I am looking for match/likely schools for my rising junior. Her GPA is 4.0 uw and 4.08 w, her school only allows 1 AP in 10th grade, ACT 35. Her EC are ok, academic bowl, competitive rock climbing and robotics. No major awards. She would like a school that is very academic but not competitive prefers small but is open to anything, location does not matter to her. She loves Williams College, but I want to focus on schools she can get into. She can apply to the highly selective schools but I think the bulk of her college search should be on school that she can realistically attend. Merit aid would be nice but not needed. Thanks for any suggestions and advice. Also, if there is a better way to guide the college search, I am open to suggestions.
If she loves Williams, she should consider other NESCACs such as Hamilton, Middlebury and Colby, as well as Vassar; Carleton and Kenyon would extend her geographical range; Denison could serve as a less challenging admit.
Has your daughter expressed thoughts on what she might like to study?
Reed looks doable by stats (though stats are only 20% of criteria), very academic but non-competitive, small, no merit aid, a grad school prep college. Not much robotics.
Since your other posts mention living in Georgia, would UGA, GT (more engineering focused), or GCSU (public LAC, but no ABET-accredited engineering) be suitable?
However, GT and GCSU do consider legacy, so an unhooked applicant may be at some disadvantage there.
Your D’s academic stats make her a viable applicant at any college. Very few people have real “hooks.” A lot will ride on things we can’t see here such as essays, recommendations etc. so she should take care with those parts of her application.
If she like Williams and smaller schools in general then there are tons of wonderful LACs out there with a wide range of admissions criteria. At this point I strongly suggest that you and your D get your hands on a good college guide book (ex. Fiske, Princeton Review) and start reading up on the many options. These books can be purchased but can also be found at many libraries and HS guidance offices.
Skidmore, Macalester, Carleton. What about the Oxford campus of Emory? And the Maine schools, Colby, Bates.
But note that a small college like the ones in the NESCAC league will have a relatively high percentage of athletes among the students, since the number of athletes to fill the usual collection of teams does not change in proportion to the size of the college.
@ucbalumnus I do agree – but I just wanted the OP to understand that a hook is not a requisite for admission to these colleges.
I would also suggest that if there is one absolute top choice and finances are not an issue that an ED application may be a good idea.
Have a look at some of the ACM schools.
(https://www.acm.edu/about_us/college/index.html)
The midwestern colleges tend to be a little less selective than peer private schools in the Northeast. Their sticker prices run a bit lower and they offer more merit aid.
Carleton, Macalester, Grinnell, Colorado College, Lawrence U. etc.
(Civilization does not end west of the Hudson.)
University of Vermont.
Good suggestions here. Add Davidson to the list. Does she know what she wants to study?
Have you guys visited anywhere yet or just starting?
Richmond
Davidson is a wonderful school. One of my favorite LACs! No one’s safety or even match, however. It is a highly selective school.
The crux of college search lies in the question you are asking in your post. What are schools that will certainly take a given student that the student likes very much. That school, or if you are very lucky, it’s of schools, are often where the students end up going and are the ones sadly tacked onto the list just to makes sure the student has fulfilled that safety requirement. All the focus and energy, imagination, visits and machinations are placed in those reach schools, often the very high reach schools where chances of admissions are very small
The problem is that those schools that are true safeties are not written up, do not have the name recognition, are simply difficult to assess in terms of fit whereas there are reviews galore for the highly selective schools. It’s an individual search project , the quest, in college search. Many of these schools end up being local to the student because those are the ones that are most familiar and you can much more easily get info on them.
In my state, a smattering of smaller Catholic schools like Marymount, Iona, Siena, Manhattan , colleges; Private schools like Manhattanville , Hartwick , St Lawrence, Hobart-William Smith, Clarkson , Utica, Wagner, Wells, the smaller SUNYs like Purchase, New Paltz. are some examples. Pennsylvania has many of these small schools like Westminster, Washington and Jefferson, Juniata, Susquehanna, Ursinus, Thiel, Albright, Geneva,etc etc.
