Also, I sent you a DM.
The chemists were the great unsung heroes of the most recent Sistine Chapel restoration. And are part of the team every time an unknown “Vermeer” magically shows up ay auction!!!
Agreeing with your posts….
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I recommend that you look at the College of Wooster for a couple of reasons:
- It offers a superb academic experience. Guided Independent Study is part of the academic experience all 4 years, culminating in a capstone project of original research in senior year for all students. The only other school which currently requires this for all students is Princeton. A student graduates with something which demonstrates what s/he can do.
- Wooster is great for both financial aid and merit scholarships. 99% of their students receive financial assistance. The cost of attendance (tuition, fees, room & board) is $82,000. The average financial package is $55,000. So, the average student is paying $27,000. Run the net price calculator to see what the estimated cost is for you.
Wooster flies under the radar, but it is truly an exceptional hidden gem. On my tour, I was surprised at the number of students I ran into who were children of faculty at other colleges. I think that those in the business of higher Ed know about Wooster.
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If you can’t visit and ask in person as thumper1 recommended, you could always call a couple of school’s admissions offices and see what they say. If they answer with, “why are you doing that” versus “it would be fine depending on the other science classes”, then you have a pretty good idea.
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I’d agree with this. My D26 actually had a question about taking a class dual enrollment versus AP. She sent an email to the admissions counselors at a few schools she was considering. In particular, she sent it to the ones that value demonstrated interest. That way she didn’t have to ask them all, but could get a sense of whether a few key schools on her list cared one way or the other.
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I’m not sure how anyone can chance you with this statement. What is your budget ?
You can find schools under $40k. But Williams, Bowdoin and Midd are need based aid only so does the NPC show a # you can afford ?
When you have a budget and you haven’t stated what it is, you need to build the list based on the budget no matter how accomplished the student is.
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Whitman’s “10% promise” guarantees that you will not pay more than 10% of your income on tuition. Check it out on their website.
St. Olaf’s is also very good for financial aid.
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That’s incredible - great find.
And they are not only getting costs under control with transparency about how they’re doing it, but it’s a terrific small liberal arts college with a student:faculty ratio of 9.5:1 where she can explore those interests to her heart’s content.
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Thanks for the suggestion. We have heard great things about Whitman. However, we fall in an income bracket where Whitman would not be one of our most affordable schools. If we pay 10% of our income on tuition at Whitman and still have to pay room and board, that would still be double the NPC price we are getting from some schools.
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Thanks for the reply. I did a prior post with budget and got lots of great ideas and ran the NPCs at all of those places and now we are back with a chance-me post because she wants to know her chances.
OK - so you are saying all these will work. Gotcha.
The UCs are obviously hard to rate given how they calculate but UCSC certainly seems as if it would happen.
St. Olaf is a safety - short of maybe having excessive need (like can only pay $15 or $20K).
Unless the need is way high (you have some need aware schools), I think you get into all three lower probability schools - Kenyon, Skid, Col Coll. But someone paying $40K may get a different answer than someone paying $10K.
The lower probability - Carleton I’d lean yes, especially ED. If you believe the CDS, their domestic acceptance rate is 38%. They are not at the difficulty that people think. If CDS is correct, they have nearly as many international applicants as domestic and only admit 4%, so it brings the overall acceptance rate way down so people who look at the overall are looking at a misleading number. And they have $$ - so I think you are good.
I’m guessing you get into at least one of Middlebury, Williams or Bowdoin but if Carleton is the choice (you ED), I suspect you’ll be done.
Best of luck.
10% is the max, did you run whitman’s NPC?
When my D applied to LACs several years ago she was accepted to Kenyon, Davidson, Lafayette, Vassar, Richmond, and a few others. Kenyon’s financial aid offer was the worst (by quite a bit) and Vassar’s was the best (where she ended up attending). I think your D should take a look at Vassar. They have excellent science programs and the location in the Hudson River Valley provides lots of outdoor opportunities.
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I think her list looks great. My only suggestion would be to consider adding a few more “low probability” schools that have outstanding financial aid— maybe Amherst, Colby, Bates, Vassar. We found with our S25 that financial aid can vary a lot, even among peer schools with similar-seeming NPCs, & also some schools were willing to work with our financial need more than others. My kid applied to 8 “low probability” schools & was admitted to 4 (not the 4 I would have predicted)—if you need significant aid it might be worth casting an even wider net. Some of these schools have no or minimal supplemental essays.
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Interesting. My older daughter only applied to Midwestern LACs that give merit (back in 2020), but Kenyon gave her the best package (a mix of merit and grants) compared to Oberlin, Macalester and Grinnell. St. Olaf was similar, maybe a tiny bit better. I guess it really depends.
And the most generous part was specifically for need-based grants (she got higher merit awards from the other three).
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Kenyon hits home equity hard. Their net price calculator comes out $30k higher than Oberlin’s does for our situation. I ran Oberlin’s several times because I was surprised to see how generous they were ($5k less than Yale!)
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If she EDs to Carleton, I think she will get in!
I think she will definitely get into Kenyon, Skidmore and Colorado College, too. (If she EDs to Middlebury, I think she has a great shot—with Williams and Bowdoin, it’s more of a toss up).
The UCs are hard to predict, but taking AP Calc BC and getting an A (I assume) will mean something, taking all of the CC classes will be helpful. You don’t have UCLA on your list, maybe because it’s more urban, but it has an excellent art history program and so many affiliations with museums and galleries. And fwiw, my daughter (who just graduated there) was very involved in several outdoors clubs and spent many weekends camping, hiking, etc. She’s not a skier but some of her roommates were and Mammoth was a popular (if expensive) weekend away.
With regards to the lack of chemistry, I like your kid’s attitude. I stressed out quite a bit about both my kids’ lack of a 4th year of language, and both landed beautifully with many great choices. My S26 is headed to Wesleyan without a 4th year of a language (despite 75-80 percent having such, according to their class profile). He too marches to the beat of his own drummer, is an artist who also loves philosophy, math, history and is looking to explore at college, esp with Wesleyan’s open curriculum.
If Carleton is her favorite and the NPC can work, I would go for it with ED. Or she could think on it and switch her app to ED2 later if she wants to.
Edited to add: agree with the above poster about adding a few more selective LACs—Colby, Vassar and Wesleyan too (Wesleyan has a brand new art building, and Colby has invested in the arts, too)
Edited again to add: I just looked for cross-country skiing near Wesleyan because I was curious and there’s a well-known ski center less than 30 mins away. I’m totally going to do this when I visit S26 in winter—I’ve always wanted to try it! 
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Oberlin was the most expensive for both our kids, even with a huge merit scholarship… Go figure. (We do own a house but it’s not fully paid off, so maybe that’s why Kenyon was very generous).