U Hartford is likely to give a lot of merit money to your student. It has a dance program at the affiliated conservatory, has a good psych dep’t, has graduate psych programs, has a physical therapy program, both undergrad and grad. It’s a self-contained campus in a safe area on the border between Hartford and West Hartford.
Understood that you’ve saved the money for college. But do you really need to spend >350K on an undergrad degree that, if they’re lucky, qualifies a person for work that pays <50K/yr? Yes, if they go on for a graduate degree to become a psychologist, they can earn a decent living. If they go on for a PT graduate degree, they can earn a decent living, and doing PT for dancers might be a future career for her. But these professions require graduate degrees, which could cost as much as the undergrad degree, or even more.
Seems to me that for such a student, with her intended career interests, you’d be best off chasing big merit money at less selective LACs, or going to an in-state public school, and preserve some of that money to use towards grad school, or a downpayment on a first home. It’s not as if any of her reaches at 85K/yr would give her a leg up over a degree at one half or even one third the price, at a merit-granting lesser LAC or an in-state public.
I agree with all of this. Some of us who are lucky enough to be able to cover the full cost start out assuming that we should be prepared to do so. In our case, we weren’t even really aware of merit money until I started reading CC. (I’d been out of the US for a long time, and I don’t think it was really a thing when I went to school.) In a sense, we were lucky, as the school our son preferred happened to be the school that offered him the most merit money, and we were able to save a lot. Also, and I am surprised this isn’t mentioned more on CC, I think the fact his school acknowledged his accomplishments and was willing to “invest” in him made a big impression and pushed him to work hard for those four years. Like the OP, our S19 needs to do graduate work to achieve his career objectives, so we are even happier now that we didn’t spend money unnecessarily at the undergraduate level.
As far as the two high reaches go, like others have said your best chance would be applying ED1. Based on what you’ve listed alone, they’re going to have a hard time comparing her favorably to other applicants who probably have more APs, stronger ECs, and quite possibly better scores/grades. That said, I think with a good essay she could have a very real chance of admission. Additionally, with sufficient practice for SAT/ACT you can really bring your scores up. Top scores on these tests can be a game changer given so few feel confident submitting their scores - it’s not too late to give this route a shot.
Best of Luck,
Z
I would agree with the others that applying ED to Bates or Wesleyan (if she has a clear first choice) could be a game changer. And, if she didn’t make it into her first choice in ED1, she could apply to other school for ED2. Having a test score to submit could help, but I will also point out that Bates was test optional long before Covid (since the mid-80s) so that school is pretty comfortable with an admissions model that doesn’t include a test.
Has she been to the campuses of these schools yet? That will likely provide a lot of clarity about which school she likes best, if she doesn’t know yet.
Wes was also TO pre-covid, although percentages submitting scores there is higher (76% of enrolled in class of 2026, 58% of admitted in class of 2027).