Your daughter sounds a lot like mine though we are just beginning the process. A few things to share - 1) My husband and I are both Bates grads and it’s a really great place. I was accepted off of the waiting list and it wasn’t until mid-May to stay on and send things to support your daughter position. They took me for January admission though I wouldn’t recommend that unless she really wants it. 2) We visited Kenyon last weekend for their Junior Visit day and it’s a great place. My daughter had a friend there and we all had dinner in the little town. It is VERY remote but she didn’t seem to mind that. The students were all very friendly and diverse for a small school and the faculty seemed great. 3) My daughter and I loved Dickinson and it’s high on her list. It seemed more “alive” than Kenyon in many ways but it also seemed less intellectual. Depends on what she’s looking for.
Good luck to her - she has great choices!
We have good friends whose son graduated from Kenyon 2 years ago. He majored in economics and was on the swim team. He loved his time there, did an internship with a gov’t agency, and was subsequently offered a job at the same agency before he had even graduated. His parents were very happy overall with everything, too, although they did mention that it was sometimes a bit difficult to coordinate healthcare stuff when he was sick, because he did not have a car.
Coincidentally, their daughter currently attends F&M and is also really enjoying her experience there and being in the small city atmosphere in Lancaster. She has some medical issues and they have been very accommodating. My oldest daughter really liked Dickinson and applied and was accepted with decent merit/need based aid. Carlisle is a lovely little college town. She ended up at the University of Richmond with a big scholarship and is very happy there.
So happy to hear that your daughter has such wonderful choices, and I am enjoying your other thread, too!
Great thread @Lindagaf , I haven’t read the whole thing but have dipped in here and there. We made a number of mistakes with our oldest son and managed to fix them with our middle child. Our d is a rising junior with stats similar to your daughter. Here are some suggestions based on our experience:
- facilitate an ed decision: I know your D wasn't sure enough to apply ED anywhere. We did a lot of facilitation to help my middle S understand why ED may improve probably of acceptance. My S was admitted to oberlin ED with much weaker stats than your D and, point in case for your D, Bates, one of her top two schools, has an ed rate twice as high as their RD rate. IMO there's a decent chance the wait list RD would have turned into an acceptance ED.
- Create a Brand: I hate the word when applied to people, especially kids. But after my first S was through the admission process, we attended a presentation by the former head of admissions for an elite school and he used the term. His notion was not to brand the kids with activities (ie get them involved in activities for which they had no passion but would show well on applications) but to have a consistent message throughout the application which helps differentiate the applicant, typically based on one or two of their passions. We did this with our 2nd, he was accepted everywhere he applied.
- Use a College Consultant: we didn't use a college consultant for our eldest S, instead, we created threads, much like yours, read an awful lot here and other places, but still managed to make all kinds of mistakes. We couldn't afford to pay for private school for our kids but in retrospect, given the size of the investment, expert guidance with a pay-by-the-hour counselor would have been a good investment. By the time we got to S2, we felt we knew enough to go it alone.
In the end, the admission process is completely opaque, I have no idea if these actions would have helped our oldest son but I’m pretty sure at least one of his (many) waitlists would have turned into an admit.
good luck to you and your daughter, she has some fabulous options!
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I asked her 100 times to apply ED to Bates. I am certain she would have been accepted. She wanted options though. I will strongly encourage my son to use the ED card.
^Wait, @quietdesperation, you’re suggesting a College Consultant, based on your experience, but you never used one? :-/
^correct. I have a friend who didn’t use an accountant to file his taxes. based on his experience, he now wishes he did. I should add that my eldest son briefly considered a transfer, we met with a cc for two hours and it helped me come to this conclusion.
I will confess, we had a consultant. She was useful in some ways. TBH, I knew so much that she was mostly confirming what I knew. However, I very much give her credit for pushing my D on both Bates and Kenyon. I think she knew my D would like those colleges. A little concerned that Kenyon might be too preppy. But great programs.
This is smart. If she makes the choice, she is responsible for it. If you or your husband makes or forces the choice, then if she’s not happy, “it’s all your fault.”
