Rising Senior at a top 10 boarding school. A/A- average junior year, a few B/B+s sophomore year due to personal issue, A/A- elsewhere. Honors PreCalc, and advanced classes. Decent workload for school. AP 4 in English and Math. 34/35 ACT. ECs: Head of several clubs related to writing, Peer Tutor in English, taught creative writing to inner city kids, Scholastic awards for poetry 5 years (no golds), poems published in other high school competitions. Internship at MIT for 2 weeks, internship at Boston Children’s Hospital for 4 weeks. Job: summer gardening.
Pamona! Not Paloma! Not sure what happened there.
Pomona. I would strike it from your list…
Looks like you have a shot anywhere.
My school is telling me that all the Ivies are “Unlikely”, other top schools are “Reaches”, like Barnard, Vassar, Wesleyan, Amherst, Berkeley. I don’t understand why.
The Ivies, except maybe Cornell, are unlikely for virtually everyone. Most of these schools have less than a 10% acceptance rate. Many students with perfect stats are rejected. Admission is not based solely on stats.
What is it about you that makes you stand out? Your post does not indicate this.
Your previous posts indicate you are the parent. Which are you, parent or student? What state is your state of residence? Any need for financial aid? Berkeley won’t give FA for OOS students. Pomona is the only LAC on the first list. .
Parent, white student, MA. She’s a social activist, gay rights supporter, does art for social change, no need for FA.
To expand a bit on the answer given by @TomSrOfBoston take a look at this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/2049694-percentage-of-applicants-accepted-by-sat-or-act-range-p1.html. The takeaway is that for the most highly selective schools, they routinely reject students with perfect or near perfect GPA’s and test scores. Most schools don’t even publicize the breakdown of acceptance rate, but take a look at Princeton just as an example: https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/admission-statistics and you can see that the overall acceptance rate is 6.4 percent but having a top GPA and SAT/ACT only moves the needle up to an 8-9% acceptance rate. Also acceptance rates at schools that accept by major can vary significantly by major, which would be a factor for Berkeley, for example.
You mentioned several of the top LAC’s. I’m most familiar with Pomona because I have a rising senior there. Pomona’s acceptance rate for Class of 2022 was 6.9%. But to fairly assess your D’s chances you need to keep in mind that a chunk of the class will be admitted ED, so the RD acceptance rate is lower than the overall 7% rate. And the acceptance rate for females is lower than for males because these coed LAC’s have more female applicants and they strive to end up with a balanced class. They are looking for a certain number of recruited athletes, a certain number of internationals, and they are seeking diversity by recruiting through Questbridge and Posse. So the competition among “unhooked” females is going to be intense.
This is not to say your D shouldn’t apply, but only to say be realistic and don’t create a list that’s all high reaches. I would think that at a private boarding school you would have good, experienced GC’s.
If she likes the Claremont Colleges, she should consider Scripps. Still not a slam-dunk but a lot more realistic than Pomona, and the five colleges all have cross-registration. Also, the Scripps art department does a lot of “art for social change” work, including sections of Scripps’ required Core Humanities classes that are taught by art faculty - here’s an example course description for a Core 3 class offered this coming fall: “The course will examine twentieth-century activist and political art in North America, Europe, and Asia, as it plays out in theatre, music, dance, and multimedia. We will examine various strategies for coming to creative terms with the struggle for social justice. The course culminates in the creation of student-directed and student-performed activist art works to be coordinated by members of the class and presented publicly. Although the choice of topic will be left to the students, there will be a particular focus on environmental activism and on working with faculty and students from related disciplines across the consortium to address current crises around the world.” You daughter sounds like a strong candidate for Scripps, and unlike Pomona, they give merit aid up to half tuition. (Pitzer would also be a possibility.)
Similarly, if she likes Amherst, look at Mount Holyoke in the same consortium - her odds of acceptance with merit $ are even better there than at Scripps, though “geographic diversity” might even out those odds a little.
We don’t qualify for FA. Would a school ever offer someone merit aid if the family can pay full tuition? I’m really not well-informed! My D really wanted to do the whole thing by herself but when I got the school list last week, I sort of freaked and decided I had best put my head into it a little bit.
Yes, the schools that offer merit aid often do it to attract students who are full pay according to financial aid formulas, but who cannot realistically pay $70+/year out of pocket, or who theoretically could but find the prospect too horrifying and not enough “value added” vs. less expensive options.
Some schools give “merit aid” to students who also receive need-based aid, but in that case it’s usually more a pat on the back than a real financial boost, as need based aid will drop by the amount of the merit scholarship.
Scripps, in particular, focuses their merit money on student who would otherwise have been full pay.
They also give financial aid to students with documented need, but the two categories don’t overlap much.
This varies at different colleges. The most elite colleges and universities typically offer generous need-based aid but do not offer merit aid at all. Brown, Pomona, Columbia, Wesleyan, Amherst, Vassar… none of these schools offer merit scholarships. (At least not beyond the occasional small research stipend for uber-exceptional STEM students.)
Berkeley is a public university, and for the most part offers no aid at all (merit or need-based) to out of state students. The “sticker price” is over $60K/year, which is still cheaper than Pomona/Brown/Columbia which are over 70K, but not all that much cheaper for a public U with quite a bit of crowding and competition for resources.
Scripps and Mt. Holyoke are a good place to start in terms of schools that are prestigious, but not too prestigious to offer merit aid.
There’s a lot that a 17-year-old can’t be expected to know about this process, especially if they’re in a high-end prep school environment where price sensitivity doesn’t figure into the advice they’re getting from the (otherwise excellent) college counselors. It would be good for you and your daughter to sit down and discuss where she is aiming to fall on the price-vs-prestige continuum. “Where can I get in” is only the first filter. I think the counselors are correct that your daughter doesn’t quite have the stats for schools that admit under 10% of applicants. But in the range of still-excellent schools that admit, say, 15% to 50%… there will be a trade-off in terms of merit potential, because merit money typically goes to the top 25% of admitted students.
