I didn’t realize there was a character limit, so this will be a two part post…
Around this time last year we were in the thick of the college search process. To borrow a term coined by Lindagaf on another thread, my daughter was just your “average” excellent kid. She attended a small private school where she was very involved; took the most rigorous courses, had a 3.8 UW GPA, yet couldn’t break a 29 on the ACT after three attempts. I was somewhat disillusioned for her since many of the posts on CC seemed to focus on the successes of higher stat kids. Because she was three points below the magical 32 cut-off for many large merit awards, I feared that she wouldn’t be competitive to be considered for admission at any of the more selective schools she was interested in, and wouldn’t receive much, if any merit aid. That was until I stumbled upon a thread which gave me some hope. It was titled: “Where did your 30-31 ACT kid get in?” posted by GossamerWings ( http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1763910-where-did-your-30-to-31-act-kid-get-in-p1.html ). So now that we are done with the process (thank God), I decided to start a new thread for others that may find themselves in the midst of the college search process with “average” excellent kids with a 29-30 ACT, that are interested in selective schools and/or large merit awards. Hope others will chime in to share their stories as well.
Background: Unhooked female attending a Catholic school in a large Texas city where she was enrolled in the most demanding curriculum offered (all AP, dual credit or honors) with a 4.1 GPA (3.8 UW), top 15% ranking, and a 29 ACT (31 superscore). EC’s: student government, varsity athlete, various school/religious clubs, National Charity League with 100+ hours of community service every year. Held leadership positions at every level. I feel that her leadership and commitment to service were her best attributes and this was reflected in her resume, essays and recommendations.
Goals: Interested in pursuing Business/pre-med in a medium size school with lots of school spirit/Greek life, ideally located in an urban setting, and of course, merit aid (we ran the calculators and knew that we wouldn’t qualify for any need based aid). Not all the schools that she applied to met all of her/our criteria, but were included for other reasons listed below.
Reach: Notre Dame, USC. We considered these as “Reaches” because they had acceptance rates in the teens, and she fell just outside of the 50th percentile range for test scores. She was a double legacy at USC, but they don’t give much, if any preference for this, as we know double legacy families where their kids got shut out. Notre Dame may not be located in an urban area, but she loved it when she visited, especially the Catholic aspect.
Low reach: BC, UT and TAMU. The last two are our in-state flagships that have excellent Honors programs which would have made them feel smaller. However, we considered them reaches because both schools have an “Auto-admit” policy where 75% of the incoming freshman class is composed of all Texas HS seniors who graduate in the top 8% for UT, and top 10% for TAMU. My daughter was in the top 15%, so she would be a “Review admit,” and would be competing among all the other kids from around the country (and the world) for the remaining slots.
Match: SMU, TCU, and Pepperdine
Safeties: Baylor, Alabama. I hate to refer to these two great institutions as “safeties,” but because of her stats, we were pretty certain she would get in. Alabama was added to the list because of all the hype here on CC, plus guaranteed admittance to the Honors college with half-tuition merit aid with her scores.
She had the opportunity to visit all the campuses except for BC, and she could see herself at any of them except for maybe TAMU, which is a fantastic school but it is located in a rural town and was a little too “Howdy” for her. But at this point, my thinking was: the more options, the better.
As far as merit aid, I didn’t expect anything from our in-state publics (roughly $30K/year COA which we could afford), and not much from Notre Dame or BC because as top tier Catholic institutions, they don’t need to give out merit aid to attract high caliber students. Same can be said for USC; they don’t need to throw money at “average” excellent kids, but I was hoping they would look past my daughter’s test scores and see what other qualities she could bring to the campus.
See next post for rest of the story.