois Urbana Champlain as a safety. It is a pretty good state school, and you have an excellent shot (90%+) of getting in considering your application. That being said, you’ll probably get into something else on your list!</p>
<p>UIUC is a great school. You should apply there, should be a safety for an in-state applicant with high stats such as yourself. </p>
<p>You need to focus on what type of environment you want at a school. You have colleges with vastly different cultural & intellectual climates at them. Do you want a large university, do you like big sports, do you like “intellectual drive”, does the “work hard, play hard” mentality appeal to you? </p>
<p>CMC offers merit scholarships and Pomona does not. That is a huge factor for me because I don’t qualify for financial aid. CMC is a part of the Keck Science Department and it has a good biology program for me. I would say that if you really want to be a part of the consortium, it may be worth it to apply to both. (It definitely is a great place!) You only apply to college once right?</p>
<p>By the way, I filled out part of the common app too haha! But whatever, I got my main essay finished.</p>
<p>@Ctesiphon alright, I will probably add that as a second safety assuming the supplement isn’t too extensive. </p>
<p>I am looking for something small to medium size-wise, and sports are not a big deal. Definitely want an intellectual student body but with more of a laid-back attitude. The kind that works hard but also know that college isn’t only about academics. I get this impression from a lot of west-coast schools and also some that I’ve visited elsewhere (Carleton, William & Mary, Vandy, etc.)</p>
<p>I don’t want to go to a school where I do nothing but study 24/7 for 4 years. I’m not saying I don’t plan on working hard, because I do. However, I know that there’s more to the college experience than that. This is why I’m not interested in schools like MIT or UChicago even though it’s so close (“where fun comes to die”). That kind of cutthroat, strictly academic environment is not how I want to spend 4 years.</p>
<p>@jkeil911 so you’re saying that if I can apply early and get accepted to one of my match schools then I can forget about safeties and probably some matches and just go for the reach schools for regular application, correct? That makes a lot of sense. Not sure how many of these schools have a non-binding early decision application though. And I don’t want to do anything binding because I’m not that decisive of a person haha</p>
<p>It’s not an easy route to take and I’m not the person to advise you on a strategy for doing this with the particular schools you have listed. If you don’t get any advice on this thread, you might want to start a thread in which you list the schools, their EA and ED dates, your preferences, and anything else of relevance you can think of, and then ask for advice on how to go about getting what you want. It’s a symbolic logic puzzle sort of.</p>
<p>@jkeil911 That it is haha. Will do, I’m gonna see how this thread plays out first. Thanks again for your (and everyone else’s) advice</p>
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<p>One of your problems, though, is that you aren’t SURE you want to attend some of your match schools (Colby, Grinnell, for example) because you have not visited them all. You are out here asking us to help you narrow the list. There is nothing WRONG with the schools on your list (except that your list is quite top heavy, as @jkeil911 has pointed out, and you are likely to get shut out of all but 4-5 of the colleges on your list). </p>
<p>Here is a list of things you should do for every school on your list, especially those you haven’t visited. This might help you narrow down the list:</p>
<ul>
<li>Run net price calculators. You say money isn’t an issue, but be sure your parents know they are signing up to pay a quarter of a million dollars for many of the schools on your list. You would hate to be surprised by their reaction in April…</li>
<li>Check out the websites and online tours.</li>
<li>Read up on them. Read the Fiske Guide to Colleges very carefully if there is an entry, it tells you a lot. Also check out the website c-o-l-l-e-g-e p-r-o-w-l-e-r (sorry, gotta do that avoid *s blocking it).</li>
<li>Go to the CC forum and read as many back entries as you can stand to read. Lots of nuggets of good info there.</li>
<li>Study the major requirements and course catalogs. If you see courses that are really exciting, check the actual course listing and see when they have been or will be offered (you can usually see at least a full year of semesters/terms). Sometimes stuff in the catalog is very rarely offered.</li>
<li>Review things like the study abroad website and EC info online if you are interested.</li>
<li>Email with the college if you have specific questions. You can email admissions, or if you have academic questions you can email a professor in the departments where you have the question.</li>
<li>See if the student newspaper is online. You can often see what the marketing people don’t want you to know…</li>
<li>If the college has any kind of info session or get together in your area, go to it. Keep an eye out, colleges do a lot of these dog & pony shows in the fall.</li>
<li>Sign up for emails from the admissions office. Some colleges sent out newsletter type emails, etc. that can be helpful. And that is how you can hear about the local events, too.</li>
<li>Look at the Common Data Set for each college. Google “<college name=”“> Common Data Set”. There is loads of info that might help with your decision.</college></li>
</ul>
<p>I feel like it is a rare students who would be happy at Pomona and CMC, even though they are in the same consortium. CMC (and Vanderbilt for that matter) have a reputation of having quite politically conservative student bodies. Pomona and some others on your list, not so much. They wear suit coats to football games at Vanderbilt – can’t imagine that at Carleton! For many students that would make a difference in what type of schools they applied to. And if you don’t like Greek life, for heaven’s sake, take Dartmouth off you list. Vanderbilt is pretty Greek, too, 50% of the women are in the Greek system, 35% of men.</p>
<p>Here is my take on your current list given your stats:</p>
<p>Stanford - High Reach
Washington University in St. Louis - High Match, but they often reject students who haven’t visited and they don’t think have shown sufficient interest.