If your daughter didn’t want to apply ED because she wasn’t 100% certain, then she made a wise decision. Trust her instincts on that one.
I agree 100% with travelerfromtx , if she wasn’t ready, she made a wise decision. The point of my post is thinking about what we can do to get our kids ready. With my S, it meant quantitative and qualitative ranking of schools, two visits to his top two schools, taking a class at each school, and talking to kids.
On the consultant front, it sounds like you got your money’s worth. You know, when I say we made mistakes with our first son, they weren’t huge mistakes…but someone saying “if he doesn’t want to get waitlisted at emory and wash u, get on a plane and visit.” would have been a big help.
btw, I think rochester was an admit for your d, also for my eldest, we visited and came away very impressed. He decided to go elsewhere but he gave it a serious look.
@quietdesperation , interesting. At one point, my D considered Wash U, but as she already had enough reaches, it didn’t make the list. Her HS guidance counselor said “you have to visit Wash U.”
^that’s funny, our hs guidance counselor gave our S a print out from a college match website, said “good luck” and that’s the last we saw of her. when we spoke to the cc about a potential transfer, she scratched her head and said “it’s hard to understand why he didn’t get into emory. you visited, right?”
Here’s a mistake you didn’t make but I did, my S was admitted EA to u mich, one of his top schools, so we advised him to drop all his safeties and matches that he liked less and replace them with reaches. Dealing with 6 extra waitlists/rejections was no fun for anyone in our household.
I like Rochester a lot! I actually insisted that we revisit after she was admitted. She was being lazy and didn’t want to make the drive, but we did. Now she is having a big internal debate, because she liked it a lot too. No doubt Kenyon is going to make her internal debate into a shouting match:-)
How do you know which schools require/prefer a visit beforehand? I’ve got a 10th grader and he’s our oldest. We’re trying to learn quickly!
If they consider “demonstrated interest” then the visit will be important. How do you know if the school considers demonstrated interest? You have to look up each school’s Common Data Set. Google the name of the school + CDS. Section C7, the last item is “level of applicant’s interest.”
To be honest, I personally would assume that every college considers it at least a little, even if they say they don’t. Schools that admit a very high percentage of the freshman class via early decision will definitely for sure be interested in the student’s demonstrated interest if the student is applying regular decision.
You state flagship will not care at all about demonstrated interest.
It’s too early, IMO to visit with a tenth grader, though others might disagree. You kid will change so much before he applies to college. Colleges my kid liked before application time fell off the list when she actually applied.
I don’t know which colleges really consider a visit important, but for any college you are interested in, check and see if interest is considered in its common data set. Just google X college, common data set. If interest is strongly considered, it will probably not just be in the “considered” column. If interest is in the important or very important column, I think a visit is warranted.
Here is a caveat: unless your child has stats in the upper 50th percent for that college, or is hooked, I probably wouldn’t waste my time visiting. Interest isn’t going to make up for grades or test scores. For top 20 schools, unless your child is in the 80th percentile, I wouldn’t do it either.
Thanks! The level of data is just overwhelming, isn’t it? Maybe because he’s our oldest and because we knew nothing about colleges before, other than the names everyone knows.
We aren’t planning on visiting anywhere just yet, but I saw the comments about the two schools and wondered how you know.
We’re going to be travelling a bit this summer, outside of our normal East Coast range, and might do some drive through visits, but more because we’ll be there than because of any particular interest. We’ll be in Columbus, Ohio and Charlotte, North Carolina, for example.
Think twice, because a campus is nothing without students. We ended up revisiting some after initially visiting in summer.
We have to be there anyway for other things. In our case, it’s important for the kids to see college towns outside of the one we live near.
D and I did a visit in 10th grade, with tour and all, because we happened to be in the area during the school year and weren’t sure we would be again.
I thought it was useful because it motivated D to keep her work up as it was a selective school (and she did apply as a senior to it), and because it gave her a data point to compare others to as a junior/senior on visits. I wouldn’t travel far to do 10th grade visits, but if they are easy to do, I think there’s a benefit.