If you are at a public HS, this is not surprising. You are in ILL - even at top HS UIUC and some of the regionals like Illinois State will be the biggies as will the surrounding big 10 flagships.
And public schools, no matter how reputed, are not going to send a ton to LACs. LACs, by their nature, are small.
I wouldn’t read into the feederish type stuff of you are at a public school.
Those are natural trends, not specific to any school.
Most important isn’t where the masses go. The masses aren’t your daughter.
You have a reasonable list so she will find a home - maybe not everywhere on the list but most.
But set your budget because what you can pay and want to pay are two different things.
Budget is priority #1a, 1b and 1c. If you’re willing to pay full which is different than can pay, then don’t say but merit would be welcomed of course.
Set the true desire so your school list can reflect that budget. If the desire is $50k, as an example, applying to some on the list would be fruitless and if accepted - either make you uncomfortable for now we have to pay. Or make your kid upset after getting in and wanting to go to a place you don’t want to afford.
Congratulations to your D on building a strong background in high school! She is clearly well-prepared to attend any college. College Navigator (the feds’ website) is the source I tend to use most when chancing students, and it’s currently down, but these are my guesses as to your D’s chances at the schools on her current list.
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
U. of Vermont
Likely (60-79%)
Dickinson
St. Lawrence
Toss-Up (40-59%)
Brandeis
Bryn Mawr
Macalester
Mount Holyoke
Scripps
Skidmore
U. of Rochester
Lower Probability (20-39%)
Smith
Low Probability (less than 20%)
U. of Michigan
Some other schools your D may want to consider include:
20%-ish chance: Vassar or Wesleyan (but no merit aid will be forthcoming from either)
Toss-Up: Oberlin (the state might not be purple enough, but this was the first school I thought of when reading what your D wanted)
Likely: Connecticut College
Extremely Likely: Lewis & Clark, UNC-Asheville, SUNY-Purchase, Drew, Muhlenberg, Lawrence
At least to me a 3.7 unweighted GPA is pretty good, a 1440 SAT looks better than a 3.7 unweighted GPA, and a 35 ACT looks better than a 1440 SAT. I am pretty sure that with these stats I would be submitting the ACT score to any school that will accept ACT scores (which is likely to be the large majority of schools). 35 on the ACT is really very good.
UVM is a very good university in an attractive small city. Your daughter’s ACT and SAT scores are very good for UVM. Your daughter’s unweighted GPA is slightly below average for UVM, but only slightly and it looks like this is offset by a very strong rigor, which they should consider. I do not know how likely you are to get merit aid there, but at least for us the NPC did predict merit aid (we were also out of state) and was spot on accurate in this regard. I think that your daughter’s chances are quite good although I do not know whether I would call it a safety.
I was a math major in university. Some people have questioned what you can do with a math major, but the answer turns out to be: “all sorts of things”. There is a very wide range of things that we take for granted in the world that only work because someone did the math, and there are lots of jobs where people know that they have tough math to solve and they need someone who knows math very well. The various math majors who I knew in university went on to a wide range of very good careers.
One subject that overlaps math and business is called “Operations Research”, which is what I got my master’s degree in. I have described this as “its fun and they pay you”. Some knowledge of computer science would be valuable with this combination of skills. There are a wide range of types of CS jobs, and at least to me the ones that require quite a bit of math can be very interesting. Some of these might be more like math jobs that require a bit of CS, rather than CS jobs that require a bit of math. Among CS courses, things like algorithms and data structures will be useful for someone who is good at math. CS is definitely not just about programming languages (in the same sense that being a lawyer is not just about speaking English).
I am going to throw out a Lac that is well respected. Not far drive from Chicago and my gay daughter loved attending there for her Junior and Senior year. Plus your daughter would get probably a large amount of merit.
Check out Beloit College. Very cute town. My daughter reopened the kayak launch and she and her friend’s would take them out to do homework on the river, .
Nice campus and nice students and families. Some great restaurants also.
1.5 hour drive from Chicago (we live by Wrigley) and there is a bus to get her to Ohare or downtown.
We used to drive up on Saturday once in awhile for their wonderful farmer’s market. Take her to lunch and head back. When she was sent to Indonesia for research she gave a presentation and we were able to drive up and listen to it in their packed auditorium. What struck us was the amount of professors that came out to hear her.
Also coffee /lunch /dinner with professors.
She renewed the Mounds project and got a grant for that and did a Gap year prior to transferring and she put on a photography show at one of the galleries they have in the city. This was pictures she took while back packing through Southeast Asia. The amount of students /faculty that came out to support her was amazing. She was selling pieces not expensivly so all could afford her work. She basically sold out. Students thank her for creating affordable art.
So for the tangent but we know many families that went there and all with positive post grad outcomes.
Small classes and as my daughter said you can go deeper with the knowledge and discussions. Very smart students also.
As far as Michigan goes it’s tough for everyone. My son went to the #1 high school in the state the year he went. Selective enrollment school. If your school is NT then it’s a feeder school. That is what you want to find out. How many got accepted and with what scores.
As far as cost, your educated to make that decision. Don’t listen to the noise. We chose the extra expense and it was worth every penny.
Write a great essay. It counts. Go to sessions. Go on the websites and check out the schools. It all counts.
But I always say be careful what you wish for. It’s a very hard school especially their math department.
Good luck. AP Calc is fine. Does she have a chance to go to a higher math class instead of Stats? If your school offers something higher this can come into play in their decisions.
I really like Reed’s rigor. They let you take analysis immediately after one semester of calculus. Their linear algebra course is also more theoretical than most. They don’t have a business major, but they do have data science courses like statistical learning, probability and stats, data science, bayesian statistics, algorithms, causal inference
@Knowsstuff I went to a very similar LAC, and a friend’s dad taught at Beloit. I love the idea, but she doesn’t seem to want to consider schools in Wisconsin- mentioned Lawrence and Beloit. Hopefully, she’ll reconsider!
