Need to shorten list of schools - Input appreciated

Parents Forum
1

<p>OK, First post ever here. Unfortunately, this will be longwinded.</p>

<p>DD is a junior in High School. Good school but nothing that jumps out at you. She is currently at worst tied for #1 as she has a 4.0 UW and is taking the heaviest course load permitted at our high school. She is taking AP Chem, AP Bio, Honors Physics, Anatomy and Physiology, Honors english, Honors history, Honors Pre-Calc, Spanish, takes concert band/marching band during power block 5 days/week, Jazz Band one night, dance classes 1 1/2 - 2 1/4 hours 4 remaining days, private sax lessons. Member of student leadership council and assistant drum major. Skis on the weekends. I think I got it all.</p>

<p>Went through this 4 years ago with brother but he is an engineer at Tufts. Applied to MIT, UPenn, Cornell, Tufts, Syracuse, Northeastern, WPI, RPI, and Norwich. Got into all but MIT and chose Tufts.</p>

<p>Different experience w/ DD. Parameters are not as narrow as brothers were (CS, Engineering, Italian, band, skiing, no further than 6 hours from home). From what we have specified so far we are down to 23 schools. I would love some help removing some of these and reasons why. I'd like to get it down to no more than 15 with reach, regular and safety schools included.</p>

<p>Here current constraints were staying in new england (approximately). Areas of interest to date have been marine science, journalism and now neuroscience (cognitive sciences). From comments she has made, I think an angle that includes marine science and its applications to neuroscience would be tops on her list. Expressed interest in Alzheimer's research. I think she also might try and double w/ writing/journalism. She would also like to EC in dance activities.</p>

<p>So here goes the list:
Bowdoin
Bates
Colby
Dartmouth
Middlebury
RPI
Amherst
Williams
Fairfield
Yale
Connecticut college
providence college
Brown
WPI
Holy Cross
Brandeis
BC
BU
MIT
Harvard
Tufts
Northeastern
Wheaton</p>

<p>Thanks in advance. Any input is appreciated!</p>

2

<p>She's only a junior; you don't need to cut it down yet. Has she visited them all? I think she has a really good first list.</p>

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<p>I hate to lengthen your daughter's list rather than shortening it, but I think she should take a look at Cornell -- specifically, its College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) and the Biological Sciences major. </p>

<p>Within the Biological Sciences major, there is a specialization in Neurobiology and Behavior that might appeal to her. </p>

<p>Also, CALS is the home of Cornell's Communication major, which is as close as Cornell gets to a journalism program. A double major or a minor in Communication might be possible. </p>

<p>To top it all off, Cornell has a marine science summer program at Shoals Marine Laboratory in Maine. And there are plenty of dance and instrumental music opportunities, and you can take skiing for PE credit. What's not to like?</p>

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<p>To Muffy333, I know that is not a long list by some standards but we are beginning the visiting w/ Harvard Jan 25 and then on from there (one of the few open that early in the year). We are really hoping to do our visting while school is in session, hoping to not pull her from her HS classes and many are not open on weekends. So 23 is a problem. I guess another alternative is to just prioritize them for visits.</p>

<p>To Marian, I would LOVE Cornell. I pushed it for my son (I had applied there in my youth). He did get in, but would not go. DD is even more rigid. She did not like the size when visiting and is stuborn about distance. But I appriate the idea.</p>

<p>I did just find a school myself to add/replace others: Clark</p>

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<p>I think you have too many safeties. I count about seven. I think you would be fine with two. Choose the two she likes the most. Then twenty-three reduces to eighteen immediately.</p>

<p>Brandeis, BU, BC? Choose the one she likes the best because I'm pretty certain she'd get into all three, and they're very different schools.</p>

<p>If you group schools this way, you'll find that there are many overlaps.</p>

<p>She sounds like a wonderful student, and I am sure she'll get into a great school.</p>

<p>BTW: My S attends Williams and the wind program is incredible. Our strategy was to apply to Bard and UChicago EA, and when S was admitted to both, we were able to eliminate all safeties, shortening our list to ten.</p>

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<p>It's hard to get tone across, so please understand this isn't meant to be rude. What you say your D wants and the list are worlds apart. I know that many of them do not offer journalism as a major. At least one does not offer environmental science as a major and certainly doesn't offer marine science. Another has very limited facilities for dancers. And I only know a handful of these schools well. </p>

<p>If you just go through the list you have and eliminate those without the things you say she is looking for, I suspect at least half a dozen will come off the list.</p>

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<p>For what its worth, here is my biased input:</p>

