<p>I am a parent trying to help my D. She is not an URM. She is a 3.5 GPA student. Her 1st attempt at SAT was 2200 ( 690 CR, 780 M, 730 W). She will be a senior this fall and will be applying to the class of 2011. Her EC’s are average. varying from various clubs to chorale to volunteer work. They are not outstanding in relation to the superachievers on this board. </p>
<p>She has not made up her mind about her major ( English to Biology to Anthropology). She is considering schools from Top 50 to LAC. I am quite impressed by CC. Since many posters are between 3.9 to 4.0 GPA, I am wondering which school should the 3.5 GPA students be applying to? We live in Pennsylvania. </p>
<p>Weenie suggested that I post on this forum also. She has given me an additional perspective regarding the financial aspect. I will say that we probably have the funds for a 4 year in state school or 2 years private. Our second is a boy and he will be a freshman in high school this year. So, we have 1 common year of double tuition bills to look forward to in 2010-2011! I am specially hoping that I will get the “money point of view” from the parents. I do not want to stop my child from getting into the best school she can but I do not want her to be saddled with crippling loans either.</p>
<p>I have added a few more schools as per suggestions on the other forum. I would like any help in pruning/adding to this list. Please be brutal with your comments. I want to know the conventional wisdom. The list is in no particular order.</p>
<li>Johns Hopkins </li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>U Of Chicago</li>
<li>Vanderbilt</li>
<li>Emory</li>
<li>CMU</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>U Of MI</li>
<li>Wake Forest</li>
<li>Lehigh</li>
<li>U Of Rochester</li>
<li>NYU</li>
<li>BC</li>
<li>Penn State ( safety?)</li>
<li>GWU </li>
<li>U of Pittsburgh</li>
<li>American University</li>
</ol>
<p>We are seeking to prune the list to about 12 schools and then start the campus visits. All your comments are greatly appreciated. Weenie suggested if I could get Carolyn to respond, that would be great. So Carolyn, if you are reading, please do give the benfit of your wisdom. </p>
<p>along with test scores and GPA there are other things that colleges look for as well. For example, does your daughter have a passion for any activity or extracurricular? If she is able to demonstrate to colleges that she is motivated to do things just because she loves doing them, not because she wants to impress colleges.</p>
<p>She is extremely passionate about helping physically/mentally/socially challenged children. Her volunteer activities are in that area. She would love to do something in the healthcare field to help those children. Even the slightest improvement in their condition really brings joy to her.</p>
<p>suggestion re school to look at – st. mary’s college of maryland – its maryland’s public honors college located in st. mary’s, maryland - about 2 hours from washington, dc.</p>
<p>why i’m suggesting – her stats make it look like this would be a safety or solid match for her; public college price tag for a small lac type honors college; location supposed to be beautiful (but if proximity to a city is important, may not be right for someone)</p>
<p>Has she taken a challenging hs curriculum (honors and AP classes, if available)? If so, the 3.5 is a strong showing. The 2200 is great! Of the schools on your list, I believe she’d qualify for merit aid at Pitt (probably a generous scholarship), Muhlenberg, Denison, and possibly others.</p>
<p>The list does seem a bit top-heavy with schools that are reaches for almost everyone - Cornell, JHU, Chicago, Vassar, Wesleyan, Haverford, Barnard. The schools are very different, as well. Is she looking for a small student body, proximity to a city, anything else that’s of special importance to her?</p>
<p>If she is interested in healthcare field and still wants a liberal arts education, she should consider psychology and biology. Or she could consider early childhood education (Tufts has a good program).<br>
But perhaps the more important consideration, given the financial factor, is to look for schools that give merit aid or are financial safeties. I believe both Penn State and Pitts would qualify.</p>
<p>What is your D’s class rank? Many of the super-reach type schools seem to accept very few that are not in the top 10% of their class, or at least that is how I read the stats.</p>
<p>NJres:
Her class rank will be in the top 20%. I believe there were 40-45 kids tied for 3rd or 4th rank.
frazzled1: She has taken mostly honors or AP courses. Her GPA can be blamed on me. On the other hand, we have noticed a real change in the last 2 semesters. She is extremely focused, diligent and most of our discussions with her have been extremly business like and adult.
Now if only we could get our boy to do that!
