@Driverof3 Any updates on the search/list? You’re right that we did have some overlapping lists. My (non-dancer) D20 has ended up with Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Reed, Bard, Sarah Lawrence and Pitt on her app list. I was also very keen for her to see Conn, Bates, and Clark but she declared the list “closed to new entrants” as of about June. Oh well.
Would Bard and Sarah Lawrence be worth seeing? Strong dance programs at both. They are also liberal, activist student bodies like Smith, but so is Vassar and also Barnard for that matter – maybe just fewer sheets hanging out dorm room windows.
Hi @Itisatruth Thank you for the suggestions! D is definitely liberal in her views and would love to be around others who share them. But I think her social anxiety and personality mean that she would never hang a sheet out of her window that said anything, even if it wasn’t controversial; she does not like a lot of attention drawn to her. I’m sure there are plenty of Smith students who feel exactly the same but being greeted by those sheets as we drove up to campus immediately made her feel really different from the students, and there just wasn’t enough about the campus or our visit experience to overcome her initial impression about how she’d fit in.
A few weeks ago we visited Goucher and Bates for tours and interviews. Neither clicked for her, though she liked Goucher’s proximity to Baltimore and DC. We had a great tour guide at Bates (he was so smart and funny!), and she said that she thought it was a great school (I agreed!) but in the end she didn’t see herself going there. The tour didn’t take us inside very many buildings so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it. Anyway, it’s not making the application list. At this point in the process if her gut check is a no then I’m not going to press hard for reasons.
She loves NYC so Sarah Lawrence has jumped on the list then off again over the last year and a half. Now that studying history too and not solely neuroscience is in play for her (I always suspected that might happen ) it’s back on the possible list. She decided to schedule an interview and tour there in October when she goes to her Barnard interview. I think I should stop researching it and just let her visit and decide for herself because from my reading of old posts on here I get mixed messages about whether it would be a good fit for her. Your daughter has visited and interviewed, is that right? Did she find the students to be friendly? Is there something that stands out to her about the school that she likes?
Her current list of definite applications includes Barnard, Vassar, Skidmore, Dickinson, Macalester, and Ursinus. She’s mainly focused on these schools right now, and I think Muhlenberg and St. Olaf have lost some of their shine. They’re still in her common app dashboard but I can tell she’s not as interested in them anymore. So we’ll wait and see if Sarah Lawrence makes the final list after her visit. Based on the website, I still think Wheaton in Massachusetts could be a good one for her to add but she hasn’t sat down to look at it at all. It seems to have more ballet than Sarah Lawrence.
As for Bard, it was ruled out some time ago but now I don’t remember why. Will have to check my notes and see if she should revisit that decision.
I start getting so nervous for her when I review the stats of last year’s admissions at these different schools. Because of my anxiety about this I keep trying to find and suggest more in the likely category where I think she’d be happy. I feel like her core list has gotten really short!
Are California schools completely off the table? If not entirely, consider visiting the Claremont Schools, specifically Pomona and Scripps, which both have strong dance programs. My D19 just started at Pomona and is taking an Intermediate Ballet class for a PE (and arts) credit (she trained as a child at the School of American Ballet in NYC but hasn’t danced for years). So far she thinks the ballet teacher is wonderful, and says that there are many very talented ballet dancers with some serious training, and I know there are ample performance opportunities for non-majors. BTW, California was pretty much off the table for my D, right up until we visited Pomona “just for fun” when out in L.A. to visit friends–and then it quickly moved to her top-choice school. And Scripps is the women’s college of the 5Cs, more of a match-y/safety-ish for super high-stats women (and they give merit aid!), and it has the same benefits as Barnard as far as a ‘women’s college that’s part of a larger, co-ed system’. So a visit to Claremont can include both a reach and match tour in one. Also, as far as dance classes go, it’s sort of a two-fer because you can take dance classes at both Scripps and Pomona (5C students can take classes at any of other schools–and unlike some of the other consortiums, these schools are all contiguous–you walk across a street and you’re suddenly on a different campus.).
@OrangeBlossomMom Congratulations to your daughter! A good friend of mine went to Pomona and loved it so much. Great school! Glad to hear she likes the teacher; sounds like she’s enjoying the start of her year!
Thank you for the suggestions! I’d looked at the ballet there a few years ago and thought Scripps might be a contender. California was always off the table for her once she got serious about her search, and we’ve visited LA a few times without her showing any interest in seeing any schools, but recently she’s softened a bit on that after spending a few weeks there this summer. Not enough to actively research schools but she definitely hesitated when i asked her if she still wanted to go to school somewhere cold and snowy. So maybe it’s worth another look. With Nutcracker rehearsals and her school schedule this fall, though, I’m not sure fitting in a visit is feasible. She said today that she’s pretty happy with her list; I think I’m the one who is more nervous about whether she’ll have more than one acceptance. I’ve told her the process is hers but I fear I’m seeing all the potential disappointment and having a hard time letting her be completely in charge as her list gets smaller. I wish she had a rolling admissions school that she liked so that she could have an acceptance in hand soon. But I digress.
