D’s stats are 4.0, 5/240 class rank, 30 ACT, 31 superscored, and strong ec’s, including a state championship and all=state designation as an athlete. Recruited by lots of D3 schools for her sport, but does not want to play D1. She’s willing to give up competing if her best choice academically is a D1.
She doesn’t want to go further than Ohio to the east, or IN to the south, MN is pushing it to the west, but she’s considering Mac. Very strong writer - hopes to do it for a living in some capacity.
Planning to apply next fall the three schools listed in the title, and Northwestern, though that’s probably a huge stretch.
Any insights on this group, and/or pros and cons of each?
Many thanks, just registered here!
Location: Kenyon is lovely, reportedly great for writing, but quite isolated. I’d think one would love it or hate it. Macalester is in a city.
thanks for the insight…the locations really are so different! Both advantageous in their own ways I suppose.
For writing, Kenyon is among the best in the country, and smaller colleges such as Mac would offer better writing instruction (smaller classes, more feedback, etc.) Macalester is located in one of the greatest urban neighborhoods I know and the Twin Cities are great for culture and internships. Kenyon’s campus is bucolic and “picture perfect”. She could consider Denison and St Olaf, plus Dickinson if she can relax her geographical criteria a bit.
Three great schools, but all very different. Has she visited any yet? Kenyon has a great prospective science student day that we attended last summer. Lots of great tips were offered for applying. Getting in has become much more difficult the past few years, so make a couple of visits, schedule an interview, etc if she is serious.
She’s visited all three. Mac and Kenyon would offer the additional benefit of her sport, which she’s come to love. Michigan is, well, Michigan. It’s a fantastic school in a fantastic place. But it’s large, and sometimes impersonal. Some of the advantages of large aren’t the things she loves - football Saturdays, etc. Kenyon was idylic, except it felt like it could get to be redundant. Same 2 or 3 places to eat your meals for four years, and no real town to ever be away from school. Mac seems just about perfect, except that it’s not as strong as Kenyon for writing. Any comments on those observations?
My son’s school has two boys going to Kenyon in the fall. They are both swimmers.
You should discount the importance of attractions off campus because students don’t actually get off campus much. If they have the opportunity, that means they aren’t really working that hard. If she is an athlete, there is even less time. She will be doing some traveling, correct? As for meals, student ratings for Kenyon’s food on College Niche is a B+. These ratings are pretty close to third party ratings I have seen for other schools, so they should be accurate for Kenyon. Do you really want your child eating off campus? I don’t because the food will be less healthy and just added expense.
FWIW - my D’s good friend goes to Kenyon (rising Junior) and loves it. She is one of those people who was super involved in HS and I believe she has continued that in College. She is a Chemistry major and pre-med, does research, quite social, plays an instrument, takes theatre classes, etc. She tells D that students do go to Columbus (about 30 min away) quite a bit as well as to whatever the nearest town of a decent size is (can’t remember the name) to eat, shop, etc. She doesn’t have a car but lots of students do. The one negative she has found is that despite what the marketing materials indicate, she has found the college to be not very encouraging of science majors going abroad. Lots and lots of hoops to jump through and administratively so challenging that she ended up looking at summer opportunities instead. It really just depends on what kind of environment your D would like. My own D found Kenyon too small and too rural (she ended up at a College with 3,500 students with a slightly bigger small town and loves it).
There’s a big difference between “not as strong for writing” and “not strong enough for writing.” Rankings of that sort can be irrelevant for a single individual whose experience will be defined by specific course choices. If she can get what she wants/needs at one school, there’s no reason to pick another because it’s theoretically “stronger” in a subject … unless the difference is going to be truly significant/relevant for their individual experience.
kenyon has s superb writing program and is very strong in some sports, swimming for example. The nearest town is about 8 miles if I remember. In the last few years Kenyon has gotten much more selective. I think the admit rate this year was 23 percent. D was accepted this year, they give good merit aid to top students
My D had a similar choice between UM, IU and Lawrence U. She chose LU and is super happy there. She wanted closer interaction with professors from the get go and smaller classes. She has gotten to know several of her profs very well and landed a summer research position with one of her profs for this coming summer (just finished her freshman year). She also wanted to continue her sport and has found that to be one of the most rewarding experiences of her 1st year. Many of her close friends are also on the team and they spend a lot of time together. My S is at UM and will be graduating next fall. UM is a wonderful school and the town of AA is amazing. Both my S and D have had the opportunity to take advantage of the towns they live in despite being very busy with their school work, it is an added dimension to the experience. In my D’s case various college groups she belongs to will have occasional off campus events at interesting venues and she got to see a traveling Broadway show off campus this winter. The downtown area is contiguous to campus and the students enjoy occasional meals at less expensive off campus restaurants just for a change. Plus since she is staying for the summer and will have a little more down time it is an added bonus to have an interesting town to explore close by. My S has picked up various jobs in his last 2 years and has taken advantage of a lot of what AA has to offer on his own dime. UM and AA have an amazing array of cultural opportunities such as various music performances, if your D would likely take advantage of that while in college it is definitely worth a very close look. I would think your D’s first choice is LAC vs. UM as these are very different choices, both worthy and with pros and cons of each then Mac vs. Kenyon if she chooses LAC.
