I do like my likelies! I love bard, SLC, and i like marist enough.
1 Like
Boarding school financial aid is not the same as college financial aid. Just because you receive aid at your boarding school doesn’t guarantee you will get college need based aid.
I’m surprised that Wesleyan and Skidmore aren’t on your list of college options. Might I suggest at least reading about them? Conn College is another you might consider.
1 Like
So just to get on the same page in terms of definitions, normally I would define a Likely as a college were the admit rate for your type of student/program is over 50% and your academic profile puts you in the top quartile of students. Alternatively, it can be a college where you qualify for automatic admissions. This is not the same definition that, say, AustenNut used, which does not mean one is right or wrong. But in the framework I sketched where you are replacing one “Safety” with at least two “Likelies”, they need to be VERY likely to serve that purpose.
Given that definition, take Bard. Bard’s acceptance rate has fluctuated, but it has recently been below 50% at least some years. So that is a little concerning for a possible Likely even before looking at credentials.
Then in their 2023-24 CDS, they reported 37.7% of enrolled students had a GPA of 4.0+, and another 21.7% of students had a 3.75+, and their average was 3.7. So normally, I would not score Bard as a Likely for you. It might, however, count as a Target, which I would normally define as over 25% acceptance rate for your type of student/program and you are at least somewhere in the middle 50th for numbers. That would depend on whether Bard is reporting weighted or unweighted and I would perhaps guess weighted, in which case you might have a little under their normal median GPA but would still be in the middle 50th.
OK, but this is just general rules of thumb. Your HS counselor may have data and experience that allows them to do a lot better, and if they are telling you Bard is not just a Target but is actually a Likely, then great!
But again since you asked for outside opinions–in your case, with no additional information to go on other than what you have told us, I would be concerned about treating Bard as a Likely, in the way I would usually define that term.
OK, then Sarah Lawrence typically has a bit over a 50% acceptance rate, which is helpful but I see the same GPA issue. They reported 38% 4.0, 17% 3.75+, average of 3.8.
OK, then you say you “like Marist enough”. That does concern me already because I am not sure what you mean by “enough”. But anyway, 65% acceptance rate (promising), but 32.3% 4.0 and 25.0% 3.75+, average 3.7. Problematic again.
But again, I fully recognize your HS counselor may have a much better idea of your chances at these colleges. I am just telling you how I would normally see them absent such special knowledge.
1 Like
I have all 3 of those in my scoir 
i wrote this list off of the top of my head so there are a few inacurracies
1 Like
I think my school has grade deflation. Our average gpa is a 3.6 and that is weighted and we are very competitive amongst the students, so i think that’s why she thinks i’m in a better position 
buuuuut when i say i like marist enough, i like it i visited im just not super enthusiastic about it u know
Do you have any idea of your class rank (even if your school doesn’t publicize rank?) Does your school share GPA decile info in their school profile? Some colleges will definitely attempt to figure that out, and some counselors do answer certain ‘rank’ type questions in their common app/LoR documents
They don’t but taking into consideration course rigor i’m probably in top 25%
2 Likes
So at the feederish private HS my S24 attended, they used an unweighted 4.33 system, which really made comparisons to reported 4.0 statistics meaningless. Fortunately, we had Scoir data for a variety of colleges, and that could at least sometimes give you a good idea of what sort of GPA/test combination was in the usual competitive range for a college coming out of our HS. And even if the data was sparse for a given college, you could maybe look at similar colleges and get some idea.
Anyway, I am pointing all this out because typically your sort of HS should in fact have the sorts of information it needs to help you figure out what sorts of GPAs the successful applicants from your HS typically have for different colleges. And that can absolutely trump reported statistics like the ones I was citing above. So like if the data says almost everyone who applies to Bard from your HS with your grades gets admitted, great (and sometimes the counselors actually know what happened with the exceptions, and without necessarily telling you they can assure you they don’t think you will be one of the exceptions).
But I would definitely caution you against then ALSO assuming your GPA will be treated as if it was higher at your same school, for the purpose of identifying Likelies. That is basically layering on two adjustments, for your school and then also for your personal story. And that might happen, but that is not sufficiently guaranteed for Likely purposes, at least in my opinion.
So I am not going to claim everyone is always “super enthusiastic” about all their Likelies, including because they may just love some of their other Likelies and Targets even more.
Still, you want to be as enthusiastic as you can be about every college on your list. So I might just suggest reflecting a little about why you seemed more enthusiastic about Bard and Sarah Lawrence than Marist. Because maybe there are more colleges like Bard and/or Sarah Lawrence you could investigate, and maybe one of those would ultimately replace Marist.
Then it’s not a true safety. I mean, if it comes down to being your only acceptance, would you spend the next year trying to transfer out? Be honest.