@Muu9 she’s concerned that Reed might be a bit too intense for her. She’s looking for a somewhat relaxed atmosphere, although with good academics. Is Reed very competitive/intense?
Reed does introduce more proof and theory heavy math early (Math 112). This can be a good thing in that a prospective math major can more easily preview early what math will be like at the upper level and either confirm interest or have more time to consider other majors.
Sorry to keep introducing the budget but you need that first. You can pay - but you clearly don’t want to pay full - based on what you said above.
I note this again because Reed has no merit aid.
Reed is over $90K a year. Are you going to go there when you can go to a Kalamazoo or St. Lawrence, etc. for $40K. Or Rochester for $60K, etc.
It’s back to the argument with Michigan when you can go to UIUC for half or others for less than half?
You need to solve that first.
If you’re willing to pay in full, then great - but based on what you said earlier and the dilemma it creates when it’s time to decide and pay and many a parent has had an uh-oh moment - that’s what you need to decide now and upfront - honestly before adding any schools.
The last thing you want to do is apply to schools you have zero willingness to pay for. Some say - well we’d consider - but they really don’t mean it. They just want to kick that decision down the road and ultimately it leads to disappointment.
So if yes, we’ll pay $90K and don’t care about merit aid - then great - look at Reed.
I suspect that’s not the case though given your previous comments.
@jenabeth, I just want to touch on this as well, but from a slightly different angle.
You’ve indicated that your D26 is the oldest of your children. I would urge your family to think about how it wants to equitably consider postsecondary costs for all of your children. I know of families where parents will go all out for the first child’s education and then realize that they either cannot or do not want to do that with subsequent children, and that can then cause familial strife. So although there are always circumstances to a particular family and their values (whether it’s effort made in school, or whether there’s a high-needs child who is likely to require long-term financial assistance as an adult, etc), it is important to think about what your family wants to do.
Once your family makes that decision, then I would make sure that you communicate it clearly to your D while she is still looking at colleges and deciding where to apply. When kids know the rules up front, they can handle outcomes much better.
Just to spitball, these are a few different methods that your family might consider:
Each child gets a budget of $X for their postsecondary plans. That budget can extend as long as there remains money (i.e. perhaps a lower cost college can mean there’s funding left over for grad school, or leftover money might be spent on a business start-up or home down payment, etc). If a school costs more than $x/4 (or maybe something like 4.1 or 4.2 to cover rising costs during college), then the student needs to find a way to cover that or be eliminated from consideration.
The family is willing to pay for the in-state flagship (perhaps + $Y)/year, that way rising costs of education will be reflected for each child (as the sticker price of the flagship will likely continue to go up in relation to the costs of other colleges for your subsequent children).
Your family classifies colleges by tiers (and your family can decide what schools belong to which tier). Perhaps each tier of college has a different price your family is willing to pay, or perhaps if schools are part of the same “tier” and there is a significant cost differential between two acceptances, then the most expensive options in the “tier” will be eliminated from consideration.
And obviously, there are other ways of thinking about this as well that might suit your family. But whatever the plan is for your family, make sure it is communicated to your D well in advance so that she can form her college list correspondingly.
I agree with your D….this does not fit with/describe Reed. IMO, Reed is academically intense and rigorous. A visit and chatting with students is a must before considering to enroll.
I would put Bryn Mawr, Macalester, MHC, Scripps, and Skidmore at “lower probability (20%-39%)” these days, though possibly on the higher end of that range for Bryn Mawr and Scripps. The OP’s stats seem to be at either around the median of the accepted students at these colleges or somewhat lower, and these colleges have acceptance rates of 24% (Skidmore) to 36% (MHC).
I might be wrong, because her high school may have higher acceptance rates for students with these stats (the top public schools in Chicago suburbs are pretty good), though that may not be true for the East and West Coast colleges, which are generally not familiar with Chicagoland high schools. For Macalester, it may help.
We’ll see! If I was going to say those schools leaned in a direction, I would say they leaning towards lower probability. But I think that OP’s 35 ACT score, combined with the extensive arts ECs and interest in majoring in math with appropriate academic rigor push her into the toss-up category. I guess we’ll find out in the spring if @Jenabeth keeps us updated!
And the full pay at need aware schools..which with the government kookiness might be more valuable going forward as they deal with the possibility of limited funding.
All those schools send reps out to visit the top big Chicago suburban schools. They probably get a handful of apps a year from just my kids’ school. So they know the high schools pretty well. It’s the less selective colleges (in less desirable locations) that may not see as many apps from the Chicago burbs. Lots of kids from here head to the coasts. I can tell by the rear window stickers.
Edited to add: so OP’s school counselor should be able to give a good prediction about admissibility.
One thing I didn’t mention- she’s above the selection index for National Merit for Illinois. Not sure that’s a factor that will help, but thought I’d include it just in case.
National Merit status could unlock some large merit scholarships at less selective colleges and universities.
What would be your preferred price limit, or are you willing to pay up to list price (up to $100k per year for some private colleges) for the student and each younger sibling?
If you are a semi finalist, Tulsa is free. For finalist, Alabama is 5 years free tuition, 4 years housing, and $4k a year. Others have deep discounts or free tuition.
Tulsa would be closest size wise to the types you are looking. But when you look at a Michigan, Alabama is your equivalent - yes not as prestigious but over $300k less - $300k is a big gap to make up. More than 1500 Illinoisans attend there.
So NM is great for those who take advantage. But at most schools is of little or no impact. As you can imagine, those that pay attract lots of really really smart kids.
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