Chance Me for Bryn Mawr College and others RD! [CA resident, 4.0 GPA, 32 ACT, <$30k; psychology, education / child development, sociology]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US Citizen
  • California
  • Private Boarding School
  • Asian American female
  • No hooks

Intended Major(s)
Psychology, Education/Child Development, Sociology

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • 4.0/4.0 Unweighted
  • 4.15/4.3 Weighted (4.5/5.0 using typical weighting)
  • 4.0/4.0 duel enrollment
  • My school doesn’t rank, however I have the highest GPA out of 29 students (yes my school is tiny)
  • ACT: 32

Coursework
My school doesn’t do APs, we do have Advanced courses though, and I’ve taken a couple AP courses online.

Advanced/AP Courses:

  • Advanced English III
  • Advanced US History
  • AP Human Geography (4)
  • AP Psychology (untested)
  • Advanced English VI
  • Advanced European History
  • Advanced (Pre-AP) Chinese

Community College Courses:

  • Introductory Psychology
  • College Composition
  • US History from 1865
  • World History from 1500
  • American Literature
  • Early Childhood Fundamentals
  • Lifespan Development
  • Children, Family, & Community
  • Teaching & Curriculum Pedagogy
  • Positive Behavior Management

Awards
11th Grade Scholar Award (Highest GPA)
Junior Year Book Award
Honors College Member at a local community college

Extracurriculars

  1. Community Life League. Member, President
    Coordinates community service activities, leads 40 students in weekly meetings, founded a weekly tutoring program at the local elementary school
  2. Reading & Math Tutor
    Provides free weekly one-on-one tutoring to low-income K-5 students, teaches essential math & reading skills, designs personalized lesson plans
  3. Girl Up [Blank] Coalition. Executive Board Member, Club Coordinator
    Leads 60 Girl Up clubs in monthly meetings, plans advocacy campaigns & awareness events, raised $1550 for local & global gender equality nonprofits
  4. Student Diplomacy Corps, Student in Public Health & Social Work Course Academic
    Studied social work & public health, wrote a comprehensive Literature Review on healthcare inequality, presented a capstone on medical accessibility
  5. Elementary School, Teaching Assistant (Externship)
    Provided struggling students with individualized instruction, aided teacher in classroom management, mediated conflicts between classmates
  6. Diversability, Content & Community Outreach Intern
    Managed an online space for disabled people to connect, amplified disabled voices using social media, raised awareness about inaccessibility issues
  7. Girl Up [Other] Coalition Executive Board Member, Communications Director
    Facilitates discussions between club presidents, initiates & maintains communication with partner organizations, oversees & edits social media posts
  8. Girl Up [School Club], Founder & President
    Educates students about global gender inequality issues, Created a 30-book library display featuring women’s literature & books on feminist theory
  9. Academic Presenter
    Taught students and faculty about the impact of visual media on early childhood development, designed comprehensive discussion-based class sessions
  10. [Store], Sales Associate. Work, Paid
    Promoted store products, operated cashier register, processed sale transactions, honed customer service skills, maintained & organized inventory

Essays/LORs/Other

  • Personal Statement: Very good, my college counselor said it was “textbook” and perfectly hit everything
  • I don’t want to make any assumptions about my LORs

Cost Constraints / Budget
Max: 30k/year. Looking for financial aid

Extenuating Circumstances
I took one year off of school due to chronic (but non-critical) medical issues, and I was homeschooled and attended online school for freshman and sophomore year. So most of my extracurriculars are from junior and senior year.

Schools

Safety/Likely:
Agnes Scott College
Muhlenberg College
Whitman College

Match
Occidental College
Oberlin College
Skidmore College
Kenyon College
Trinity College
Franklin & Marshall College

Reach
Smith College
Bryn Mawr College
Scripps College

I applied to Smith College ED and was deferred. I am trying to decide whether should apply ED2 to Bryn Mawr, or if I should wait it out and see the final decision from Smith College.

I would really appreciate any insight, thanks so much!

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Oops I forgot to add Advanced Statistics.
Thank you for taking a look!

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Talk to your boarding school counselor. They’ll know best.

On paper all are possible.

Only you can decide if you want to wait on your top choice or potentially give up on it with an ED2. You’d certainly be competitive.