<p>Bowdoin - general liberal arts - visit campus, I hated it.
Bates --wasn't interested---never visited--
Colby---don't know...did consider but never saw
Dartmouth---great school but can't mind being in small town--skiing great
Middlebury---ditto as Dartmounth...would choose Dartmouth first as IVY
RPI---don't know
Amherst---somewhat provincial.....lot of MA kids..not easy access to Boston
Williams---small town...hated campus--general liberal arts
Fairfield---pretty campus.....would be saftety
Yale---a reach for anyone....IVY....New Haven is iffy area, but close to other cities
Connecticut college---don't know, probably not very competitive
Providence college---nice but in a REALLY bad area...should visit first
Brown---on the nice side of town...good liberal arts and easier IVY--not cutthroat
WPI---don't know
Holy Cross---up and coming school, not as competitive as others
Brandeis---good school, very Jewish
BC--good catholic college...good middle school to apply...in BOSTON!
BU---would take BC over BU
MIT---VERY NERDY...I didn't feel I would fit in with kids there though I am very smart
Harvard--they have a very male oriented culture and private male clubs which exclude women students...don't like that...
Tufts--great school if you fit the profile---daughter might not be good fit based on what you said
Northeastern--don't know...competitive?
Wheaton--ultra religious college...many kids don't like because of this</p>

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<p>To Mythmom, I your opinion, which 7 were the safeties? We originally had 28, grouped into 3 categories and cut what we thought were safeties down to 3 (WPI, Fairfield, Northeastern). Sounds like we are not grouping these well. How did you group them?</p>

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<p>To Jonri, Believe me, no offense taken. When one asks for input, you accept it. Anyhow, I know we have a crazy cross section of all styles. DD is not willing to eliminate due to single characteristic being absent. For S we initially visited schools that had some characteristics and not some. Even when he applied. I guess DD will have to become more specific on which characteristics have to be there.</p>

<p>To Myohmy, I will give your input to DD and see if any of those observations help to weed out some schools.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Wheaton--ultra religious college...many kids don't like because of this

[/quote]
</p>

<p>To clarify what myohmy said: Wheaton in Illinois is an ultra-religious evangelical Christian college. Wheaton in Massachusetts is not religiously affiliated and, if anything, pretty liberal.</p>

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<p>jonri has a good point.</p>

<p>Your daughter's list doesn't seem to match her interests. </p>

<p>She has interests in several unrelated fields. She would be most likely to find opportunities to pursue those interests at a large university. Yet most of the schools on her list are small. The constraints she is putting on herself in terms of size and distance may limit her chances to pursue all of her interests. If size and distance are crucial considerations, she may need to choose which interests to pursue, rather than trying to find a small, nearby school that offers everything she wants.</p>

<p>As for Cornell, as much as I like it (it's my alma mater, and my daughter is a freshman there), it's not for everybody. It is large, and travel in and out of there by public transit is a bit of a pain, which may make the distance seem even greater than it really is.</p>

<p>One other suggestion: Maybe your daughter could meet all of her needs by going to one of the schools in the five-college consortium in the Amherst, Massachusetts area. Kids at any of the five schools can take courses at the others. Amherst College is extremely difficult to get into, but your daughter would probably be a competitive candidate for either of the women's colleges in the consortium (unless the idea of a women's college repels her), and she might be able to find some of the more applied courses that she wants (such as journalism) at UMass.</p>

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<p>If she decides she doesn't want a techie school you could eliminate RPI, WPI and MIT. The first two also are heavily male. The young woman I know at RPI was satisfied with her education, but didn't like Troy, and was eager to move on so she's graduating in three years.</p>

<p>I disagree vehemently that Harvard has a male oriented culture. Finals clubs are a tiny, tiny portion of the people who are there, and if you go for that sort of thing there are several women only finals clubs to compete with the all male ones. I only met one person in four years who was a member of a finals club.</p>

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<p>Has your daughter read the literature on the schools or discussed them with a college counselor? Maybe then there would be something that jumps out at her to make her eliminate the school. My problem is that I'm making lists and my daughter isn't actively researching enough.</p>

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<p>Mathmom: I have encouraged keeping some of the techie type colleges in the list since she has strong interest in the sciences and good at math. I am hoping that in our visits she will give a passing glance to engineering before completely eliminating that idea. Plus those are the schools that tend to have the sciences while offering "formally" communications/journalism on the side. I do worry about Troy, I worry about MIT and burn out and WPI is along for the ride.</p>

<p>A further note on the conflicts in her interests and schools. Journalism is rarely mentioned on a school's list. My nephew, Harvard grad and currently at Yale, admonished me for discounting Harvard for it's lack of that major. He pointed out that the EC journalism opportunities of a school can create that like the Harvard Crimson. So anyhow, trying to keep that in mind when looking at schools that the degree does not have to be formally there in order for the student to learn this skill.</p>