Anyway, thanks again and best wishes to your daughter!
I just wanted to add that I’d probably feel better about her most likely school of Ursinus if she had visited when students were on campus. She liked the campus and she liked what she learned about the programs plus she’d be guaranteed at least 35K a year with the Gateway scholarship (and possibly more if she got a dance scholarship). I just wish she could have sat in on a class or met students other than the tour guide and the admissions intern. But the timing of our visit just didn’t allow for that.
She doesn’t have a safety. Yes, with her stats , St Olaf and Muhlenberg are likely. But likely does not mean safety, and these small schools can sniff out someone not so enthusiastic because I can’t for the life of me figure out why some high stats women were turned down from certain LACs when accepted by more selective ones .
In fact, I get the feeling sometimes that having that higher test score targets you for a bit more scrutiny on the demonstrated interest.
If There were any Early Action or rolling decision schools on the list, I’d feel a lot better. Waiting till spring for all your “birds”to come in, is always chancey. Any school becomes a safety once an acceptance is in hand.
My personal opinion is to appply to Barnard ED and add Wheaton or Sarah Lawrence EA as an early safeties. That is, if she’d have no regrets ending the process with Barnard if accepted.
Thank you, @Driverof3! Best of luck to you! My daughter found that coming up with actual “safeties” (much less safeties at which she’d be happy!) was pretty much the near impossible part of the whole process.
Oh gosh I really thought Ursinus was a safety for her but maybe I’m wrong about that. The average unweighted GPA is a 3.3 and hers is a bit above a 3.8. She interviewed there and her stats qualify her for an automatic scholarship. Acceptance rate is almost 80%. She’ll apply there EA. Am I missing something @cptofthehouse ? I just meant that I’d feel better about knowing if her safety was truly a good fit for her if there had been students there when we’d visited. If it’s not a safety then I’m not sure what else we should be looking at. She’s interviewing with St. Olaf next week when their admissions rep comes to town. I think she’s just starting to have concerns about the extreme cold of that campus on the hill in Northfield but when we were there in November she had really liked it. She’s interviewed at Skidmore, Dickinson, and Ursinus already and visited those schools twice.
@Driverof3 I would definitely consider Muhlenberg and Ursinus safeties. And I think she’s a likely at Dickinson as well. I may have missed it, but I didn’t see anything about budget. Do you need merit? Also, is Conn on the current list? I think that’d be a good match. Oh, and from what I remember, Ursinus is pretty remote. Is there a good-sized town nearby? Just thinking out loud here.
I like one in the bag by end of the year. Unless it’s got a an auto admit situation. Spring is just too long.
What happens is that an increasingly number of students are applying early these days . Come November or December, they are either done with ED acceptance or at least have state school or other rolling or EA acceptance in hand. They might haughtily say it’s just their safety and they’d rather die than go there, but, trust me, it takes a lot of stress out of this whole thing to know at least one school as officially accepted you.
Yes, I think Ursinus is likely school for our daughter. Many would call it a safety. The last decade , even last 5 years ,I’ve been surprised at turns of events. A school gets “hot” and it runs out if allocated seats. They hire some hot consultant for enrollment management that has some frigging model that can anticipate yield with certain students. You give them all year to play with the cards and you can end up on the wrong side of the odds.
When you apply Early , the colleges have a huge empty room they need to fill. They have no givens. They need to fill thstvroom and tend to be more generous with the accepts. As the room fills up , they get stingier with tgecsrsts left. Model doesn’t always hold UMich is an example where it does not for high stats OOS apps. But for the most part , it still does.
It’s no big deal to just add an EA school to the list. She gets in, she has a sure thing.
@cptofthehouse I agree that having something in hand before end of the year is important. She’ll apply to Ursinus EA, and I think she should know in December but I need to double check their EA notification date. The EA deadline is Nov. 1. It’s her first deadline and she’s planning to have her dance supplement finished by then if not before. If she likes Sarah Lawrence when she goes in October for her interview and tour then she’ll make her app EA there as well. She will likely apply ED to one of her top 3 schools but is just now allowing herself to start to rank them. We had focused so much on finding multiple schools that she liked that she really held off on calling any her favorites until recently.