One thing is your community college classes are heavy into childcare/development. It’s also the major you listed. Clearly this is an interest. It may not align with all schools curriculum. Did you check each ?

Good luck.

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Thanks for your insight! :smiley: The problem is that the Bryn Mawr ED2 is due January 1, and my college counselor will not be available between now and then because of winter break.

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I DMed you. :slight_smile:

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You seem incredibly qualified to get an offer at either Bryn Mawr or Smith. Personally, assuming you do have a real preference, I might see Smith out and apply to Bryn Mawr RD. I think the bet that ED won’t make the critical difference in final admission decision for Bryn Mawr is a relatively safe one given how strong your profile is. Of course, I’m just one person, and I don’t know you in real life. But my gut, in this specific instance (not as a general rule) is: you seem very likely to get an offer at Bryn Mawr either way, so I would apply RD and leverage the flexibility that provides you.

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Is the counselor portion not in your common portal ?

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Thank you everyone for your insight so far!

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The counselor portion is there, however my counselor already attached the recommendation letter to my common app. So I won’t have to talk to her her every time I submit an application. She explicitly told us that she would not be available until after break, so I can’t consult her about this until after that date, which falls after the Bryn Mawr ED2 deadline.

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I really appreciate your encouragement and confidence in my chances. I’ve started to doubt myself after the Smith deferral. I’m constantly racking my mind, wondering what’s wrong with my application.

I do have a slight preference for Smith, but as I’ve been doing more research, I’m finding myself loving Bryn Mawr more and more. They’re almost equal to me at this point. However, I’m not sure if I want to dedicate myself fully to Bryn Mawr if there’s still a chance (however small) for Smith.

If I was lucky enough to get into both, I’d want to weigh my options because I think they’re both incredible schools. I’m still worried, though, about how ED and RD would affect my admission chances at BMC, though it’s reassuring to hear that you think I have a strong enough profile that it wouldn’t make a difference.

I also realized the brackets didn’t show up in my original post, which might misconstrue my extracurricular accomplishments. I mentioned two different Girl Up Coalitions that I’m involved in, since Girl Up is an international organization with coalitions and clubs. I also want to clarify that I forgot to mention that the last Girl Up part was just referring to my school club, not the whole organization. To clarify:

Girl Up School Club, Founder & President
Educates students about global gender inequality issues, Created a 30-book library display featuring women’s literature & books on feminist theory

Does this make any difference to you in terms of my profile?

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I understand you want to get your counselors but in but this should be a decision you are able to make on your own.

You have the ‘goods’ - you just have to decide do you want to potentially throw away Smith or you love it so much that you want to keep the opportunity there.

You don’t need a counselor to decide that!!!

If you 100% want to talk to your counselor - then await RD.

Good luck.

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The counselor has to sign the ED2 form.

ETA: OP, check to see if the BMC app may be submitted without the ED2 agreement (many schools allow that)….call admissions and ask for direction, you aren’t the only student with this issue.

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To the OP…can your counselor do this part before the end of this week?

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If you’re feeling like BMC is in a pretty close to tie for first, I’d ED2 there. If you really prefer Smith and need to see it through, you can hold out – especially if you think something in your app will change (awards, etc) before they reevaluate. But while some applicants are deferred ED and admitted in the RD round, the vast majority are not. Smith could have admitted you this month and didn’t.

I like your list and think you’ll have choice in April if you follow through with all RD. You have goid stats. My hunch is that if there’s any weakness, it’s lack of rigor. I like your odds for BMC

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So I know this is a stressful decision (my S24 was also deferred and has to make the same choice about whether to do ED II).

But I can tell you that in your case, I would probably wait it out. I think that is because although I think Bryn Mawr is great, I am pretty confident even if you went to neither of Smith or Bryn Mawr, you’d still end up somewhere great. So with that as a Plan C, I’d personally leave Smith as Plan A.

Along those lines, though, I am curious about some colleges not on your list. You may have good answers, of course, I just was wondering.