I hope that she is planning to apply to more than four colleges, especially since all of these are very competitive (with an ACT of 31, she almost certainly will not get into all of them). For such competitive schools, it is best to apply to at least seven colleges. Need at least one true safety, and none of these are close to being a safety.
Kenyon is almost twice as hard to get into as Macalester. Kenyon’s admissions rate is about 23% compared to about 39% for Macalester.
Thank you all for your valuable insight! You’ve given us some things to talk to her about. It’s good to have an array of nice choices, for sure!
Cellomom2, I wonder if you feel like D or S’s experience was better in terms of actual education? I know it’s very amorphous, but you have a direct contrast in settings to see in your kids’ experience, so I wonder if you have a feeling one way or the other. Or, maybe it’s a wash and there is no feeling one way or the other…
mkwc, it’s hard to answer who is getting a better education as there are many variables. My S is close to the end of his college journey and my D is just beginning. My S is getting a dual degree at UM in music performance and math. Being a student in the SOM gives him the experience of a small school within a larger school. His music education has been fabulous- it is a wonderful and unique experience. He has developed very close relationships with his professors from day 1 especially his private lesson teacher. For his math degree I would say that he did not really start making close connections until his jr. year and it has generally been a more solitary experience. It’s possible that that is colored by his immersion in the SOM, perhaps he would have had a richer academic experience in the school of LSA if he hadn’t been so otherwise involved in music. He is extraordinarily busy and music is his true passion. That being said he has had some great classes in math and the liberal arts and has been very challenged academically.
So far, my D feels very challenged academically and feels that her courses are very rigorous and professors generally excellent and very engaged with the students. She has gotten some opportunities through faculty recommendations that I don’t know that she would have gotten at a larger school in her 1st year. She is a science major so their paths are pretty different.
Thanks, cm2, for taking the time to share your experience. It’s very helpful.
Is Michigan your home state? Sorry if I missed it.
All three are great schools, so it may come down to the soft factors. UM is huge and has a nice college town. How does she feel about that? Size and school spirit and Greek life? Would she be lost or able to find a niche for herself? (I have a kid at a Big State U who I worried about and he did fine precisely because he quickly found a homey little corner. He does have issues with getting all the classes he wants when he wants them, however.) Kenyon is tiny and in the middle of nowhere. That would be appealing to some people, however, the isolation. Would she be recruited for her sport there? And would she want to play in college? Mac is in the city, so it has that urban vibe, but is also its own little oasis. Could she play her sport there?
I have visited only Mac of the three. I loved the energy and the diversity I saw there, plus the Midwestern friendliness. The day I visited, it felt as lively and vibrant as my other S’s Big School.
There is an African-American writer at Mac who is getting a lot of press these days…I will have to go look up his name. He was in the NYT earlier this year. I don’t know how the writing program is overall.
Marlon James. And he is Jamaican. Just one guy, but maybe the buzz is good for the program?
Thanks a bunch, Lizardly. I think there is a buzz at Mac, but not a chorus, like there is for Kenyon’s writing program. I agree about the feel of Mac. It’s special, and is about the entire world and doing good however you can. Kenyon is special in its own way, too. It felt like it is about excellence, in every form possible. It is a polished, magical place. Michigan’s largess and those advantages don’t play out much for her - won’t be a Greek, isn’t into football, and is more introverted. Finding a niche, when her niche is her sport, could be a challenge. But, it’s still UofM and it’s still AA, and as Michigan residents, there’s that allure. Anything you want to do, you’ll find there, which is pretty neat. And yes, she would play at both Mac and Kenyon, and both coaching staffs have been amazing to us during the process. She’d likely have a whole lot of fun doing so, too.
Kenyon is becoming quite hard to get into for white girls. Will you need financial aid? ED may be a good option if you don’t.
Kenyon has a low acceptance rate with a 28-32 ACT range (same as many schools with significantly higher acceptance rates) so they are quite yield sensitive and open about it. Visit if you can and absolutely request an interview.
Michigan is a large university, but has the resources to make it a fairly personal experience. The Creative Writing department is very small (15 students per year), but its faculty is relatively large (12-13 professors) and accomplished. As such, Creative Writing majors tend to have a LACish experience at Michigan with regards to class size and access to faculty.
The program recently received a $50 million donation from a wealthy alumna. Although that gift is dedicated entirely to the MFA program, it helps support other aspects of the program that undergraduate students benefit from.
A natural fit for Creative Writing majors is the Residential College, which resembles a LAC within the larger University.