Marite: We looked at Tufts. I do not know if she can get in. </p>
<p>Frankly, we have added 4-6 schools to the list based on suggestions from this thread and other thread in college search. We will be in DC area this week. I want her first decide about the size of school, urban/rural/suburban etc so we can narrow down the field and really focus.</p>
<p>Weenie:</p>
<p>I got your PM, Thank you very much for all your help.</p>
<p>I assume you have a sense of your EFC, and you’ll need merit aid or big loans if the school is private? (If you don’t know your EFC you can often calculate it on the school’s financial aid weblink.)</p>
<p>For merit aid, you want schools known for excellent financial aid where your D’s stats will place her in the top 25% of admitted students. Alternatively, you can include state schools you can afford on no merit aid.</p>
<p>I suspect that with your D’s stats-- similar to my D’s stats-- the privates offering merit aid will be schools in the Beloit, Lawrence, Allegheny, Muhlenberg tier. Perhaps a women’s college like Bryn Mawr, Scripps or Mt. Holyoke. Or a school with decent merit aid and lower cost of attendance, like Wells or Grinnell.</p>
<p>Wesleyan and Haverford, and some others on your list, are “need based” schools & will not give ANY merit aid. </p>
<p>Take a look at the old merit aid thread and see what stats were necessary to get the aid. Look up the old threads by Curmudgeon, whose D had very high stats (35 ACT, 4.0, Val) to see where she was awarded aid.</p>
<p>My daughter has similar Stats to yours. 2230 SAT 3.6 GPA at a tough college prep school, National Merit Scholar, with unusual ECs. Last year this time our list looked very similar to yours. We found out the hard way that some of the colleges that used to be a bit easier to get in to, such as Haverford and Tufts, are now extremely competitive. Our friend’s daughter with close to a 4.0 and the toughest classes at their school was waitlisted at Haverford while my daughter was rejected. The safety schools can also be tricky because of admissions folks’ concerns about yield. My daughter’s essays for her reach schools were stellar. Her “why college X” essays for the safeties were very lackadasical. My biggest advice to students like ours is-all your essays need to be killer.</p>
<p>With an uneven effort on the essays my daughter was waitlisted at all her safeties except our state school. She was also accepted at Tulane and Claremont McKenna, both with very generous aid packages. Lots of rejections and lots of disappointment from other slightly less than top tier LACs and Universities. Luckily she fell in love with CMC, but it was a nail biter for our whole family.</p>
<p>If your daughter will consider all girls colleges, they can also be easier to get into with uneven stats. Our niece and a couple of my daughter’s classmates all got into excellent all girls LACs with similar stats to our daughters. I’m personally a fan of both St John’s College campuses,also easier to get into but offering a superb education, but your child has to be willing to follow what is basically a four year core curriculum. Reed College in Portland, OR is also wonderful and not as competitive as some of its peers. Our friend teaches there nd talks about Reedies being somewhat “self selected” because it is a quirky place. It also has one of the highest numbers for alums going on to earn a PHD in their fields.</p>
<p>This has been said many times on these boards but it’s uber important to love your safeties AND go all out on those applications.</p>
<p>List looks good to me. As you’ve noted, need to determine if your daughter wants a big campus or small and urban, suburban or rural. That should help cut down the list.</p>
<p>Regarding helping challenged children…if she wants to do this as an EC in college, and if she won’t have a car, might be better in an urban or suburban campus, where there is access to public transport. As far as having this interest become a profession…many LAC’s will not have a specific major in child development…but will have good psychology and sociology depts…which will prepare her for grad school in the area she is specifically interested in.</p>
<p>My son’s situation was very similar to your D’s. He went through the application cylce the year before last with a 3.6UW and 670M 790V 780W (old SAT II writing) - class rank 13%, good EC’s. He will be starting his 2nd year at U of Chicago this fall. </p>
<p>You D is a valid applicant at any of the schools on her list. However, one a statistical basis, I believe that she is likely to have more trouble at schools with very low admissions rates, or those that need to fill a large # of athletic slots. In these cases, she needs to have something to let her get by the not-so-hot clase rank. As others have mentioned, essays are important, particularly if the app has a wart or two.</p>
<p>I would also suggest peaking at Lawrence, Allegheny and the College of Wooster on the LAC lists. Case and Brandeis would also be appropriate for a list that includes JHU and UChicago. </p>
<p>Good luck to you and your D - and enjoy your college visits together!</p>
<p>mcvik, In your case I think a lot also depends on the reputation of your HS and its relationship to some of the schools on your list. IF yours is a very competitive school which also has little or no grade inflation, the GPA may not be an obstacle other than to the very top places. </p>
<p>Does your school maintain a list of stats for past students, ie GPA and standardized test scores linked to college admission results (the school and whether or not admitted, rejected, deferred or waitlisted). Those can be invaluable to see where kids with similar stats have gone in past years. Some high schools give access to programs like Naviance, which show actual scattergrams of these results, and others just keep these results as a listing sorted out by college. I highly recommend a trip to the guidance office for this! </p>
<p>If your HS does make these stats available, be aware that stats don’t always tell the whole story either. For example, you won’t know who may have had hooks such as legacy, a sport, an underrepresented minority etc. Some places don’t make it easy to get access to this info. Check with the school district administration offices to find out the real policy if you’re told that they don’t give this out.</p>
<p>the only real safeties I see on the list currently are Penn State (apply early!!!) and Muhlenburg. Once she determines the type of school she prefers, i.e. large/small, urban/suburban/rural…she will cut down her list but she may need to come up w/ some more ‘likely admits’.</p>
<p>My daughter (also now at the University of Chicago) and had similar stats/profile applied to Pitt as a safety (knew a lot of kids for whom it was first choice). Pitt has rolling admissions, very numbers-oriented. She was accepted very quickly, and that took some pressure off the rest of the process, since she knew that she could be perfectly happy there (and, for a PA resident, at a lower cost than practically anywhere else). She much preferred Pitt to Penn State, by the way.</p>
<p>Another plug for Bryn Mawr: Not only is it perhaps the most beautiful college anywhere, but it has a first-rate social work school, and therefore a lot of people around with interests similar to your daughter’s.</p>
<p>But be careful with the womens’ colleges. They don’t like being used as safeties, and will reject kids with strong numbers in favor of kids who look more like they really want to go there. (And good on them for that, except they can misjudge what girls want and cause a lot of heartache.)</p>
<p>How about Dickinson in PA?<br>
My S was accepted at Pitt-did an overnight there and liked it very much-but he got into his first choice (Dickinson) and will be going there.</p>
<p>SAT’s are really terrific but only being in the top 20% of her class make many of the schools on your list super reaches if not downright impossible.Second if money is a concern,I’d be focusing on Pitt and Penn State and than applying to schools like Muhlenburg and Dickinson as others have suggested and hoping for some merit money.Several of the schools on your list offer zero or very limited merit money.
IMHO, no kid should borrow a lot of money to finance undergrad school.It just cripples them down the road.
Penn State and Pitt are both real fine institutions and they cost about 25k-30k a year less than many of the schools on your list.</p>