The first is Vassar. My understanding is Vassar has one of the top Psychology departments at any LAC, and that students interested in Developmental Psychology make use of the Wimpfheimer Nursery School (their lab school) for observation and research:

The second is Barnard. Again, top Psychology, and they have the Barnard Toddler Center for similar purposes:

https://toddlers.barnard.edu/our-program

The last I would mention is a little less reachy, Mount Holyoke. They actually have an integrated Psychology and Education Department, and again make use of the Gorse Children’s Center, their lab school:

These are all competitive admits too, of course, but my point is the more great alternatives I had to both Bryn Mawr and Smith, the less pressure I would personally feel to ED II anywhere in particular.

That being said, you already have plenty of other strong Psychology schools on your list–Kenyon, Whitman, Trinity, Skidmore, and so on. So I wouldn’t say you need to add any of those I mentioned, but I know for me it would be something to consider.

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By the way, I am pretty cautious about overusing statistics, but for what it is worth, this infographic says for the Class of 2026, 46% of students enrolled through Early Decision:

https://www.brynmawr.edu/admissions-aid/policies-resources/meet-class

That may sound pretty high, but actually that implies ED admits were a much lower percentage of admits, because RD yields are much lower.

Indeed, doing a little math, if 396 enrolled and 46% of those were ED enrollees, then that is 182 ED enrollees and 214 RD enrollees. Usually yield in ED is something like 97%, so maybe there were something like 188 ED admits.

That means there were somewhere around 917 RD admits, about 83% of their admits. But there was only somewhere around a 23% yield from RD (fairly typical for LACs like Bryn Mawr), which is how you get down to only 54% of the enrolled class being RD.

My point with all this is that I would not personally be too afraid of “missing” Early Decision for Bryn Mawr. Fine if it is your actual top choice, of course, and affordable. But the big round for Bryn Mawr is actually RD, and it has to admit over 4 people for every 1 it yields out of RD. And again, I would personally not mind taking my chances on being one of those admits, as long as I had other great possibilities too.

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I think that your qualifications are very good. Sure, go ahead and ED2, or do it all RD. The problem that you are likely to run into is money. The majors that you are considering lead to jobs paying under $20/hr, with a BA. That’s about 40K/yr, not enough to live on in many areas of the country, especially the higher cost ones, and most definitely not enough to be able to pay back student loans, unless you live at home and work an extra part time job. If you’re thinking to go on for a masters or farther in clinical psych, it’s very competitive, plus it’s costly. Even a masters in a social work or child development field would be costly, when compared to the eventual salary. For this reason, you really need to consider your cost of attendance for undergrad. Unless you’re getting a full ride at your tiny boarding school, I suspect that your family might not qualify for enough fin aid for expected contribution of <30K/yr.

Is there a public college which would give credit for your AP and duAl enrollment classes? Where you could get in-state tuition? If you are a CA resident, would a CA public college near home, to which you could commute, be on the table? The things you’re considering for a major are usually offered at nearly every 4 yr college.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t shoot for your reaches - you should. I’m just saying that you need to create a true financial safety, which in your case is in-state, better yet, commutable from home. Luckily, you have many options in CA for public college.

BTW, from what you’ve listed, the only thing that has me worried is the money. You will surely get into some of these schools. Of the majors you’ve listed, the one that is sure to earn you enough to be able to support yourself, without further expensive education, is an elementary or secondary school teaching certification. It’s toughest to get a job teaching English, but definitely a possibility. So however you do it, try to get a teaching certification while doing your undergrad degree, and not for early childhood (which doesn’t pay, unless you’re lucky enough to get one of the very few jobs teaching preK in a public school - and for that, you’d need a masters degree.

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Ahhhhh sorry

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Absolutely apply ED2 Bryn Mawr! Based on last year’s CDS data, the bump is substantial: Early Action and Early Decision vs. Regular Decision Admission Rates

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I note that it appears that Bryn Mawr did not actually report ED statistics in its last CDS:

I also note that even when colleges do report ED statistics in their CDS, they typically do not distinguish ED II from ED I. But in cases where college do separately report ED II (such as by press release), often the ED II’s pool acceptance rate is much closer to the RD pool’s acceptance rate than the ED I pool acceptance rate.

And of course in cases like that, any difference in the pool acceptance rate could be explainable just by differences in the pool composition, and not materially different standards on an individual basis.

But again, I personally have not seen a primary data source which breaks out ED II versus RD for Bryn Mawr.

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