<p>I do not believe Grinnell offers a great deal of merit scholarships. To the best of my recollection, the majority of aid is need based. You may want to double check this.</p>
<p>“A relative very recently had a bad experience at Union – just not a very academic place. She transferred to one of the small, private universities mentioned in this thread, and is much, much happier.”</p>
<p>That doesn’t surprise me. It’s a huge drinking and frat school. If that isn’t your thing it’s not a good school for you. </p>
<p>The kids who do go there do seem to be able to party and study but if ^that isn’t anything you would be into I agree.</p>
<p>My Swarthmore daughter applied to Dickinson as a “drop-dead safety”. I can’t really say much about it except that she needed a drop-dead safety and they were aggressive in promoting a full-tuition merit aid deal. </p>
<p>To be perfectly honest, I feel like a northeasterner who looks beyond the usual northeast choices should have matches that produce plenty of acceptance letters. My daughter was accepted ED at Swarthmore and, therefore, we never got to test the theory. But, I would have been shocked if she had not gotten at least three acceptance letters from Emory, Davidson, Vanderbilt, and Wake Forest. I believe that the midwestern LACs (Grinnell, Carleton, Oberlin, etc.) can provide similarly attractive odds for a legitimate Swarthmore-level candidate. And, for a female applicant, the women’s colleges are a terrific admissions-value.</p>
<p>The mistake people make is picking their safer “matches” from the ranks of northeastern schools where admissions rates are impacted by the highly desired northeast location. Thus, schools that might be matches (Wesleyan, Vassar, etc.) aren’t really great sure-bets even though they may be enrolling comparable students to Davidson and Grinnell. These are not good “admissions values” and, therefore, make poor “safe match” options. Think “reverse commute”. When you get on a crowded freeway, you want to be driving in the opposite direction, against the flow of rush hour traffic. Use less desireable geography as a way to provide a sure-bet.</p>
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<p>One other note: As you read the “trainwreck rejection” threads, keep in mind that a lot of these applications probably weren’t that good. There are many kids with 2300 SATs who have **no prayer **of admission to the very top schools. At these top schools, you need to be able to identify something (beside test scores) that makes an application stand out.</p>
<p>“One other note: As you read the “trainwreck rejection” threads, keep in mind that a lot of these applications probably weren’t that good. There are many kids with 2300 SATs who have no prayer of admission to the very top schools. At these top schools, you need to be able to identify something (beside test scores) that makes an application stand out.”</p>
<p>I read through the Columbia thread and honestly I don’t know what 3/4 of the kids were thinking by applying to Columbia. Whomever is advising them has done a terrible job, imo. </p>
<p>My son has stats similar to many who applied and got denied and Ivy or the small Ivy’s (williams, amherst, middlebury, etc…) weren’t even on our radar. </p>
<p>JMHO.</p>
<p>Just a note about Davidson, D’s BFF with 2300+ SAT and top 10 in her large class and and at Amherst rejected from Davidson. It is, like Swat, Williams, and Amherst, not a safety or a match for anyone. Don’t be fooled by average SAT’s at these elite LACs. Those with hooks, especially athletics, bring the scores down. Also, merit aid at Oberlin, and I suspect Grinnell as well, seems somewhat random though I agree with ID that odds of admission are probably pretty good for the Swat level candidate.</p>
<p>I second Grinnell if merit aid is important.</p>
<p>The Columbia ED thread is perhaps the worst one to read because a lot of people – especially in our generation – tend to think of Columbia as simply one of the “other” Ivy League schools (that is, an Ivy other than Harvard, Yale, or Princeton). In actuality, though, it has become as selective as those three and more selective than the other schools in the Ivy League (Brown, Penn, Dartmouth, and Cornell).</p>
<p>If you look at some of the ED threads for other colleges, I think you will find results more in line with your expectations for those colleges. But there is still a certain seeming capriciousness to the process.</p>
<p>The idea of applying to schools outside of your home geographic area is a good one. If you read through old threads, you will discover, for example, that it seems to be easier for a Chicago-area kid to get into Georgetown than Northwestern, while a DC-area kid tends to have the opposite experience. A lot of schools like some geographic variety in their classes. And it’s only a two-hour flight from DC to Chicago.</p>
<p>Grinnell: Apart from merit aid (which it has), the need-based aid policies are very favorable. And the base cost is about 10% lower than the competition, even after you adjust for the fact that travelling to the middle of nowhere is more expensive than travelling to the outer reaches of somewhere. </p>
<p>So if what you care about is cost, rather than having your ego stroked, attending Grinnell without any aid is equivalent to many colleges’ merit packages.</p>
<p>Can you give us an idea of the colleges on your son’s current list – so we can suggest safeties that are similar to those schools? (knowing where he wants to go will help us get a sense of what he’s looking for.)</p>
<p>Vassar should be a safety for your son. If it was your daughter, it wouldn’t be a safety.</p>
<p>The perfect safety school has EA admissions and offers merit scholarships. In the Pacific NW, that’s Whitman and Lewis&Clark; in the NE, not sure, but perhaps Union?</p>
<p>My oldest son’s friend, who is Filipino, first generation, had an excellent experience at Davidson. They gave him a nice scholarship, too, and his scores were not as good as your son’s; his GPA was very good, and he is an outstanding kid for many reasons. At the time of his application, 2005, they seemed to be actively seeking Asian kids.</p>
<p>“Can you give us an idea of the colleges on your son’s current list?”</p>
<p>Princeton
Stanford
Swarthmore
Dartmouth
Chicago
and few other similar schools.</p>
<p>Whatis the supposed safety?</p>
<p>His safety is the state university where he has 99.9% chance of getting in.
BUT, he is not a big fan of his safety. He prefers medium to smaller size schools.</p>
<p>Did he apply to Chicago or Stanford EA?</p>
<p>No Early Action.
His essays were not ready. GRRRRRRRRRRR</p>
<p>Rochester doesn’t seem to reject top kids, but they do like to see an interview. </p>
<p>Lawrence and Kalamazoo should be in the shoo-in no brainer safety column. For Lawrence, the upper end of the SAT range is very high but the admissions rate is too. </p>
<p>Rochester has a Jan 1 deadline, so you need to get the transcripts and recs and test scores out now. </p>
<p>Lawrence has a Jan 15 and Kalamazoo has a Feb 1 deadline, you have a bit more time. </p>
<p>No point in writing the actual application to these schools until you have an actual decision though.</p>
<p>I think the schools with low admit rates like Carleton, Grinnell, Oberlin, etc even though they would be great schools, cannot be safeties because they consider level of interest and review the applications very holistically. There is a good chance that your son will get into one of the schools on his list, so I think what you need is a safety or two that lets you all sleep at night until April. The ones I mentioned above have pretty high admit rates, so it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t take your son when they take so many other applicants. I believe in two safeties so that should disaster strike, he still has a choice to make in April and gets to disappoint one of the two safeties. </p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>A very helpful discussion of the importance of well-chosen safeties is an old thread from several years ago, called something like, “We’re picking up the pieces, but what went wrong?”. Might be relevant to consider in this context.</p>
<p>Is your son actually interested in LACs? They really are very different from big urban unis which is what’s on his list. </p>
<p>I am thinking he might be able to get merit at some urban unis like Hopkins (not a safety but a good match), GW even NYU and BU-- all big urban unis that give merit.</p>