2 Likes
I’ll bite.
The best applicants (however you want to define best) have these things:
1- Rigor. I’ll trust that your BS is providing that in spades. But if your math foundation is shaky, you have a year of HS left to fix it. You may not plan to take a math class in college or ever… but math is everywhere. Evaluating whether or not you should get a particular vaccine, having to decide on a health care plan on your first day of a new job, deciding whether to lease or buy a car, figuring out if you can afford to buy a condo… all of these are extremely practical word problems (i.e. that algebra stuff) and being good at these word problems really pays off. I know lots of talented adults who %^& away good money by having chosen the wrong health care plan at work- for example- and then they get too flummoxed to try and fix it every year during open enrollment. The fact that a college will recognize that you’re working hard in an area that doesn’t come naturally to you- that’s a bonus.
2- Focus. Drop whichever clubs you really don’t care about- art club, model UN, tutoring? Don’t spread yourself too thin senior year. Pick what’s meaningful to you and do that. Drop everything else.
3- Write essays that only you could write. To me, that’s the shoe repair stuff. To you, it might be something else. But there might be 20 kids in the entire country who are interested in shoe repair, and I’m going to guess that none of them write as well as you do. If you’re writing about personal identity stuff- great- but make sure it’s with a light touch and doesn’t sound maudlin. I know this is harsh- but adcom’s have read hundreds if not thousands of “this is what I learned taking care of and losing my beloved family member” and it’s very hard to do it well. If you want to see an essay which is “personal” but strikes the right tone, I usually suggest Calvin Trillin’s essay on his method of parallel parking, and his follow up essay on driving a car which parks itself. None of us are Calvin Trillin who is a world class writer, but he is able to write something “personal” which nobody else could write, and in a highly original voice, yet would not be confused with a therapy session.
4- Spend as much time on your safeties as on your reaches. Nobody likes this advice. And yet every year here on CC (and in real life) we hear about kids who got denied from their rock solid safety. Upon further study, it turns out that the kid phoned it in on the safety- didn’t answer the prompt (just recycled a different essay from another school), had some obvious grammatical errors because it was the end of the process and they were tired of editing, etc.
5- Find something to love about every college you have visited and/or are applying to. Even the dreaded University of Southern Eastern Wyoming is going to have tenured faculty with PhD’s who publish in their field, go to conferences, etc. Even the horrifying University of Northeast Clown College is going to have research librarians who can help you learn advanced ways of examining the past, will have Deans who want you to become the best version of yourself you can be, etc. The pecking order in academia has been disrupted over the last generation, and there are world class scholars working everywhere. Don’t believe me? Look at this week’s press release of the Guggenheim fellows. What an incredible group of scholars and what a wide range of institutions!
Good luck!
12 Likes
Agree. This point cannot be overemphasized.
6 Likes
Of course, the “safety” may not be an actual safety if admission depends on opaque subjective aspects like essays, recommendations, and level of interest.
I also think that an essay about your shoe repair activities would be very interesting and could make you stand out.
9 Likes
Me three, for the reasons Blossom described. It was the one thing that caught my eye as I skimmed, and stayed with me. (Of course other things about your situation also struck me and are important).
5 Likes
100% agree that the shoe repair thing could make an amazing and unique essay. AO’s also need to know that you had a long and difficult experience as a caregiver for your grandmother, but in most cases it works much better for your school counselor to be the one to talk about this. And as for the egg-donor/adoption topic, I think it could be an interesting add-on (perhaps in one of the shorter, supplemental essays), but I fear it could backfire if you try to make it do too much heavy lifting, and thinking of it as a possible “hook” gestures in that direction. But, if you have to write a “diversity” essay, it could be a really interesting side-note (i.e. “this is why I became interested in researching my genetic heritage”) that could really make that short essay “pop,” in contrast to the reams of similar-sounding, uninspired essays that these prompts elicit. But for the main common app essay? Volunteer shoe repair has SO much potential, both in terms of telling a story about how it has connected you with people and enabled you to meet a real need in their lives, and also in the more overarching sense of painting a picture of yourself as a person who notices problems that need solving, and finds meaningful ways to make herself part of the solution. That’s the kind of student every college wants!
8 Likes
OP, have you considered applying through Questbridge?
OP’s GPA is not where it needs to be for QB, and sounds like mom has too high of assets as well.
ETA: Most QB applicants who match have SAI of 0 to -1500
2 Likes
Oh, I took the $65k figure to be HHI rather than budget
I did for a minute (my mom does not have any assets sorry if it seems that way) but my mom’s income last year was much higher than the cutoff despite it being in reality only half of what it was reported on our tax forms b/c she was employed for half of the year
That doesn’t make sense to me. Tax forms report the actual amount earned during the year, not what she could have earned if she had worked the full year.
2 Likes