William & Mary - Low Reach (harder to get into OOS, they are a public university)
Carleton College - High Match
Vanderbilt - Low Reach
Pomona - Reach
Claremont Mckenna - Reach
Dartmouth - Reach
Brown - High Reach (unpredictable…)
Amherst - Reach
Bowdoin - High Match
Colby - Low Match
Grinnell - Match (although if I were them I would wonder if you are serious about applying, since you live in Illinois and have not bothered to visit – especially if you are full pay)
Williams - Reach
Wheaton College (safety) (Sorry, which Wheaton is this? The Evangelical college in Illinois, or the one in Massachusetts?)</p>
<p>Vanderbilt has been known for a “work hard, play hard” atmosphere with an active greek scene. Rice & Tufts are known for being competitive, but not overtly cutthroat. They compete “with themselves”. You may want to look into those, but would also be some unpredictable reaches.</p>
<p>@intparent thank you so much for your reply. I will definitely do what you suggested to try and narrow down this list (although I’ve already done some of that. The Fiske is basically a sacred text in my house lol)</p>
<p>I plan on visiting Dartmouth, Brown, Amherst, Williams, and hopefully Grinnell before applications are due. Also, I’ve already visited Wash. U., which I hope would make it more of a match than a reach for me.</p>
<p>Also, idk what to think about CMC and Vandy having politically conservative bodies/what that entails. I myself come from a politically conservative family and I consider myself somewhat conservative but politics aren’t really that important to me, and I’m very tolerant of others’ beliefs mainly because I’ve basically been going to heavily liberal schools most of my life. What kind of difference does being a conservative/liberal college student body tend to make?..I’ve been to Vandy and Carleton which I’m sure are pretty different politically and loved both so there’s probably something I’m missing here?</p>
<p>Would I be happy at Pomona or CMC? Just tell me! (jk haha)</p>
<p>Also, the safety is the Wheaton in Illinois, and also possibly University of Illinois (as some on here have suggested)</p>
<p>And do you really think I should expect to be rejected by all of the schools you’ve labeled as a reach? I was kind of hoping to get into at least one or two of them…</p>
<p>Vanderbilt is not a conservative school. The student body is about equally balanced–although more voted for Obama than not, for example. Mostly, Vanderbilt is an apolitical school where students are not super-focused on political issues. As for suits at football games–sure you’ll see some of that, but plenty of shorts and Vandy T-shirts too. Many Vanderbilt stereotypes, if ever accurate, are certainly outdated now!</p>
<p>kmart, it is very common here that people are convinced that there is only one kind of school that a student will enjoy, when in reality, for many students, they enjoy different aspects of different schools. You are going to spend most of four years there, not the rest of your life. Plenty of city kids enjoy 4 years in an idyllic, bucolic setting, and vice versa. If you can take it or leave it when it comes to big sports, don’t worry about it as long as the school has other things to offer. As for Greek life, it is different at different schools. At some southern schools, people take it really, really seriously, and Greeks rarely socialize with other people. At Dartmouth, the Greek scene is very open, and you don’t have to be affiliated to have a social life. People join houses there who would never do so at Vandy, for example. </p>
<p>Carleton is a great school, and much better than Wheaton in MA. If I were you, I would consider cutting W&M and Grinnell, since you don’t like the location. I think that you could pick something more interesting than Wheaton for your safety…I’d cut it and go with UIUC, personally. Bowdoin is a great place, and my favorite of the Maine trio, so I’d keep it. (Their acceptance rate this year was under 15%, so although it is a very solid match for your stats and ECs, and I’d be surprised if you didn’t get in, nothing is guaranteed.) I think that with UIUC as your slam-dunk academic and presumably financial safety, you could pick an interesting rolling admissions school and apply as early as possible–I’d suggest the University of Pittsburgh, which has a good honors college, is in an increasingly cool city, and would probably give you merit money, which never hurts–and if you get in, don’t bother applying to other schools that you aren’t crazy about.</p>
<p>So you could presumably apply to Pitt in early September. Let’s assume that you get in and hear by late October. Then you decide whether you want to apply to UIUC, because to be considered for honors you have to apply there by Nov 1st. If you don’t hear in time for the UIUC deadline, just go ahead and apply to the latter. You also apply to Stanford early: the deadline is Nov 1st, and they will allow you to apply to PUBLIC schools also. So by December 15th or so, you have answers from Pitt, UIUC, and Stanford. f you get into Stanford, you can either consider yourself done and relax, or apply to any other school that you would consider going to instead. (For example, I know a kid who was accepted early to S and ditched the rest of her apps except for Yale.) If you don’t get in, you presumably have a safety in the bag, so you can cut out places you would not prefer to Pitt.</p>
<p>But definitely ask your parents to do the NPCs on some schools to make SURE they can–and will–pay the EFC. </p>