Please help with my "average excellent plus" daughter's list

Parents Forum
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Please help with my daughter’s college list. She is “average excellent” (maybe a little above?), and we have a single-digit EFC. Since the schools that meet full need are all highly selective with ever decreasing acceptance rates, finding a great place for her seems tough. She’s a rising senior, and I’m feeling a little panicky that we’re behind at making a list at this point.

Her unweighted GPA is 4.0 from a rigorous but small/unknown school. It doesn’t rank students. Her older siblings ended up with great options, but her class is more competitive with several other accomplished students looking at highly selective schools, and it doesn’t seem likely that a top school would accept more than one of them (if any). The school does not have Naviance.

She doesn’t have a specific spike at all, but she does a lot of things very well. She’s a varsity athlete in three sports and has also played on select teams for two of those, but she’s only interested in playing for fun in college, if at all. She has regional awards in multiple types of art and writing, but she doesn’t want to pursue an arts degree. She’s had leadership roles in student government and in a couple of clubs (but again, small school). She’s won two regional awards for a service-related endeavor. She’s participated in a highly selective regional program and a highly(?) selective national program in the general area of politics/civics. She works (various hours depending on the season). She is interning (remotely) for a project with a group of students at a top university. She tutors young kids who speak English as a second language. So, again, a lot of activities and some decent accomplishments, but not a particular passion.

Her ACT was very high in English/Reading but a lot lower in Math/Science, for a 31 composite, but hopefully with more practice she could take it again in the fall for a higher score. Or maybe try the SAT, since time pressure in math and science was a factor.

She thinks she’ll prefer a small or medium-sized school with a close knit community. Sunshine is important to her, so she thinks she should look in the South. (She doesn’t want to go as far as California, and there is no chance of us visiting any schools there anyway.) She is undecided on a major, so she likes the idea of a liberal arts school. If she had to decide today, she would most likely major in a social science or English.

She saw a few schools with her siblings, and from what she remembers of schools in the South, she liked Vanderbilt, Davidson, Furman, and Rice, and she did not like W&L or Centre. I gave her a Fiske guide and a list of schools in the South that meet needs, but she’s only just started looking through it.

We don’t have the time/money to visit many schools, and it feels like time is short. Any suggestions on how to get a reasonable list together or any ideas on specific schools?

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I’m a rising HS senior, same age as your daughter I think. If your EFC is low, you might want to consider QuestBridge, which “matches” low-income students with selective LACs and unis for a full-ride scholarship. Rice, Vanderbilt, and I think Davidson are partners. There are a list of 45 colleges and unis, maybe you would like to consider applying through QB? The drawback is that you have to apply for finalist status, and the application is due in late September (you start late July). Matching with colleges is not guaranteed even if you are a finalist. The benefits with QB is that there is more room on the QB app to talk about specific troubles related to being URM/low income. There are a lot of nuances with QB but the basics is this. let me know if you want to know more about it :))

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Schools that are pretty good for financial aid and offer excellent academics that you might want to add to your list:

Colorado College
University of Richmond
Washington University (St. Louis)

The following are very difficult/impossible to get into, but might be worth a shot if ACT comes up:

Johns Hopkins - more accessible for Liberal Arts than for Sciences
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill)
University of Virginia

These are very good public liberal arts colleges that might be affordable:

College of Charleston
New College of Florida
University of North Carolina/Asheville

These are good to very good colleges where she might have an opportunity for scholarships. They are worth reading about in Fiske or other sources to see which ones might appeal to her. Some are religiously affiliated:

Agnes Scott
Austin
Bellarmine
Birmingham Southern
Eckerd
Emory
Emory & Henry
Goucher
Guilford
Hendrix
Hollins
Lynchburg
Millsaps
Randolph
Rhodes
Sewanee
SMU
Southwestern

Here are some scholarships worth knowing about and considering. They are highly competitive, but you never know. It’s worth consulting your guidance counselor or researching on your own.

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Seconding Sewanee, which now meets full demonstrated need and has good merit as well. She might not like it if she didn’t like W&L and Centre, though. Top notch English department as well.

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Have you looked at colleges that offer Stamps scholarship?
https://www.stampsscholars.org/

Also Wofford
https://www.wofford.edu/admission/scholarships/richardson-family-scholarship

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Did I miss the state where you reside?

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I’d add Tulane and Trinity University (in San Antonio, TX).

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Your daughter sounds very similar to mine, but we are full pay so we’ve been looking for merit rather than need-based aid. So, from just a fit standpoint I would take a look at Elon, Rollins, Wofford, Furman, Trinity University (TX), Texas Christian and maybe High Point University. HPU doesn’t get much love on CC but people love it. I haven’t taken my daughter to look because overtime I look I get turned off by some of its reputation, but then local guidance counselors, high school admin, college admissions advisors all rave about it. On the flip side, we have a good friend who is a student at Davidson and he’s “meh” about it. It has a fantastic reputation but he says it’s just OK and none of his friends have truly loved their experience. We’ve had trouble picking reaches because the academic reaches are unaffordable for a full-pay family :(.

