Hi! To whoever is reading this I hope you’re well! I’m looking for a college that meets the following criteria: diverse student body, interesting traditions, (not as important) a scenic campus, & above all else excellent academics. Some schools I’ve been looking into are the University of Chicago, Washington University in St. Louis, Rhodes College, Agnes Scott, & the University of the South (Sewanee). I live in a small rural southern town. However, contrary to the stereotype my family’s politics lean (if not completely) left lol.
Here are my Stats/ Extracurriculars
1480 SAT
4.2 weighted gpa (5 AP’s)
Student Volunteer for the Tubman Museum
Intern for the local children’s art & science museum
3 years of classical voice (opera)
SCAD summer scholarship (3rd place nationally)
Governors Honors Program '58
I’m open to any suggestions!! Although, my parents would prefer me to stay in the south (no more north than D.C)
Are you a URM? Do you have any financial constraints?
You need to look at Section C7 and Sections C9-C11 of the Common Data Sets for the schools in which you are interested; the information in Sections C9-C11 for matriculated students may help you focus in on likely schools for admission.
With respect to your desired criteria (and not considering any potential financial constraints), UNC-Chapel Hill meets most if not all of them; but if you are an OOS applicant with no hooks or an alumnus as a parent, you are unlikely to be admitted there. Guilford College meets some of your criteria; Oglethorpe University should merit a look as well.
Indiana University, Vanderbilt University, Curtis Institute of Music, University of South Carolina Honors, &, since you are considering the Univ.of Chicago, Northwestern University (School of Music).
P.S. I assume that you plan to continue with opera during college.
The voice faculty are all classically train opera vocalists. The voice dept frequently collaborates with the Santa Fe Opera and UNM students often intern there during the summer in both performing and non-performing roles.
UNM has a cognitive science program and the Mind Research Network (MRN) is doing some really interesting stuff. https://www.mrn.org
You’d qualify for guaranteed merit aid at UNM, bringing your cost down to $20K/year.
I was going to say Richmond, which has great performing arts opportunities for non-majors. Look into their talent scholarships for music - you have to commit to a music minor for those, I believe, but not a major.
If you’re willing to head to snow country for UChicago, it could be worth checking out St. Olaf as well, which is excellent for both sciences and vocal performance.
Sewanee does seem like a good fit for your criteria, if their Neuroscience major is close enough to what you’re looking for. (Some CogSci majors are more computational or lean more heavily toward psych/linguistics/philosophy vs. the lab science-y side; it depends what focus you want.)
If you want a computation-heavy CogSci major with top-tier vocal training available for those who qualify, look into Carnegie Mellon.
William and Mary is worth a look as well (another school that doesn’t have a CogSci major but does have Neuroscience Undergraduate Program | William & Mary ) Sadly, the professor who ran their Opera Workshop passed away recently, so you’d have to look into whether they’ve got someone in the pipeline to ramp that back up post-pandemic.
Oberlin seems like the school that is missing from this list. Maybe it’s too far north?
Also a school whose music opportunities are underappreciated but superb, has great academics including cognitive science, and has general overall excellence is Rice.
Rice is a terrific school, with a brilliantly-designed undergraduate experience. My daughter who majored in CogSci there says that if she had it to do over again, she would not choose the CogSci major. There is not an actual CogSci department - just a major that’s assembled from courses in other departments. So the CogSci students aren’t anybody’s first priority, in terms of advising and mentoring, and there’s no real “center” to the major. (There’s a Neuroscience major now as well, which was only launched in, I think, 2018.) The other downside is that the music conservatory is very self-contained and not super accessible to non-majors. There are some large ensembles for non-majors to join (although multiple students I know who intended to join them never did, because they tended to conflict with other commitments), but the higher-level stuff tends to be for Shepherd students only. So, Rice may or may not be as good a fit as it appears. Not mention that it would be a big reach, albeit less so than UChicago.
In the “southern reach schools with great music” category, Vanderbilt is another to look at. Vandy has both Cognitive Studies and Neuroscience majors, and you can dual-major or minor in music at Blair (which you can’t at Shepherd).