OP, I think you are going to have to ‘give’ on something, and it may be ranking of the school if location and swim team are the most important for her fit. Many students go to medical school from the smaller schools ‘no one’ has heard of. I know athletes who have gone to Rhodes and really liked it.
You should also look at who the school competes against because that will indicate how far the team has to travel to meets. Colorado College, for example, seems to travel to Texas a lot and also swims against D2 teams (Colo school of Mines and CSU Pueblo).
You mentioned W&M, Richmond and Davidson being out of reach athletically, but have you considered Washington & Lee? It is their peer academically and appears to have a D3 program:
Yep, we are considering W&L and may visit there in the future. At the moment, it’s a slight reach both academically and athletically but certainly under consideration. Is it as good for biological science/pre-Med? It appears to be a bit business/law/finance oriented as opposed to the hard sciences but that’s just my observation at first glance. I have not delved deeply into W&L yet.
Has she just looked for the LAC factor first, then looked at the swimming team. That might be the plan to follow. Happyniece had very nice merit money from Guilford, and graduated from the honors program with a solid science degree. She had planned to play softball there but was permanently sidelined with an injury beore classes started.
Fair enough re: women’s colleges… although my daughter didn’t think she was interested in women’s colleges at first either, but then ended up feeling that a women’s college within a co-ed consortium was not such a bad idea after all. Bryn Mawr is very closely paired with Haverford, so the reality might not be as off-putting to your daughter as she thinks it would. Not to say it’s a likely enough choice to make a special trip to the Philly area for… but if you were visiting Swarthmore anyway, it would be worth a tour - after all, Swarthmore students can cross-register at BM (and Haverford, and Penn) and vice versa, so it only makes sense see the whole cluster of Quaker College LAC’s.
The point about club sports is a good one - some teams are quite serious and well-organized. But I think the trend is going to be toward larger schools having the critical mass to have a robust club team. So then the question is, was your daughter leaning toward small LAC’s because she prefers an LAC, or was it because of looking for well-matched D3 programs that she was leaning that way? Certainly there are some smaller D1 universities with club teams that could be worth a look. For example, http://campuslifeleadership18642.orgsync.com/org/clubswimteam
Also, if you’d consider Carleton, definitely look at St. Olaf in the same town - also excellent for premed. It’s not quite as reachy as Carleton, but a more competitive admit than Centre, Rhodes, et. al.
If you’re looking at schools as far as PA and Grinnell and Carleton, what about Ohio? Lots of great LACs to look at in Ohio- Wooster, Kenyon, Oberlin, Denison. I don’t know anything about swimming specifically at those schools but they are worth a look.
W&L may be academic reach but it is in a nice conference with some other schools that might be of interest although no knowledge of how most of them stack up in pre-med. I do think W&L has a lot of STEM kids and easy to complete pre-med while doing other majors. Several of D’s friends were pre-med - a few were science majors but one was religion and one was psychology. W&L is in ODAC - Old Dominion Athletic Conference. Might look at that list.
If swimming is important, don’t discount small schools. I don’t really understand very small schools like Wofford being Division 1 but I know they sent lots of my personal doctors to med school. Same with Presbyterian college (no swimming). So point is even some that don’t seem to be on academic level of W&L or Davidson might still well prepare you for med school. (what #20 said )
@packattack1018 I’m not sure about the hard sciences at W&L, but its rep is very good overall. I can’t imagine they would be subpar in anything they offer. To see if they offer what she is interested in, you might take a look at available majors and classes, and see what kind of faculty they have for those majors.
We toured Centre College and liked it very much. The campus was nice and the President made an effort to talk to people in the admissions office. It might be worth a look for your D. Also, not an LAC but I know people at Wingate University outside of Charlotte that think highly of its academics and athletics. With your D’s scores she would be eligible for some great merit $$ In the last ten years they have added a PA and Pharmacy program.
I think you are looking at schools that seem like good fits. I thought of Trinity University and Southwestern as I was reading through the first half of the post and then saw you had looked into them. You are getting good suggestions.
I’d second F&M in PA. I think academics at Rhodes are terrific. Campus is beautiful. Maybe you could see if Memphis is a fit. Wash U is a beautiful school and a top-ranked national university. It’d be a reach but a possibility. Note another point or two on the ACT would help, based on school ACT range, which is 32-35 or 33-35… It puts a fair amount of emphasis on “interest” (visiting and maybe interviewing), and it does seem to offer a big bump to ED applicants.
I’d also second William and Mary. Like Wash U, it’s a mid-size national university (just over 6000 undergrads) but definitely has an LAC vibe. Swim team might be too strong, but it does offer club swimming. We know someone who does club and loves it. They were a competitive swimmer in high school and could have swum varsity in college. I’d agree with University of Richmond too.
If you are looking at F&M, you might consider Dickinson. A terrific LAC with a terrific campus, really very nice. It has very strong academics, and your daughter would be right in the school profile academically, and, I think, athletically. We know a student who was a varsity athlete there and had an amazing experience. It is in southern PA, if that’s a bonus.
She might also look at Denison University, Kenyon College, and the College of Wooster in OH. Denison is the right size, even with university designation. All have strong academics. All have swimming. All have very nice campuses. Kenyon is in a very, very small town. Denison is in a very nice town and is pretty close to Columbus. I can’t speak to the women’s swim teams or your daughter’s competitiveness. Kenyon might be a reach but a reasonable one certainly. I’d think she’d be a great candidate at the other two, and would probably get some aid.
