<p>RPI and WPI are both good safeties. They are located in residential neighborhoods in small somewhat rundown cities. Girls almost certainly have an extra edge. She's got a good chance at merit money at both schools. (Our son was offered $10,000/year at RPI and $15,000 at WPI.) We have a friend whose daughter is studying biology and ecology at RPI. They have upped her merit aid at least once that I know of. WPI has straight biology and bioengineering. It's also part of a five college consortium so you can take classes at other colleges in town. They both have field hockey.</p>
<p>I'm not voting for these particular colleges as safeties. I just know them best because they were my son's safeties. :)</p>
<p>It is daunting whittling down a list like that--good luck to you. Have some good campus visits this summer. She should send those postcards back to U of Chicago to show interest.</p>
<p>POIH, Chicago does not have an engineering program and their CS dept. is heavily theory-based. A perfect match for my son, but not what it sounds like your D wants. S applied to Chicago, MIT and Caltech EA -- got into Chicago and MIT, and was deferred, then waitlisted at Caltech. He did not like Stanford enough to apply SCEA and limit his options, and once he had two EA acceptances from his favorites, he decided not to pursue his app at Stanford. </p>
<p>Agree with UMich as a great early-notification school. UMD (also a public school -- so if she won't go public OOS, why is it on the list??) has Priority Decision (Part 1 of app by 11/1, Part 2 by 12/1), but you hear results in mid-Feb., and merit $$$ interviews are in mid-March.</p>
<p>D needs to spend some quality time on school websites figuring out what is a good fit for HER. (WashU is not a match school given the current environment. Too many kids applying.)</p>
<p>What constitutes a match/reach/safety these days MUST take into account the number of students applying vs. number admitted. S was over 75th %tile at every school he applied to and had several major national hooks, but did not get into a couple of places that ten months ago, even Dave Barry of CC considered a slam dunk. (One of them had sent him a personal recruitment letter based on one of those hooks last fall.) Ultimately, he wound up with exactly the schools he wanted, but there are no sure bets.</p>
<p>If lots of students from your D's school (and I recall from prior posts that it is an excellent place) were shut out except for their safeties, that is a warning you and your D should heed.</p>
<p>^^^: To put things in perspective my D has opinion that she would like to be "Literate than Educated" so to her the solely tech schools are not good place to get literate and so the big public places.
She would choose Harvard over MIT for engineering; Yale over Cornell; Columbia over UCB EECS.
So keeping this trend she wanted to make her CC understand that she might be happy at U of chicago or Georgetown than at a tech school.
But it seems that is not going anywhere. We are trying not to intervene at this point.
I might sound very agressive involved parent but it is limited to this site only. At my D school we are the coolest parent those who have full faith in their daughter and CC.
Coming back to the question.
My D will be comfortable at schools that has more breadth of courses available with better mix of student body i.e at least 45% girls.</p>
<p>Having been through the process several time, I would say that any GC that considers WashU, Emory or Rice to be a match - should get into a new line of work.</p>
<p>So if these are also reaches then what is a match? We thought Northwestern, Duke, JHU (other than Biomedical), U of Chicago and Gerogetown are all matches.
This is becoming very frustrating. Since Early Action results won't be out till Mid December there might not be sufficient time to apply to too many colleges after that.</p>
<p>This was my D plan prior to recieving the list
1. Oct - Apply EA to MIT, Caltech, U of Chicago
2. Nov - Apply to UCs (UCB, UCLA, UCSD) but will include UCD, UCI, UCSB also
3. Nov/Dec - Apply to Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Princeton
4. If get into MIT, Caltech don't apply anymore.
5. If get into U of Chicago apply to Brown, Columbia, Cornell, U Penn, NW, Duke, JHU
6. if not get into any EA then she haven't thought.</p>
<p>But now after this I've told my D to think about step 6.
So I need a list of good colleges that matches my D criteria and have early Action or rolling admission and will allow us to cut down her applications to colleges in December.</p>
<p>Aaaaargh - teenagers. So many opinions based on so little information. Many "tech" schools offer every bit as good a liberal arts program as the Ivies. An engineering major eats up a lot of class time anywhere. For the rest of her classes, she will have absolutely no trouble becoming "literate" at any of the schools she mentioned.</p>
<p>^^^: I think she need to start visiting the schools; She looks at us and our friends to make up these opinions.
