This group of schools will only get more competitive because they are focusing resources on international recruiting and slowly Asian parents are warming up to them.
It would not surprise me if in 3 - 5 years the top 25 have acceptance rates like the Ivy League schools.
Fascinating article about recruited athletes at Haverford. Many do get rejected, even with great scores.
The http://ope.ed.gov publishes this information, so no need to look at rosters. A quote from the website is below. Note that 25% play multiple sports, so in Amherst’s case ~1/4 is a better estimate than ~1/3.
Did she look at Tufts or Wesleyan? Just curious. Davidson is a good idea, as are the mid-Western schools listed. Vassar? Have you looked at Colleges that Change LIves schools at all?
I have difficulty believing the percentages cited in post #3 (30% recruited athletes etc.), despite all the discussion
Your daughter’s stats, grades, and extracurricular seem very competitive to me. She doesn’t need a national or international award. Where did you get that idea? And in fact her extracurricular is international service and is very interesting. How did she get involved in that at such a young age? If she has done that for 4 or 5 years with deepening experience, that is much more of an addition to her applications than a smorgasbord of activities. Just make sure that a letter of rec. reflects her involvement, work ethic, concern for others etc.
I hope you don’t suggest your daughter do anything solely for the sake of admissions (there is no indication you would). Character (and authenticity) matters a lot for these schools and it will come through in recommendations. I think essays are recognized universally as iffy for evaluating a student, since so many are coached, but if she can pull off a good one that is always nice.
I think your daughter should apply wherever she really wants to go and has a good shot- but of course she needs to know also that she cannot count on anything in this crazy admissions game. I think you are unnecessarily negative and a bit too formulaic in your analysis. Admissions is an art not a science, so to speak.
As for retaking the ACT, it seems as if she is “into” it, but many of these schools are backing away from standardized tests as essential markers of future college work. In fact, look at this list: http://fairtest.org/university/optional Many selective schools on it, including some that have been mentioned. Of course for merit scores are often needed, but just saying, that extra point may not mean much. But if this is important to your daughter for some reason, fine.
Seems like differences in both academic and social experiences can be quite significant among smaller schools and LACs. For example, a math major at Williams may find significantly greater offerings than one at Amherst, unless the Amherst student commutes to UMass. The social scenes at Oberlin and Washington & Lee differ considerably including such characteristics as fraternities/sororities and political tendencies of students.
Re: 40% (or some high percentage) of small LAC students playing varsity sports
In such cases, are most of such students recruited as athletes during the admission process, or are there substantial numbers of walk-ons who joing needy teams after enrolling at the schools?
According to the NY Times article, Haverford has deferred or rejected the same number of recruited athletes as it accepts during ED
The NYT article is 10 years old, so it may or may not still be reflective of how Haverford operates.
The article is old, but the number of ED applicants then, is not far off what is reported on the most current CDS. Div 3 athletics hasn’t changed all that much in the past 10 yrs, so much of what is in that article likely rings true today
I’m not math-ey, so I freely admit that I am looking with a novice eye, but what’s the difference here?
Spring 2016 and “Mathematics” search results -
https://www.amherst.edu/course_scheduler?tab=search&result=1 - (that link may not work unless you redo the search).
They have roughly the same # of courses and roughly the same # at each level (W has 3 more at the 400 level). Both have more courses than a single student could take in four years, I believe, even if that student came in and skipped all the 100-level courses.
Like I said, Galois Theory, Stochastic Processes and Ergodic Theory don’t mean anything to me, so I may be missing some really important distinction.
wow, what a great community we have here! I do appreciate why everyone is exhorting my daughter to throw herself into ECs but, as #compmom suggests, we’re not into resume building and her dance card is pretty full.
In addition to the community service project, she’s a seven year veteran of destination imagination ( www.idodi.org ), a collaborative problem solving program. Last year her team finished 4th in the world out of thousands of teams participating in her challenge. Unfortunately, we’ve come to understand colleges don’t respect the program in the way they might a top debate program. Still, she loves it but it’s very time consuming. Throw in school work, her service project, tennis, chinese club, and student human rights council and she’s plenty busy.
someone asked about Wes, her brother was rejected/crushed ED and so she doesn’t want to apply. And I don’t think it’s really the school for her.
A number of people have suggested we make sure we have safeties in the mix and we certainly will. Tulane has been a good safety for our boys and we’re thinking about a visit to kalamazoo when we visit her brother in ann arbor. anyhow, we’ll probably have 3 safeties, 3 matches and 4 reaches. If she gets into a match ea, we may change the mix.
we’ve thought about playing the language card, she’s taken two languages through hs,spanish and chinese, and her teachers throw around the word “prodigy”.Oddly, I was horrible at languages but my dad was a latin scholar. Maybe it’s a generation skipping talent. Anyhow, she’s not really interested in language, so it seems like a dead end.
