<p>I have been hanging on to this weird urge to apply to the University of Chicago, even though it doesn’t have an engineering program - an important criteria for me. I don’t know exactly why, but I haven’t been able to completely decided that I’m not applying there…When I saw the essay questions, it only made me even more interested in applying!</p>
<p>I have this odd urge to apply to UChicago as well… and then I saw the essay questions and decided I wasn’t “creative” enough.</p>
<p>After I read the essay questions, I had an urge to apply to UChicago too. They’re quite good for self-selection, apparently. Unfortunately, the Core is really a deal-breaker for me, plus I’d have to ask for a math/science teacher rec.</p>
<p>Apply to UChicago. If you want to eb an engineer, you’ll probably do a graduate engineering program anyways, and UChicago has a GREAT physics/hard science program. I am now kind of sad I didn’t apply, and I didn’t apply specifically because they didn’t have an engineering program. If I hadn’t gotten into Brown, but had managed to get into Chicago, I would have been glad I applied. Luckily, things worked out, but otherwise I wouldn’t be so content.</p>
<p>As far as engineering goes: pretty much all of junior year, and until the RD applications, I thought I was going into engineering. then changed it to physics for my Brown application, and now don’t really wanna do engineering undergrad, cause I can get most the requirements done through physics, while still being able to take fun, non-engineering/math classes.</p>
<p>DS1 was sure he wanted to attend a LAC. He applied to all LAC’s except for U. Rochester and UMiami (Miami, Fl). He was rejected by UM (his safety school - This was back in the day when UM could have been considered a safety. I’m not so sure about now.), visited Davidson (his first choice), and U. Rochester (his not first choice) during visit-back day, and seriously considered Furman. He ended up at U. Rochester. At the last minute he decided that he needed a ‘larger’ environment and also Davidson felt like an extension of his boarding school.</p>
<p>CaliforniaDancer–maybe you’re not destined to be an engineer! :)</p>
<p>S1 picked his OTB college – for a math/CS guy, everyone assumed he’d head to MIT, Caltech or the like. Chicago had the top-flight math AND the Core, which he decided at the end of the day would challenge him to grow more than attending a school in his comfort zone.</p>
<p>The GC did pull a “WTH?” when he had Reed on his list at the junior year college meeting.</p>
<p>Colorado College is a wonderful “think outside the box” school. It stands virtually alone as a first-rate, New England style liberal arts college in the vast “Mountain West” region. Its nearly unique one-course-at-a-time “Block Plan” allows flexibility in scheduling that you just don’t have in a conventional semester system. Professors can (and do) take students off for a week to study Alpine botany, fossil formations, geology, or Navajo social systems. Or, a student can apply for a Vision Grant ([Colorado</a> College | Venture Grants](<a href=“http://www.coloradocollege.edu/resources/dean/VentureGrants/]Colorado”>http://www.coloradocollege.edu/resources/dean/VentureGrants/)) to support an individual research project.</p>
<p>The combination of setting (in a small city at the foot of the Rockies), curriculum plan, and overall quality make this school something of a hidden gem among small, liberal arts colleges. The students, too, show a wonderful mix of outdoorsy, athletic, arty and intellectual qualities, energetic yet more laid back than some of their bi-coastal peers.</p>
<p>One reason the outside the box approach makes a lot of sense is that when a person is 17 years old, their preferences can be formed by some pretty flimsy reasoning, off-target stereotypes, peer-group gossip, and just plain ignorance. I mean, most high schoolers have barely spent any time at all on a college campus, so how COULD they have a well-thought-out list of criteria?</p>
<p>I recall when I was sorting out colleges, many people I talked to quickly dismissed ALL larger schools as places where “you’re just a number.” </p>
<p>I read all the time on collegeconfidential that any school with religious ties will try to force religion “down your throat.”</p>
<p>People tend to think rural schools will be dull, and urban schools will be dangerous, etc. </p>
<p>There is simply no substitute for spending as much time as possible on the campuses you are interested in.</p>