I went to a pure tech school for undergrad and to a comprehensive university with a great tech school for post graduation. My wife went to the comprehensive university for her both undergrad and graduate education.
So my exposure to literature/humanity is next to nothing and so do most of my friends. We all are great techies but that is all. We just cann't talk about great literature. Our discussions tend to be about stocks, computers and to some extent sports. We don't talk about emotional issues like Dafur, or inner city problems.
That is why we also support her in her quench for balanced knowledge and was the primary reason to send her to this prep school. Our public school is great and make it to US news top 100 but again is very focused on making well educated student over well literate.</p>
<p>Just cross-posted with you. I'm assuming that you're in Calif. and that her grades/test scores are high enough that she is confident about getting into a UC (you could add UCSC to that list also - it's only one more click of the mouse and another $60 on your credit card). If she doesn't get into MIT or CalTech early she should apply to her long list of other schools, whether or not she gets into U of C. My daughter did something similar. She let her GC and recommenders know well in advance that she might be coming to them on Dec. 15 with a list of schools (several of them on your daughter's list), but it turned out not to be necessary.</p>
<p>I'd apply to USC. It has a good engineering school, encourages students to explore subjects outside of their majors and offers merit money (including a half tuition scholarship to National Merit Scholars). The deadline to apply and be considered for a merit scholie is usually mid December.</p>
<p>Absolutely start visiting the schools on your list and ask questions about distribution requirements, core curriculum, what other course offerings are available, etc. While it may be possible to avoid literature, philosophy, etc. at some schools, it's there if you want it. Berkeley and MIT (to take two schools on your list that I know something about) have extremely distinguished departments in the humanities and social sciences - as good or better than what you might find at the Ivies.</p>
<p>My #2 child is the opposite of yours. What he liked best about Brown was that he thought that he could get away with taking nothing but science, engineering, and music classes (sorry, kid - the college itself may not have distribution requirements, but the School of Engineering does).</p>
<p>Even my daughter practically ran screaming from the room when we visited Columbia and heard about its core curriculum. It might just be your daughter's cup of tea, however.</p>
<p>I'm really not convinced that in the current college admissions climate that there is anything that can be considered a match. With the number of applications floating around for schools like those the OP considered a match, they have more than enough applicants with "matching" statistics (within, at the upper end or even above the mid-50%) to fill multiple classes. You just can't count on admission to any one. Clearly if you cast a wide net in that pool the odds are that you will be admitted somewhere. But heed the wonderful advice of those who say beware...there have been too many cases of kids being admitted no where, or only to less than ideal safety schools. Again I would caution against the U of C if there is any clear desire for engineering as I think your D would be frustrated by the offerings. As for not considering Michigan because it is a public OOS school, than if the reason is financial, fine, otherwise I'd rethink that. And though her schedule looks reasonable, those applications should be completed BEFORE she finds out about EA applications. It's really hard to concentrate and do your best on applications after you've suffered a big disappointment.</p>
<p>Case might be another school that meets some of her criterion at the match level. Certain is urban, has at least a strong element of liberal students in its student body</p>
<p>^^^: Case i.e Case western reserve U; I think is safety as per her CC and she will be looking into. It also have a combined BS/MD she would apply to.
Is it a good college and does it provide rolling or EA?</p>
<p>MarinMom: Yes, that is the plan but looking at everything being reaches it might fireback now. </p>
<p>So now she would like to still have 1 or 2 safety where she will feel comfortable.
She will also apply to Oxford and Cambridge in October but the results of that also won't be available before December.</p>
<p>Santa Clara University is well regarded in engineering is private and in CA. But with her residency it seems to me that Cal Poly should be on her list. It is regarded as one of the top Eng. schools in the nation. Is there a reason you would choose general prestige over program specific prestige?</p>
<p>historymom: Santa Clara had already invited her as a Engineering student as part of their high school Junior student program. She didn't join as she won't be happy at that school as general university prestige is a big thing over program specific prestige for her.
So will be the case for Cal Poly. She at one point thought of applying to Olin and Harvey Mudd but both seems extremly hard to get in anyway.</p>
<p>marite : She won't be applying for financial aid anyway; so if she doesn't get the NM scholarship then it is not a big thing.</p>
<p>DeniseC : She knows Georgetown doesn't offer engineering but she thinks she might be better of at Georgetown than supposedly at UCD.</p>