Hi! I’m hoping to broaden my list a bit, specifically feeling like I’m heavy on reaches, good on safety’s, and lacking in targets.
Stats
3.99 UW
1380 SAT
Debate captain, head of a number of social justice-related organizations at my HS,
Student Gov all four years, Theatre participation & head of the drama club, etc
8 adv courses(my school doesn’t offer APs)
Undecided major, but something in the vicinity of History/Anthropology. I’m looking for schools that while rigorous, prioritize a good work-life balance. Colorado College is my top choice by far, which I feel sums up my priorities.
My list as of right now:
Colorado College, Bates, Pitzer, Williams, Scripps, UVM, and CU Boulder
A very common trap is to compare your SAT/ACT and GPA to the colleges’ averages. Your choices are heavy in small LAC. Despite claims that they have a holistic approach to each individual, keep in mind that colleges admit students to reach objective goals for the composition of each class. Each college publishes a CDS (common data set) which will tell its class composition. (% diversity, % first-generation, %international, % from each region of the country, % out of state). Filter those stats to your profile and you’ll see how many first-year seats are truly available at your colleges of interest. Set your target goals from there. These blogs are full of sad tales of kids with 4.0 GPA and top 1% test stats who only applied to top 20 schools and were not admitted or were waitlisted everywhere. For example Wellesley admitted 1200 students to fill about 600 seats this year. 65% women of color, 15% international, 40% speak a language other than English at home, 10-15% come from the Midwest. If you’re from the Midwest, you are competing for 120 offers for 60 seats without breaking down other demographics, majors, legacies, athletes, etc. Divide 60 seats into all of the major cities and small towns in the Midwest. This translates to 2-3 people per metropolitan area of the Midwest.
Consider Kenyon, Oberlin, Centre, Grinnell. I am a big fan Miami U in Oxford, Ohio. Significant merit aid available and has a liberal arts emphasis despite being a bit larger than your other schools.
You are, overall, wrong about this. While colleges will often try and get at least some students from regions from where there are generally few applicants, there is no limitation. The reason that 10%-15% are from the Midwest is because that’s proportionally how many applied.
As a rule, the majority of the domestic students who apply to any of the NESCACs or other colleges on the East Coast are from the East Coast. Kids from the Midwest who are looking for LACs are more likely to apply to Carleton, Macalester, Grinnell, St Olaf’s , DePauw, Kenyon, Denison, Oberlin, etc, than to LACs in the NE.
Some 10-30 kids from my daughter’s Chicago area high school applied to colleges like Carleton, Grinnell, etc, while no NESCAC and few other East Coast colleges received even 10 applications from the high school.
So the reason that a higher proportion of students at Kenyon are from the Midwest is because a higher proportion of students who apply to Kenyon are from the Midwest.
While there may be a benefit of being from the region in that a college is more likely to know the reputation of a high school which is well known, that will not cover the majority of high schools in a region.
However, even here there are exceptions. There are often connections between high schools and colleges in different regions - again, I’ll use my kid’s school as an example. Relatively large numbers of kids from the college would apply to Vassar, and their success rate tended to be good.
With Williams, keep in mind that it reports a 25th percentile SAT score of 1430 on its Common Data Set, which probably fairly reflects its academic expectations.
As suggestions, look into Colgate, Kenyon, Trinity (CT) and Wheaton (MA).
I’d have serious reservations about UVM for you since they are getting rid of a number of their humanities majors. A quick google search will give you more detail.
I’d heard about those changes in passing, but hadn’t put much thought into it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, going to have to seriously reconsider UVM
I agree that Kenyon and Oberlin would be good target schools. Both have very strong History programs (and humanities in general) and active theater life, if this is still an interest. My daughter just finished her first year at Kenyon and declared a History major. She has loved her courses and made great friends. She feels she is challenged academically (and she comes from a very rigorous selective high school) but still had time to pursue her interests in theater and music. The campus is beautiful and it’s located in a hilly part of Ohio, with some nice hiking/biking trails.
This was us–we convinced our daughter to apply only to Midwestern LACs (we wanted to be able to drive in one day to move and visit her; we travel extensively and have lived overseas, so she has already experienced the world outside of the Midwest). Also, we needed merit, and many good Midwestern LACs offer it.
This being said, while Kenyon might have a higher proportion of students from the Midwest (I couldn’t find this info in their CDS), it has significant geographical diversity. The parent Facebook group has a thread going on about where families live, and I was surprised how many different states were represented. (I know you were arguing a different point, but I just wanted to mention this fact).
Definitely check out Whitman. It checks a lot of boxes similar to Colorado College and is known for good merit aid. The students are generally outdoorsy, intellectually curious, socially/politically active- just a great campus vibe/culture. And excellent professors to boot.
I would hesitate to consider Kenyon a target for the coming year. They are overenrolled for 2021-22 and are offering incoming first years stipends if they take a gap semester or gap year. It’s still a wonderful school that you should consider, but there’s a good chance that it will be more selective next year. https://www.kenyon.edu/first-year-experience/alternative-options/
I believe we will disagree on on the weight of geography in the admission process. We don’t get to see the process in each Admission Office so we’re all speculating to some degree. I believe in looking at the statistics. Over time, those will tell you exactly what a college wants its class to look like. Every Top 20 college receives applications of “qualified” students to fill its class multiple times over. (I’m not being critical of Wellesley. It is typical of nearly all.) If NESCAC colleges wanted 25% of their respective student bodies from the Midwest, they certainly receive a sufficient number of qualified applications. The proportion of applications is irrelevant to the gross number of qualified applicants and the ability of a college to distribute seats according to objective criteria. Distance from home likely impacts other metrics like yield, retention and transfer rates. I’d like to think that colleges don’t admit students to target these stats used for ratings, but…
I do agree that many small liberal arts colleges have a bias toward high schools with historic relationships. They know the schools’ demographics well. Private prep schools and wealthy suburban schools districts feed them qualified, full-pay applicants. There is definitely more uncertainty in the ability to pay from the public high school in a low-income zip code for example. (I will believe in a fully need-blind admission process when I see statistics that show a college with random, need-based financial aid expenditures.)
My point in looking in-depth at the historic admission statistics rather than scores/GPAs is to avoid being the unhappy Honors student at State U when you really wanted an LAC experience.
Colleges can be truthful in stating that they are need-blind for individual applicants, but that does not mean that they are need-blind for the class overall when deciding which criteria to emphasize or de-emphasize for the upcoming admission season. For example, choosing to increase ED admissions or the weighting of legacy will reduce the FA need of the class overall due to these groups skewing toward lower FA need, even though some individual ED or legacy admits will have FA need.
I’d agree with some pp’s that Kenyon is more a reach than a target. Not as high of a reach as Williams or Colorado College, but still a reach.
I’d consider, in the West - Occidental, Reed, Whitman, Lewis and Clark. In the Midwest - Macalester, St. Olaf, Oberlin and Kenyon. In the Northeast - Skidmore, Connecticut College, Bard, College of the Holy Cross, Colgate, Lafayette.
Of that list, Macalester, Kenyon, and Colgate might be on the higher end of competitiveness. St. Olaf would make for a great safety school where you would likely get some merit aid as well. Beautiful school and campus in a great college town.
Also, if Colorado College remains your top choice and you can financially swing it, I would strongly consider applying Early Decision (or at least Early Action). My son was very interested in Colorado College, but it has something like a 4% admission rate for regular decision applications, so he opted not to apply.