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<p>For your daughter with excellent credentials I would consider safeties:</p>

<p>Fairfield, Conn. College, Providence, Holy Cross, Northeastern, Wheaton and WPI. </p>

<p>These would certainly not be safeties for others, but her her, I think so. </p>

<p>So, choice of technical vs. liberal arts college could be made (with possible exception of MIT). That also helps narrow the field.</p>

<p>Three Catholic colleges. Is this intentional?</p>

<p>Not sure you need Bowdoin, Bates, Colby and Conn. College. Somewhat similar.</p>

<p>Ditto: Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin. </p>

<p>From your above parameters my list might look something like this:</p>

<p>Brown
Dartmouth
MIT
Williams
Bowdoin
Tufts
Middlebury
BC
Colby
Connecticut College
Wheaton
Northeastern.</p>

<p>YMMV. I would be happy to answer a PM about why this school and not that, but these are, of course, individual decisions. The above is just a sample. For instance, you may prefer Amherst or want both Amherst and Williams. I chose Williams for strength in sciences and Williams in Mystic program, a great maritime studies and marine biology program.</p>

<p>One more safety (and a financial safety as well) would be SUNY Stony Brook I know it's not in New England, but it is right across the sound. 4 miles from the Bridgeport-Port Jefferson Ferry (feels like New England.) The Uni just bought the Southampton campus of LIU for a complete Marine biology program. Very inexpensive for OOS.</p>

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<p>Marian has a good zoom-in lens on Amherst. I just want to add that there is no restriction on taking courses in all 5 colleges, unless you're enrolled at UMass, where there might be a filter or two making it harder to enrol at the other 4 private colleges (Amherst, Smith, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke). </p>

<p>Another poster who said Amherst has "mostly Massachusetts kids" is probably confusing Amherst College (1800 undergrads, national and international student body, highly selective, on par with Williams or Brown..) with with UMass at Amherst (flagship state public university, 25,000 students, many instate). When you walk around the Town of Amherst, you can't tell who comes from which college/uni, so it can be confusing that way. The third college, also in the Town of Amherst but a coupla miles out of town, is Hampshire.
The other two colleges in the Five College Consortium, Smith and Mt. Holyoke, are all-women's colleges, quite fine private colleges, former 7 Sisters to the Ivies. Smith has a unique engineering program, and among my favorite features requires all to take a basic course in financial management as a lifeskill. Dance is great at those two colleges, along with all the academics.
Hampshire has a unique mission and emphasizes taking courses at the other 4 campuses, a senior capstone project, and also offers its own classes on campus.
A free bus service connects all 5 campuses. I believe there's also a daily (free?) shuttle from UMass into Boston, which is 2 hours away. So while it's not a suburb of Boston, that's a rather easily accomplished way to get there while studying or sleeping, and is a college-run transit system, not involving a Greyhound/Trailways. Just check to update; my S is an '05 graduate of Amherst College and things can change, of course. Hawk those websites!!!!
Marian was astute to suggesd this, because her many academic interests could all find coursework among the 5 schools. Just beware not to enrol in UMass at Amherst and assume you can get into all the courses in the other 4 private schools.</p>

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<p>To Muffy333, To date my daughter has only been doing a small amount of the actual reading. With her classes, EC's and SAT preparations going on, her time has been limited. I was hoping use parameters she defines to help eliminate some and then have her deal fully with the shorter list (hopefully <15). When she comes home from skiing today, I am going to give her this thread and see if it helps her remove a few. I actually had not thought about the guidance councilor. Not used to asking for their help. I will suggest that to her and see if that helps.</p>

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<p>And test scores? That would really help to know where the safety bar starts....</p>

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<p>To mythmom:
-thanks for the breakdown, as we go along I may take you up on the offer to PM thoughts about these colleges
-any thoughts about my newly spotted Clark
-Wliiams - I saw the mystic program and that was in it's favor, they also had a "Williams in Africa" - Africa is another forgotten interest - but in it's blurb it looked like only AIDS/medical and not possible african marine studies.
-PS What is YMMV?</p>

<p>To Paying3tuitions & Marion - We keep consortium schools in mind. That would leave Amherst or cause addition on Hampshire since to date she has no interest in all female schools.</p>

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<p>Prepping for first SAT on March 1. The only score she has is a 780 in Biology. She will take a MAth and Chem in June.</p>

<p>Our hoped for goal is all 3 SAT scores be over 700 but time will tell.</p>