My D is a sophomore in HS, so we are just at the beginning of the college search. She would love to major in Creative Writing. I do not have any test scores, because she hasn’t taken any yet- I believe PSATS this coming October. But she was a straight A/A+ student last year, received 9 academic/ teacher preference awards (the most in her class) and is currently 7th of 122 (she only had 1 honors class, otherwise she probably would have been higher- she is in full honors this year). She is in two sports, a few clubs, class treasurer and some community involvement. She honestly just has this amazing charisma about her and people are drawn to her!!
We just put together a list of schools to see (tried to do a mix). Dartmouth, Midd, Colby, Wheaton (MA), Holly Cross, BC, Conn, Bard, Hamilton, St. Lawrence, Colby-Sawyer and Curry. As you can see she would like to stay in New England and NY area. Likes a smaller school (but not smaller than 1000 students) and ideally and enclosed campus.
She has seen Colby (as well as Bates and Brandise). She LOVES everything about Colby (well except the mascot), she did not like the other two (Bates seemed too open to the community and Brandise was too mismatched looking and just didn’t capture her at all)
I’d love any feedback you may have on our list. Do we have too many? Are we missing any? Are we way off the mark on any?? TY!
That’s a good list. If you are in the potential range for admission to Dartmouth, then you might also consider Amherst, which has a significant heritage in writing, and generally leads the nation’s LACs in percentage of grads who go on to get English PhDs. Vassar and Wesleyan are also well worth looking into.
If she is considering all-women’s schools, Wellesley and Smith are considered good choices for writing. If you are willing to go a little further south, Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr would be good.
It will be helpful in formulating a realistic list of college ideas to have the PSAT score. I think it’s hard for people to make recommendations just on freshman grades. You can also have her take a practice PSAT or SAT test under test conditions (this is a good idea in any case) so you get a better idea where she might stand, allowing for some improvement next year.
My junior writer has somewhat different preferences (mid size, college town or urban, no cornfields) and her stats are not going to be limiting. I think Brown is her favorite school at the moment.
If I were you, I’d look into how many writing classes and instructors you are going to get at a small school, and whether there is going to be a critical mass of kids passionate about writing there.
Also, many schools don’t have a creative writing major. This may or may not be important to you.
If I recall, Princeton requires all students to write a senior thesis and English majors can write a creative thesis, but this has to be approved. I’d be interested in hearing how hard it is to get such approval.
One of the points made in my thread on creative writing programs is that actually majoring in creative writing may not be the best option for a writer, I guess the idea being that other majors, eg. history, could provide a better background for future writing. Another point made is that it’s extremely difficult to make a career of creative writing, except perhaps in corporate writing, eg. advertising, which isn’t what my kid envisions. So one possibility we have thought about is a double major with something more employable. That’s more difficult or impossible to do at some schools, such as Princeton with the thesis requirement.
I’d agree she has a good list with which to start. It helps a lot that she seems to know what she likes. Along these lines, I’m pretty sure she could embrace being a Mule if everything else fell into place. Of the moderately selective colleges on her tentative list, St. Lawrence is the one that seems to posses attributes that even one or two of her more selective choices cannot quite match.
Syracuse is known for its creative writing program. Sarah Lawrence and Wesleyan also.
Frankly, I think her chances at the most selective schools on your list, such as Dartmouth and Midd (and Wesleyan, if you add it), may be harmed by the fact that she has completed two years of HS with only one honors classes. That’s not what they expect to see.
@Consolation she has just started sophomore year, and is now in all honors. We only had her take 1 (English) her freshman year because she does acting (tv,film and commercial) and often misses a lot of school; so we weren’t sure how she would balance all of it.
@happy1 although I’m sure Emerson is a fabulous school, it’s too “city” for her taste. She really likes the idea of an enclosed type of campus where people are almost “forced” to be involved in the school.
Architecturally, SLU offers the impression of having grown through time, creating an academics-cum-ski-lodge appearance that seems organic to its surroundings. Beyond that, their location between the Adirondacks and St. Lawrence River, and not far from Ottawa and Montréal, borders on the exotic.
That said re SLU (#14), it might be good to maintain some awareness of statistical factors as your daughter progresses through her search process. For example, SLU’s student profile bears little statistical resemblance to Dartmouth’s or Hamilton’s – that is, SLU’s 75th percentile SAT score is lower than the 25th percentile score for either of these colleges (though it does have some overlap with those for Middlebury and Colby). Factors such as this may reflect the academic preparation of the students at these colleges, and the classroom atmospheres may correspond accordingly.
Your daughter’s impression of schools and location will change dramatically. She is very young and if you visted schools off session which sounds like the case, her views will most certainly change on revisits during session.
I would take her preferences now with a grain of salt, a large one. For example, if she needs to fly, how does she feel about getting to the Portland airport from Colby an hour and 45 minutes away.
@CP2020 - the ones we saw definitely were during off session, so we have decided that going forward we would visit during a normal school day. I’d like to have her do her first visits during this sophomore year and revisit during her junior year, because as you mentioned it is very likely that her views may change.
If my D told me that she would want to major in Creative Writing I would think that’s great, but really push for her to double major, with the second major being in something that might lead to a job after college such as Communications, Film or Journalism etc. On the otherhand if she wants to go straight to graduate school then it might be okay
