I would encourage her to connect with dance faculty. I am a Colby grad, but definitely not recent (87) my roommate was very passionate about ballet, but switched to modern when she got to Colby and had a lot of support from her dance teacher. The nice thing about such a small school is you truly do have access to faculty. Both my studio and art history professors acted as mentors and encouraged and supported me. You just have to ask! Portland is far, she won’t make the trek there.
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I feel for you. It would be hard to put so much effort into any project and not get the results you were expecting. That said, my S21 w/ similar stats may well choose the U of A over all his other choices for the same major, biochem. It’s a great option, a Top 20 school for research, and the honors dorm is practically new. I think once your son processes his disappointment he’ll realize he has great options to choose from (and if he lands on the U of A and is looking for a roommate we should chat!)
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Thank you for this tip.
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Yes, her list was mostly formed by cross referencing meet full need/need blind/smallish/with Some academics she wants and ballet options. Not all of them met the all of those. Barnard or Harvard would be ideal With their student companies but going off the current track record those will not be options.
@BertieMom, Congratulations to your daughter. While I do not know much about dance at Colby, I can speak a little to the overall culture. My son is a junior who is having a very positive experience. Although I am sure there are plenty of students who fit the preppy, rich kid stereotype at Colby, my son does not seem to interact with many. His friends are very down to earth (I would even say they are a bit nerdy) hardworking students. He attended an independent day school where the kids were much more entitled than those he meets at Colby.
Colby was not high on my son’s list until he visited and attended the admitted student weekend. We quickly learned that the school is very different today than it was even five or six years ago. He ended up choosing Colby over other great liberal arts schools like Hamilton and Davidson, even turning down the presidential scholarship at Richmond (that one hurt!). I continue to be impressed with aggressive investments being made at the school including the Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts opening in Fall of 2023 and the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence. I would reach out to admission to get more information on both of these initiatives as I think they would impact both your daughters extra curricular interests and intended major. I do not think it is realistic to train in Portland. My son has a car on campus and rarely ventures beyond Augusta unless it is to ski at Sugarloaf on occasion.
I have been really impressed with how Colby has handled Covid. My son has had to take a few classes remotely, but he has mostly been in the classroom this year, was able to continue with his on campus job, volunteer in the community and hang out with friends. The school does lots and lots of testing but the trade off is that the kids are allowed to live more “normal” lives than I see happening at other schools.
Good luck with the rest of the apps! I am happy to answer any specific questions that might arise.
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@Momof0ne My gf majored in bio sciences back in the day and has a great career in biotech back in Seattle now. We all fainted at the $30k/yr full cost back in the 90’s when she attended. Biochem is a great field. My sister is also thriving in it and if you add engr with it, she’s got the 1-2 punch. We need more women engineers. And when she’s got those degrees checked of, she could set herself up to sit for Patent Law :). The world is her oyster and she will be in such a beautiful area! Yeah!!
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I think this would be tough at Colby. There is frequent bus service but that’d be a lot to schedule around. This would be tough even at a school like Tufts if you had to go into Boston.
I agree with @homerdog that you probably want a school with a program if you want to dance seriously.
Colby has a ton going for it and a pretty robust performing arts scene, so your talent would likely have a good home there. But it sounds like you need to figure out what role ballet is going to play in your life.
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This is my second turn at the rodeo. For the first kid, we knew nothing, although CC was a wonderful community for learning the ropes and I highly recommend sticking around. If you ask for help, you will get it! Most people are kind and helpful. Sometimes the tone can be blunt, especially for people who persist in unrealistic thinking about cost and/or where their kid has realistic chances for admission.
We were more conservative in our approach with our first kid, with mostly match and safety schools, a couple of low reaches and only one true reach. They got in everywhere, with many merit offers, so there were affordable choices by late December, which made for a more relaxing Spring. However, the favorite was the last one to release decisions. Kid #2 applied to more reaches and has gotten into a few. The match schools where merit money might be possible have still not released decisions about admission and/or scholarships. If I could do it over, I would have insisted on at least one EA school that was a true affordable safety that my kid would genuinely want to attend. Even without the pandemic, it has been a very long wait.
Get a Fiske or Princeton Guide to colleges. Money well spent.
Last piece of advice - familiarize yourself with net price calculators (each college has one on their site so you can do a quick check of what kind of financial/merit aid your child might receive), the FAFSA (to qualify for Federal student loans), and the CSS Profile (a more detailed financial assessment that selective private colleges and universities often require to be eligible for financial aid. It’s best not to let your kid apply to schools that you are unable or unwilling to afford.
Good luck. People here will help.
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I wanted to add one thing: In my earlier post I misspoke when I referred to some candidates as “super strong”. I’ve done enough research to know it really is a very small minority of candidates who get admitted to highly selective schools based on academic merit - reality is most high schools do not differentiate candidates enough for that. Most of the time the strongest candidates are those who satisfy whatever institutional priorities schools feel are important at that time. I frankly think “holistic” is a way for them to do whatever they want, whenever they want. It is in no way a meritocracy. So no kid should feel badly about being rejected or waitlisted. Admissions is about what they want, not who you are.