So does Florida, if your DD wantsvto go further south, and there are plenty of such schools nationwide.
If you want to look at schools more in the match category, the Fiske guide and just googling liberal arts colleges will bring up schools like Union, Hamilton, Dickinson , Gettysburg which I put in the match range for your DD.
As full pay, and with those great stats, your D’s choices are wide open for most any school in the country. It’s just at the very short list of the most selective schools in the country that things get iffy in terms of admissions.
It’s a matter of picking the best schools that fit your DD that is the difficult part here, not any dearth of choices, and this is something only she can do with research and time and work. It’s a personal thing. The schools with the prestige kind of force the feeling that they are the right paces because the PR, information available anywhere, the designer labels scream it out.
When we looked at schools, I liked to pair the visits with lesser known schools when visiting any area Manhattanville college near my house, for example, has a beautiful campus with great access to NYC-Manhattan, along a vibe like other far more selective LACs. St Lawrence University way up in Canton is a gem of a school—I’ve been impressed with every single grad I’ve met from there, doesn’t get the mention that the well known Maine trio of LACs and the Little Ivies do. With good demonstrated interest, gaining admissions to these schools is highly likely.
As @happy1 says, very few kids have hooks. So your DD is not unusual in that respect. Those top ranked schools are difficult in terms of gaining admissions because of the number of applications they get and the number of spots they have. That’s why they are reaches. Absolutely no reason not to throw a bunch of those on the list , once your DD has done good strong sure things going. But as many of those lottery tickets as she feels like filling out and you feel like paying for. She certainly has the stats to have a fighting chance. It’s just not a good idea to obsess on any of these single digit accept rate schools, because the chances are that small in getting accepted.
Good luck, and enjoy the college search process. If coming in the NYC direction, do visit Fordham Rose Hill, Iona, Manhattanville, SUNY Purchase, to name just a few schools, —make Your way up to St Lawrence U and look at some of these unsung schools that are excellent choices for so many students
Her stats will keep her in the “on to the serious read” phase. But you are right that her application will be in a big pile at that point. And many of the schools that are considered “overlaps” also have single-digit acceptance rates.
Some of the easier to get into schools that have similar vibes might be Union, St. Lawrence, Hobart William Smith, Dickinson, Franklin and Marshall, and Denison.
I think that with strong essays and strong recs, she is on the right side of the odds for the competitive NESCACs and that she should look at others in that category (beyond Williams) to expand her chances. (And to be sure she likes the community- while most are collaborative, they don’t all have the same feel.)
With a perfect 4.0 GPA & a 35 ACT as a rising junior, full pay applicant, your daughter should aim high.
As far as small LACs that are a match, consider Kenyon College in Ohio.
Hamilton College in New York.
Grinnell College in Iowa.
Vassar College in New York.
As your daughter continues to grow & to mature, her tastes may change so be sure to look into large puublic university honors colleges–which offer the best of both worlds = small community feel with all the excitement & advantages of a large university setting.
Thanks so much for all your replies. She is interested in psychology, which it seems to be a popular major at all schools. I will have her take some time and look at the Fiske Guide and Princeton Review, they have copies at her school. You all suggested so many great schools. Do you think in general school with around 30% acceptance rate would be a match?
Yes. In my opinion, your daughter wouldn’t, in general, see high matches and reaches until she encounters rates below 25%. This would make many potential choices around and across this selectivity level appropriate destinations for her application.
Look at the female acceptance rate from the college’s common data set, not the overall acceptance rate. At Vassar, for example, women are admitted at about half the rate as men. LACs draw disproportionately high female applicants, so be,aware of that. Also, the women’s colleges might be of interest and attainable, some maybe even with merit aid.
Thanks, we will take a look and visit a few this fall. I want her to be happy with all the schools she applies, knowing that the prosses in unpredictable.
A little larger but UVA popped into my head.