The size of the school often has little to do with the NCAA division it plays in. Presbyterian has 1200 students and is D1, with a football team. Sometimes the division has more to do with traditional rivals (Ivy league), the number of teams the school wants to sponsor, and where it is located; it is hard to have a baseball team in places where it is covered in snow through much of the spring. Some D1 schools have dropped swimming in the last few years (Buffalo, North Dakota) because the schools just can’t afford to have teams travel so much.
The division also doesn’t mean the team is ‘third level.’ It just doesn’t work that way. There are D3 schools with swimmers who could have gone to a D1 school but wanted to go to Middlebury or Gettysburg. No one is going to confuse a Stanford team with the one at Hopkins, but an individual swimmer may have fit in at either school.
The midwestern schools y’all have mentioned are certainly on my list except maybe for Kenyon and Denison. Guess who finished second and fourth this year respectively to Emory’s 9th D3 National Championship? The rest are certainly being looked at. Dad really is intrigued by Grinnell on paper. She fits well in their academic and swim profiles. Anyone have any feedback on Luther College in regard to academics? Augustana? Macalester? Oberlin? Illinois Wesleyan?
I have a relative who was an outstanding swimmer in a top HS program. He recently chose Dickinson after being admitted everywhere he applied.
Kenyon (one of the schools he turned down) has won 34 national titles in men’s D3 swimming & diving, which apparently is an NCAA record number of wins. I don’t know if the women’s swim program is equally strong. Kenyon is famous for its strong English & Writing programs.
My impression is that Earlham College has a very strong biology program. Dunno about their swimming programs/facilities. http://earlham.edu/biology/
Yes, there are lots of LACs in the mid-Atlantic and the Midwest.
As for schools being a long way from home …
one issue with some of these places is not just the distance from home as the crow flies, but also perhaps the distance to and from major airports. Carlisle, PA (Dickinson) for example is about 2 hours from BWI (Baltimore) and about the same from Philadelphia. I don’t know if your area would have direct flights into Harrisburg, which is about 1/2 hour away. You might have travel issues with a few of the other LACs mentioned so far, possibly including some of the Southern schools. Sewanee for example would be about a 6 hour drive from Pensacola FL, right? But it’s also about 90 miles from the Nashville airport or 60 miles from the Chattanooga airport.
Berry College is worth considering for academics, athletics, and hands on work experience. It has a great Regional Reputation, and every student is offered a campus job regardless of financial need. A close relative is a college swim official, and he really likes the swim coach there. It is a self-contained campus in a small town, but is close to both Chattanooga and Atlanta for students to experience trips into a bigger city.
Our D graduated from Berry with a Biochemistry degree, and really connected with professors. She was able to work in Chemistry department, as a T.A. (along with the professor, Berry does NOT allow TAs to teach on their own). She also did research with a chem professor which led to a published study. This experience helped her get an outside summer internship which was quite valuable as she secured full time employment after college.
The student population is large enough, and diverse enough, for a student to find their “tribe” but not so large that they are lost in the shuffle. Students who choose to reach out can form great relationships with their professors. Advisors actually do advise students, I remember my D mentioning her talks with her advisor sprinkled throughout her time at Berry.
And the campus. Wow. It is worth a visit just to experience the beauty of this 26,000 acre campus. The website pictures just do not compare to seeing it in person. If you are outdoorsy type, or even if you can just appreciate the beauty of nature, this place offers lots of ways to decompress from your academic studies. It is almost a Requirement for students to own an Eno Hammock!
Berry has been around for over 100 years, and has a large endowment. They offer substantial academic merit aid, plus they seem to offer additional departmental aid to returning students (who have proven themselves in the classroom.)
Once you post enough posts, you will be allowed to PM with others. If you want more detailed info on the swim coach and the swim program at Berry, PM me.
I’m a huge fan of Centre as it’s where my daughter ended up choosing (soccer player). She similarly had very high stats, AP scholar, and many ECs. It’s a beautiful and welcoming campus and she is friends with many swimmers. It is very academically challenging and she really has to work hard to maintain her grades (everyone has said that Centre is challenging but I don’t think she believed it until she attended). She is also on med school track and they have an advisor assigned to help navigate med school admissions.They are very successful with placement in the surrounding schools as they are aware of the academic rigors of the college. No regrets from her.
Centre and Berry seem like great recommendations. Definitely at least peek at Dickinson–really just across the Mason-Dixon Line.
You learn something new every day. Yesterday, for me, it was that Kenyon is really good at swimming for a small school. Alums include Paul Newman, Allison Janney, John Green (The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns, etc.), Laura Hillenbrand (Seabiscuit and Unbroken), Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes), E.L Doctorow, and many others, which I think is pretty impressive for such a small school.
It is a good point to consider travel. It tends to diminish in import as a student goes through school, but there are cost and time considerations.
I can’t say enough good things about Rhodes, especially for biology/pre-med. Please don’t let Memphis scare you out of consideration. If anything, being located in Memphis should be in the “pro” column. It’s an interesting city with many resources available and Rhodes maximizes its relationship to the city in mutually advantageous ways. One of the better Town/Gown relationships around.
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