At the 300/400 level (which is the main concern for someone majoring in the subject), Williams has 10 different math courses offered (1 of which is statistics and 1 of which is theoretical CS, so 8 pure math), while Amherst has 6 different math courses offered (2 of which are statistics, so 4 pure math).
Most different courses offered every semester means more choices of topics to study at the advanced level in one’s major. Many subjects like math, history, biology, etc. have many subareas, so a student at a school with a smaller department may not have the opportunity to sample some potential subareas of interest.
OK, at 300/400 for 2015-16 I see very little difference in the offerings (Amherst actually has one more, or two depending how you treat that last one), but a lot more than 6 and 4?
These are fall and spring of the current academic year, and I removed sections of the same course and duplicates in fall-spring. In other words, these are all the math courses one could be taking right now or next semester. 300+ only.
Williams:
MATH 313 - 01 LEC Introduction to Number Theory (Q) (W)
MATH 341 - 01 LEC Probability (Q)
MATH 350 - 01 LEC Real Analysis (Q)
MATH 355 - 01 LEC Abstract Algebra (Q)
MATH 361 - 01 LEC Theory of Computation (Q)
MATH 372 - 01 LEC Complex Analysis (Q)
MATH 394 - 01 LEC Galois Theory (Q)
MATH 397 - 01 IND Independent Study: Mathematics
MATH 401 - 01 LEC Fnctnl Analysis (Q)
MATH 403 - 01 LEC Measure and Ergodic Theory (Q)
MATH 420 - T1 TUT Analytic Number Theory (Q)
MATH 493 - 01 HON Senior Thesis: Mathematics
MATH 497 - 01 IND Independent Study: Mathematics
MATH 499 - 01 LEC Senior Colloquium
Amherst:
MATH-320-01 Wavelet and Fourier Analysis
MATH-345-01 Functions of a Complex Variable
MATH-350-01 Groups, Rings and Fields
MATH-355-01 Introduction to Analysis
MATH-360-01 Probability
MATH-365-01 Stochastic Processes
MATH-370-01 Theoretical Statistics
MATH-380-01 Set Theory
MATH-390-01 Special Topics<br>
MATH-390-02 Geometric Group Theory<br>
MATH-410-01 Galois Theory
MATH-450-01 Functions of a Real Variable
MATH-490-01 Special Topics (fall)
MATH-490-02 Optimization Models (spring)
MATH-498-01 Senior Departmental Honors<br>
MATH-499-01 Senior Departmental Honors (this is a different semester but also different course #, so I left it).<br>
I really don’t see any difference at all.
Also - apologies to the group for digressing. But I am genuinely curious about how LAC academic departments are compared and what makes one good or not-so-good, other than professor reputation, class sizes or facilities.
@ohmomof2 - I was thinking about this today, how do we differentiate haverford from say swarthmore? based on the tour and info session, they sounded more similar than different. so I started thinking about academic programs, if my daughter wanted to study computer science and the school allowed it,I could spend an hour with each professor and get a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of each program. But my daughter isn’t going to study cs, so how to differentiate? I’d suggest 10 vs 6 courses is interesting but not really predictive of which program is better.
Good question especially with those two! Both Quaker, similarly selective, same area, similar size, presumably similar class sizes and such…possibly one has a better “x” dept than another?
I admit I looked at a lot of web pages when D was looking last year, to get a sense of what was on offer and what different departments were like, any distribution requirements, etc. She is undeclared but has a general idea of her major and career goals…does your D?
BTW an interesting site, if you haven’t seen it, is http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ - you can see how many graduate with a particular major, for instance.
H: http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=haverford&s=all&id=212911
S: http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=swarthmore&s=all&id=216287
It’s easy to find reach schools. Finding matches and safeties is much more difficult. Your D has slightly better stats to mine. My D is applying to 12 colleges. 1 dream school, 6 reaches, 3 matches, 2 safeties. She likes all the schools and will be pleased with any acceptances, but of course would love to get at least one reach. We spent a lot of time researching to find good match and safety schools. I think your daughter should focus on her match schools, because they are a challenge. We have all read too many stories about the excellent female student who has a hard time getting in to any of the highly selective schools, so,she should be prepared for,the possibility.
My white D was unhooked, and got in everyplace she applied, including Swarthmore. But a 2380 super scored SAT, and 800 subject tests in Lit and Math II surely helped. Great test scores do make a difference.
ucbalumnus- I sent you a PM re: Math at Williams
I’d be in the camp that says it’s important, and worth considering. It might not tell you which program is better, but it might tell you which will make your child better prepared. It’s possible that your child could have all better professors at the college with 6 upper level courses than the one with 10, but assuming the professors are essentially equal, the kid in the school with 10 courses to choose from will probably be better prepared when he/she gets out.
Course selection at a lot of the LACs is slim to begin with in a lot of the majors, slimmer would make me wary. On the other hand, if I had good information that the kids absolutely loved their professors at the school with the smaller selection, I’d lean toward that, and try to supplement at affiliated schools, if there are any. Amherst definitely has some, but I have no info on whether it’s convenient. No idea about Williams.