College selection help for my daughter

fdgjfg
Wed, 19 Sep 2018 22:22:50 +0000

As mentioned above, she should be competitive for admit + merit schollie at Rice, Vandy, NW, Texas state schools and they’ll be good options for her.

Up to her obviously but I think I would still take some shots at HYPS. Yes, its a crapshoot, but she’s already done the work to be competitive - all you have to do now is to take a number and see what happens. At worst, she gets in, takes the admitted students day visit, hates it, and decides not to go. But having the option available is probably worth the meager price of an app fee + supplemental essay (almost zero work compared to what she’s done over her HS career). They lack merit aid but they have absurd need based aid. Even if you might not qualify for aid at a less generous school, you might get it there.

All schools are great, especially near the top, but there are differences. For business (if that means IB/consulting, which it almost definitely does because that’s where the cash is and where most of the smart/competitive kids end up) there are differences between a target (i.e. HYPS, Penn, etc.) and a semi-target (Vanderbilt, NW, etc) recruiting-wise. UT Austin will have solid recruiting too but it might require a little bit more hustling to stand out from the crowd since it’s a bigger place. For premed it matters less because it’s more of a meritocracy with the formal application cycle, MCAT, etc. but I can tell you from the other side of the fence that interview and acceptance rosters at elite med schools are chock-full of kids with very very well-pedigreed CVs - I don’t think there’s an outright bias, but they get really rare opportunities and get pushed by peers who are the best of the best, and this is reflected in their outcomes and options down the road. Same thing for grad school - it’s not the name on your degree that matters, but the name of your PI/mentor/professors that affects your options in the end (and big names tend to aggregate at certain places).