There are also excellent public U’s with a lower “sticker price,” and some of those give merit aid too. And there’s your own state - Commonwealth Honors College at UMass Amherst is not a bad option at all, in the 5 college consortium with Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke and Hampshire.
It’s great for kids to have autonomy and drive the process, but they do need guidance on the financial aspect unless it’s a complete money-no-object scenario.
Hope that helps…
SO incredibly helpful. I’m wondering if you know any liberal schools, with excellent teaching, good for arts and writing, that might be good for a “safety.” We’ve got Smith and Oberlin as “likely” right now but would love to have a few more on our radar. Thank you for all your great advice. We’re not too worried about the financial aspect right now but are worried about finding a good solid list with some “likelys” that she really likes.
Thanks!
Here are some commonly used terms for estimating someone’s chances:
“Reaches”
High reach: 0-5% chance
Reach: 5-15% chance
Low reach: 15-25% chance
“Matches”
High match: 25-40% chance
Match: 40-60% chance
Low match: 60-90% chance
Safety: 90+% chance
You can monkey with the percent ranges, but this at least helps us all be on the same, or a similar, page.
Here’s what I would estimate your daughter’s chances to be at these schools, based on stats – your daughter’s, the schools’ admit rates, and stats for students recently admitted. You didn’t mention her unweighted GPA, but let’s say it’s 3.8:
Columbia: Reach
Brown: Reach
Pomona: Reach/low reach
Berkeley OOS: Low reach/high match
The three private schools are fairly holistic – they consider things other than stats, like letters of recommendation, essays, and extracurricular activities. Berkeley is less holistic.
Typically what kids do, or what we advise them to do, is to apply to a list of schools comprising a mix of reaches, matches, and at least one safety. At this point you have three reaches and a borderline reach. I think it would be a good idea to add some matches and at least one safety. You were smart to ask about the latter.
Here are some ideas based on what you have told us – artsy kid, quite liberal, politically active. Some have already been mentioned (and dang it, a few are a bit reachy, but nothing like Brown or Columbia):
Vassar: Low reach
Wesleyan: Low reach
Smith: Low reach/high match
Barnard: Low reach/high match
Reed: High match
Oberlin: High match
Kenyon: High match
Bryn Mawr: High match
Scripps: High match
Skidmore: High match/match
Mount Holyoke: Match
Bard: Match/low match
Hampshire: Low match
Sarah Lawrence: Low match/Safety
Wheaton (MA): Safety
Those are all LACs, and it sort of makes sense: LACs tend to be politically liberal, very strong in the humanities and social sciences, and some are cradles of political activism. Those listed above are known to be among the more liberal LACs. They’re all, more importantly (imo), good schools.
If you read up on them and evaluate whether environment, location, social vibe, and academic vibe (majors, curriculum, calendar, etc.) fit what she is looking for, maybe she could add some of them to her list.
I think that your best use of College Confidential at this point would be to step away from the whole “What Are My Chances?” forum and instead post in the “College Search and Selection” forum, describing your daughter’s interests/passions and stats, noting that she will not qualify for financial aid and merit aid would be nice but not utterly essential. Ask people to recommend schools that would be a good fit, and you will get lots of suggestions. A lot of knowledgeable people on CC don’t even read the “chance” forums.
Look into the schools that are suggested and have your daughter take a list of ones that appeal to her school guidance counselor for “sorting” into their unlikely/reach/likely/safety categories. She knows better than people on CC do, because she knows the rigor of your daughter’s school and how it is regarded by college admissions departments. She knows the historical trends of students from your school who have gotten into the various colleges, and what stats they needed to make that happen. It sounds to me like the “chancing” advice your daughter is getting from her is solid, and there is no need to second-guess it here on CC. Instead, use the forums here to generate ideas and get firsthand information about schools that your daughter might love. Then take it from there with the guidance counselor. Your daughter will be fine - she will have great options - she just needs to target her list appropriately.
(For my part, I will think about additional ideas, but it’s best if you start a non-“chance” thread and then I’ll comment over there 
)
Sorry for the double-post –
As has been mentioned, Scripps and Pomona are both members of the Claremont Colleges. They are quite close to one another and students can, and typically do, cross-register at the others. Aside from Scripps and Pomona, the 5Cs include Harvey Mudd, Claremont McKenna (CMC), and Pitzer.
Some of the other schools that I mentioned are also in consortia:
Smith, Mount Holyoke and Hampshire are in the Five Colleges consortium. The other two schools are Amherst and UMass-Amherst.
Bryn Mawr is in the Quaker Consortium with Penn (the Ivy League school, not to be confused with Penn State), Haverford, and Swarthmore.
This is truly amazing! Thank you so so much. What’s interesting/ incredible about your list is that it basically mirrors our own - very closely. But the Reach/ Match/ Safetys metrics are much lower coming from my daughter’s school’s counselors, perhaps because there are just so many smart, privileged kids at her school all looking at the same darn schools, so the chances are just so much harder.
It might make me mad because it affects her so directly, but at the same time I’m a big fan of the new Making Caring Common approach, giving kids from less privileged backgrounds more opportunities. I can understand why admissions people want to turn towards the kids who’ve really had to struggle all their lives in some of the basic ways the private school kids just take for granted.
This post of yours is genuinely so useful for us - not only does it confirm many of our thoughts but there are a few on here we don’t have and we will look into those.
You refer to a “we.” Are you a college counselor yourself?