@taverngirl Ursinus is in a town that’s about 30 miles from Philadelphia and abut 12 miles from King of Prussia where there’s a big mall. We went there to kill time on our visit; it’s really big though not as big as the one in St. Paul. Because of this development not far away the school didn’t feel remote to her the way Bates did. I imagine that traffic makes the trip to Philadelphia more like 45 min to an hour but it’s an option to go for visits. I don’t think there’s much to Collegeville compared to the downtown of Carlisle or Saratoga Springs but there’s a newer shopping area nearby with a Panera Bread and, important to her, there’s a Target about 8 min away, so it felt more like where we live even if that’s not really accurate (suburb of Houston).
Conn is still on “a” list but hasn’t yet made it to “the” list because we didn’t get to visit, and I’m not sure we will before application deadline. I’ll have to see how late they conduct interviews to see if we can visit after Nutcracker and finals in December, though that wouldn’t really help her know if it’s a good fit for vibe. We are full pay and have savings/funds to cover full pay at all of these schools.
Thank you to everyone for the input! I haven’t listed all of her activities and accomplishments here so I don’t expect a true assessment of whether she’s likely to be admitted to these schools. Originally I just wanted to know if we were missing some we hadn’t yet considered. And some of the schools show the dance supplement to faculty for evaluation and feedback and others don’t, so that’s been a consideration for us as well. For those that do I think it will help her. That was why I’d hoped she would like Bates because they specifically say that a favorable rating from the dance faculty can help with admissions but she just wasn’t feeling it. If ED to her first choice doesn’t go well then we may add some schools to the list beyond her current one so I do appreciate the suggestions. And I’ll update after her Sarah Lawrence visit/interview in late October.
Some mentioned Park Pointe. https://www.pointpark.edu/academics/schools/copa/copadeptsmajors/dance/index
This is more for students that want a BFA or BA in dance. It’s very competitive and some of the best dancers try to get into this program… FYI.
I really like St. Olaf and Muhlenberg for your daughter even though you might of ruled them out. Sara Lawrence is interesting but very liberal. Look at how they teach their academics and see if this jives with what you want.
Since you mentioned New York check out https://www.mmm.edu/academics/majors-minors.php
This seems to have your daughter’s interests with an extremely great dance program. I just don’t know if she can minor or just take classes. But I would find out.
It should be expected that “overqualified” applicants get scrutinized more for level of interest at colleges that care about it, since the strongest admits tend to have the lowest yield rates – most admitted students tend to favor the more selective colleges that they are admitted to, if cost does not prevent them from taking that choice.
… with sufficient financial aid and/or scholarships, if necessary. Admission to a college that is too expensive is equivalent to rejection from that college.
@ucbalumnus Yes that is something I’ve learned from this site, which is why we made sure to visit Ursinus in the spring, click on every single email, and return in August for an interview where she talked about how much she liked the school, which was genuine. They seemed appreciative that she would travel from Texas again for an interview. She’ll do the optional Why Ursinus essay and have plenty to say. I hope that will be sufficient to show her very real interest and satisfy their scrutiny.
@Knowsstuff She hasn’t ruled out St. Olaf and Muhlenberg, she’s just more excited about Skidmore and Dickinson and even Ursinus. She has reasons for her preferences. She’s still applying to both, and is still interviewing with St. Olaf next week. If she doesn’t get accepted to her ED school and wants to pursue the dance scholarship at Muhlenberg then she’ll go in Feb to their audition. She can’t attend in October or Nov. I’m trying to encourage her not to rank the other schools (other than for ED purposes) until she has acceptances. I think that will take care of some of her recent lack of enthusiasm. When I said they’d lost their shine I just meant that she wasn’t as enthusiastic about them as she had been when we visited. But they’re still on her list. I’m not convinced that Sarah Lawrence is a good fit for her based on some things I’ve read but that’s why she’ll go visit and interview when she goes for her Barnard interview in October. Hopefully she can get enough of a feel for it to know if it could be a place she’d be happy. I’ve looked at MMM in the past but moved on, though can’t remember why now. Will check again. Thank you!
MMM is where the dancers I treat go or have on their list for dance from Chicago.
Ursinus is a nice school.
Kids get hot and cold on schools for the littlest things. Make sure her reasoning makes sense to you also. It does get a bit overwhelming for them. The schools you have also have really good support services if you need them. St. Olafs are really good.
) it’s back on the possible list. She decided to schedule an interview and tour there in October when she goes to her Barnard interview. I think I should stop researching it and just let her visit and decide for herself because from my reading of old posts on here I get mixed messages about whether it would be a good fit for her. Your daughter has visited and interviewed, is that right? Did she find the students to be friendly? Is there something that stands out to her about the school that she likes?