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Thank you! We’re familiar with Questbridge but our kids haven’t applied because we don’t feel like we have the level of hardship to justify it. We are a stable, two-parent, well-educated, non-URM family, and it just seems like if she got it, she would be taking an opportunity away from a student who is overcoming real hardship.

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Will your D qualify for any Pell Grant (you mention a single digit EFC)?

Re: Questbridge, if your family income is <$65K I would still encourage your D to consider applying. She might not be a matched finalist with a non-zero EFC, but nonetheless QB can be a powerful hook, even for finalists (37% of 2020 QB applicants were finalists).

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If you qualify for Questbridge…apply.

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Thank you! She is going to consider URichmond, and we may be able to visit. (WashU is need-aware, and she is not interested in Colorado.)

Of the others you listed, Emory, Rhodes, and Sewanee interest her based on the little she knows. UNC-Chapel Hill and UVA meet needs with loans, if I recall, but are they on the bigger side? We’ll look into those and others you suggested, thank you!

Thanks also for the scholarship info! I hadn’t heard of most of those.

Sounds like her ACT is a real stumbling block. She has a 36/35 in English and Reading, but she couldn’t finish Math or Science, and the time pressure made her panic and underperform. She was getting much higher scores on those sections in practice tests (timed, but obviously in a much lower stress environment). In real life she is pretty strong in both subjects and has won an award or two. Ugh. I wish ACT were offering the single-subject retakes they had planned at one time.

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Kids really do improve -often by a lot - the second or third time they take the test.

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Could look at colleges that awarded test optional scholarships, like Baylor. Don’t know if continuing policy for 2022.
https://www.baylor.edu/admissions/index.php?id=873057

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I didn’t know Sewanee meets demonstrated need now, thanks! She wants to visit that one, if possible. She didn’t like W&L because when we toured 5 years ago we saw literally only one person of color there. One of her brothers was a finalist for the Johnson, but he didn’t get it and even before that dropped it from his “top” list after spending several days there. I don’t remember exactly what he didn’t like, but it may have colored her opinion. I don’t know what she disliked about Centre, but she won’t even consider it. I don’t think it was size, because she really liked Kenyon (but thinks Kenyon would be too cold/gray).

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I’m not familiar with Stamps scholarships or Wofford, so I’ll look into those, thank you!

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I tried to offer you a mix of schools in terms of admissions difficulty. There are many great schools that are not as difficult to get into and that students might fall in love with. Those are the ones where your daughter’s chances for full scholarships rise. And there’s something to be said for going to school some place where not everyone is a super high achiever, which is in some ways a better mix.

The admissions game has become like a lottery at the most competitive schools. In my own family and extended circle, I’ve seen straight A students with 35-36 ACT and good ECs get repeatedly turned down by Top 20 schools and feel fortunate that they got into some others. We’ve seen on this forum applicants get rejected everywhere they applied and/or not be able to afford the schools where they were accepted.

A list of schools must be realistic both academically and financially, and then still have backups for the inevitable surprises.

Best of luck.

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My son’s ACT tutor told him at the end if he was running out of time, just pick a column and fill in the remaining answers - you’ll get at least some right. He only had one shot last year, but he did this and his composite went up to a 34 (perfect in almost everything except math). He said that tip helped.

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One other thought. I know that your daughter doesn’t know what she wants to major in, but does she have any idea what she wants to do with her life?

One of our daughters surprised us when she was deciding among her colleges by telling us that she had always wanted to be a nurse. This was after thinking that she “should” major in business because she was good in math. We had no idea! She had never mentioned it. Kids get all kinds of crazy notions. Fortunately her list of accepted schools included ones with nursing. That’s where she went, she has since been working successfully in intensive care, and is now studying to be a nurse practitioner.

My point is that as good as the liberal arts colleges are, it’s not a bad idea to choose college options that offer majors in fields where a kid can actually get a job after graduation. As important as it is to consider college affordability, that becomes more realistic if a graduate is employable when they leave college.

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A school like Sewanee could be a good fit for your daughter. Look at their most recent Common Data Set and you will see that her scores are generally above the 75th percentile for the school, which would likely qualify her for admission and generous merit aid. She would likely be a student that the school would like to have in their freshman class and would make her admission more likely in RD. She would have better shot in ED, of course.

DD had similar scores and was awarded a Wilkins Scholarship in 2021. She was admitted to Wake Forest and decided to go there. However, no merit was offered her at Wake since we were full pay. I’m not sure she would have been admitted RD there with her stats if we had needed financial aid.