<p>How about Tulane? Top 50 school with a culture of academic excellence combined with a commitment to giving back/making a difference in the world. Gives loads of merit-based aid, making a private school education much more affordable. Great music, food and art scene in New Orleans</p>
<p>If I could do it all over again, I probably wouldn’t apply to my Outside-the-Box school (Rice). It seemed to have everything I wanted, except for the location, but my guidance counselor encouraged me to keep an open mind anyway. I was accepted, visited, and loved the school… but in the end I just didn’t want to be in Texas. Yes, high school students can have weird prejudices, but if they’re reluctant to apply to a school with a certain characteristic I wouldn’t be pushy about it (not that anyone was being pushy in my case, I was just a rather suggestible high school kid). There’s nothing inherently wrong with going to college in Texas, but it wasn’t the right thing for me, and ended up being a waste of time for both me and the school.</p>
<p>^ But another kid might have had the same prejudice and changed their mind after visiting. I don’t think it was a waste of time. JMHO.</p>
<p>Ironically Harvard was the out of the box school for mathson - everything else was a techie school. We wanted him to have a choice come April and thought he had a good enough chance of getting in that he might prefer H to his safeties. In the end he decided to stay in his box, but I’m not sorry we encouraged him apply.</p>
<p>Yeah, just to be random, Kenyon’s my out-of-the-box school. </p>
<p>Everything else is State U’s or privates with similar programs. Even though Kenyon makes no sense for me what so ever, I still love the school and am going to apply (I really want to go to an elite LAC on the inside).</p>
<p>So, my question for y’all-anyone out there shifted direction so randomly on a whim during the process without any real basis besides touchy-feely aspects and thought their choice was a GOOD decision?</p>
<p>Might look at schools with strong alumni networks that help in job placement and internships-Duke, Dartmouth, Holy Cross, Williams, Notre Dame.</p>
<p>This has really inspired me. Time to put a liberal arts college on my list 
Thanks so much CC, great advice!</p>
<p>Definitely good advice.</p>
<p>People always give me funny looks when, after asking me how I found out about Mudd, I tell them that the school simply sent out the most amusing admissions mail. When I first heard about the school, it sounded wayyyy too small (at under 800, its half the size of my high school) and was also wayyyyy to expensive. Turns out, I got more financial aid from Mudd than I did from my parent’s alma mater (University of Virginia - very different place!), and I’m loving the small school feel, despite thinking that private schools were about the most silly, closed-in, thing on earth in high school.</p>
<p>Of course, you need to make sure that the problem you have with your “Outside-the-Box” school is one that you could actually change your mind on. If you won’t budge on a subject (For example, I would not apply to Colorado State University due to the fact that its in my hometown, no matter how much money the neighbor kids were getting), then don’t waste your time stressing over yet another application.</p>
<p>^Agree. My out-of-the-box college was Olin, just because it was so different from everything else. And all my other schools were medium-large, and either in cities or with good access to them. Not an isolated 240 kids. I thought I would be too social for that few people. In the end, I don’t think I would have gone had I made it past candidates-weekend, but it was still a good experience.</p>
<p>What a great discussion. I second reading Loren Pope’s book for everyone… not that you may - or your son or daughter may - necessarily choose one of those schools, but it really gives you a different way of thinking. For us, we ended up visiting four schools in the book, and completely feel in love with St Olaf, a school that probably would never have been on our list (We live in Manhattan.). In the end, our son choose Bard and after two weeks of freshman orientation is loving it and saying each day gets better and better. While Bard is not in Pope’s book anymore, it is a definitely out of the box school, and despite my son being a computer science type, is perfect for his iconoclastic personality.</p>
<p>I was only really looking at liberal arts colleges in the north (Amherst, Middlebury, etc.). For some reason, WashU came up on some list of schools to look at and I went out to visit and fell in love with it. I had practically decided I was going to go to school in the North but instead I ended up applying ED to WashU.</p>