<p>Deep breaths, you’ll get through this. </p>
<p>I went to Smith (obviously) but I visited Spelman. It’s much different than Wellesley/Smith/MHC in terms of location as well as price, but as others have noted, the financial aid at Wellesley/Smith/MHC (I only know Smith from experience, but the others by reputation) is very good IF you think your family will qualify for need based aid especially. The merit aid at those three schools is also good, but there aren’t as many merit awards compared to number of students and there’s a very high number of meritorious applicants, so the competition for merit aid can be fierce. </p>
<p>I think with EA you have to still give them your decision early (earlier than May) but the acceptance is not binding, meaning that if you are accepted EA you aren’t required to attend and you can apply EA to more than one school (Smith I know does not have an EA option, only ED and RD. Not sure about the others). You can find this out easily by checking the admissions websites of the various schools. The downside of EA/ED is that you don’t get as much opportunity to compare financial aid offers, and also it may be harder for you to qualify for some of the merit aid scholarships (a lot of schools save the best merit aid scholarships for RD applicants, because they know RD applicants will be comparing many offers from many schools and they want to entice the RD kids to come to their school. ED kids are required to attend if accepted, so it’s not neccessarily worthwhile to expend all of your best merit scholarships so early). </p>
<p>As for differences, I don’t know if all of these schools have 3/2 engineering programs (they may, I’m just not sure). Smith is the only women’s college that offers engineering as an undergraduate degree, and it’s a great, very well funded program, with special merit scholarships attached to it that are just for engineering students. Smith also has an almost brand new engineering bio-molecular sciences building. However, all of the women’s colleges are very strong in the sciences. </p>
<p>Spelman again is in a very different location than the other three. When I visited Spelman it felt way too urbanized for me (I was not that interested in going to school in a big city) and Atlanta did not really appeal to me as a homebase anyway. But almost no other women’s college (except Scripps maybe) can boast so many young men immediately across the street. Wellesley has a bus that will take you into Boston, which can be a nice balance between rural and urban. I love Northampton, where Smith is located. It’s a really cool, fun, hip town with tons of good shopping and restaurants, great music scene (lots of concerts), cool coffee shops, etc. I grew up in a big city and I didn’t feel like Northampton was boring at all, I always had plenty to do on and off campus. And I wanted to go to school in a place where people did things at the college on the weekends, and didn’t just run off to other schools or the attractions of the city. I didn’t want campus to be dead Saturday and Sunday, basically, and I got what I wanted. If I ever did get bored, I could take the bus for free to one of the other Five Colleges in the area. </p>
<p>Smith (all the women’s colleges but I can only speak from experience at Smith), is a really tight knit, super supportive community of women who graduate into every walk of life and after they graduate are really excited about helping other Smithies. I felt like my college was my family, my housemates really cared about each other and helped each other like a family would (I know, it’s cliche, but it really is a sisterhood in the best sense of the word). That was important to me because I went to college so far away from home. I think if you asked Wellseley grads or MHC or Spelman grads they would say the same.</p>