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@BertieMom I also have a daughter that is in a preprofessional ballet program
… however she knew early on she wasn’t going to pursue ballet professionally. She applied to schools more based on academic fit, rather than dance opportunities (the exception is Duke, which has a great dance program). She also wants to be able to continue training/performing to a certain degree when she gets to college, but will have to figure that out wherever she ends up. Good luck to your daughter!
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My daughter got into her ED2 and she just went into each school portal and was able to pull her application. It was easy to do and only took a minute or two for each school.
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He’s always loved UofA and I agree with you 100%. He got an amazing merit scholarship from Loyola so we are likely to make a trip to Chicago but UofA is the school to beat as of now.
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Ok, looking for ideas and advice—
I bought 2 cards at Walgreens. A congrats and a condolence. When D got her waitlist I gave her the congrats. She loved it. What should I have on hand for the 3+ notifications that will happen this week. Chocolate…
Thank you, and to your daughter as well. She did focus mostly on academics because she knew if she went to college she was going to pursue her academic interests and if she was going after a dance career she would train with a company and save college for later. But I know she would feel better choosing Colby if she thought she could get some dance outlet. I worry about her just cutting off the stability of that passion and physical outlet, can’t be good for mental health.
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Yes, likewise ballet has given my daughter structure and also is a very important emotional and psychological outlet. Hopefully our daughters will be able to find opportunities to continue this passion in some shape or form. Actually she was just admitted to JHU and it does seem she will be able to take ballet classes at the Peabody Institute, if she chooses to attend.
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I learned alot with my oldest D19. She got into her dream school. She had several friends with similar high stats get into T30s but not the UC’s they applied to, and two admitted to ivies who did not get into the UC that they really wanted. That was eye opening. I know there are people that will argue with me that the kids that get in to highly selective schools have ‘something’ that made that happen, a great package, a pointy EC, etc. but I truly believe that luck plays a part (unless you are a recruited athlete or your fam has some strings to pull) at getting admitted to a school where the acceptance rate is very low. You will save yourself and your student a lot of angst if you can help your student understand this simple fact: there are more qualified applicants than there are spots at highly selective schools no matter how strong the student’s profile is.
We took this into consideration for D21, a more typical ‘good’ student…3.9 UW/4.1 W GPA through junior year (those senior year A’s might count a lot this year but in a normal year, not that much, IMHO), only took ACT one time pre-covid (29) and no opportunity to retest, some rigor but not exceptional (5 honors/3 APs/3 DE classes, barely in top 20% of class), multi sport athlete but typical ECs (impacted a bit by covid)…average ‘good student’. We told her the same thing we told D19: spend your time and energy being your authentic self in high school and your college path will work out. D21 never even considered a UC after seeing what happened with her sister’s friends at a much higher level of academic performance (D21 applied and was admitted to SLO, but her major was one with a much higher acceptance rate than the selective majors or she would not have even bothered). D19 and 21 had very realistic expectations and followed this philosophy: take pride in doing the best you can, and the outcomes (even the tough ones) will benefit you by preparing you for college and adulthood. D21 applied to good schools OOS that have much higher acceptance rates than 20%, and all gave her merit that bring the cost to within 10K-12K of SLO. So I’d suggest looking at schools that are ranked 50 - 200 with higher acceptance rates than 20%, including ones where your student is above the median and a few where s/he is at/above top quartile for GPA stats. There are many exceptional ones that give solid merit aid, and at the Colleges that Change Lives list (many give great merit). D21 only applied to one ‘big reach’ and has no expectations of getting in and one ‘reach’ where she was waitlisted. No disrespect to SLO or the UC’s - the students attending them will get a great education - but my husband (CA native) and I (east coaster) both went out of state and far from home for college and it was an excellent growing experience, and my kids always wanted to do the same.
And if you’re a CA res, look at WUE schools (and honors colleges at WUEs because if you qualify for those, there are often additional scholarships above WUE tuition break available for that caliber of student), and/or directional state schools of neighboring states as other solid match options.
I saw a college counselor comment on a FB page that she tries to prepare parents that they are generally going to end up paying $35-$40K per year unless they go to a meets need school. D21’s merit aid at over 1/2 dozen schools in states on both coasts and the middle brought the net cost for all to right in that range. This is still steep. In CA we have a fantastic transfer admission guarantee (TAG) program for students that go to community college (which is free for full time students after high school) and earn 60 credits, to transfer into a specific UC their junior year. Sorry for my long message but that’s my advice :).
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My niece graduated from St. Olaf last May and has started a doctoral program in astrophysics in Minneapolis. She was a dancer for many years but I don’t recall how much dancing she did at St. Olaf. She was in their traveling choir all 4 years and that took up a great deal of time. I can connect you with my sister, her mom, if your daughter would like to hear more.
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@Momof0ne congratulations! What a stunning campus!
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@BertieMom My daughter is a first-year non preppy, non-rich student at Colby. She is involved with theatre, music, and some clubs on campus this year. Feel free to PM me with any specific questions and I’ll share what I know!
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If there’s no withdraw app button on the portal, then you just send an email to the admissions office or to whatever contact there is and you decline the acceptance. You can usually google the info or find it somewhere on the school website. I remember when my daughter needed to withdraw from UNC she had to email them.
@Creaky Pretty sure there is no withdraw option on the common app.
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