Just a little note about language-be careful about the use of first person (I) where the third person (she) is more appropriate. Remember that your daughter’s the one applying to college!
Thanks for the tip, @albert69.
@Sue22, thanks for pointing that out. Our family and friends kid me about going off to school with my kid. I need to start thinking in the third person, then hopefully my use of appropriate language will follow…
Right now you’re focusing on Dream schools. Those are easy to find and require no work-just list any top 25 university and LAC. The real work should start now, not later. : identifying safeties she likes- colleges that admit 50%applicants and have good honors colleges, from Alabama to usf to Barrett at asu to penn state schreyer to
uminnesota and u Wisconsin.
Then add LACs that admit 40%applicants or more, preferably not in the Northeast - women’s colleges are fine, and do include Agnes Scott if you diversity,
… sorry, missing chunks of post above and can’t edit!
Right now you’re focusing on Dream Schools. Those are easy to find and require no work-just list any top 25 university and LAC. The real work should start now, not later : identifying safeties she likes- colleges that admit 50%applicants and have good honors colleges, from Alabama to usf to Barrett at asu to penn state schreyer to uminnesota and u Wisconsin. In particular, look into UMD-CP for politics, good honors college; UMass Commonwealth Honors may be of interest and there’s the five-college consortium.
They don’t have to be in the South but the reason people have been speaking about UAlabama is because its students come from all over, unlike many flagships in the South such as UT Knoxville or Ole Miss: fewer than 50% students are from Alabama, and in the Honors College New York and California are heavily represented.
Note: forget UT, as well as UNC CH, UCB, and UCLA, because there’s a cap on OOS students they can admit. For UT and UNC CH, once you’ve included legacies and athletes in the cap, it makes applying there from OOS the same as buying a lottery ticket and it’s my understanding that you’d rather buy lottery tickets to Top 25 universities and LACs. UCB and UCLA are not likely now that there’s the 20% cap (80% students must come from instate, the other seats will be for OOS applicants as well as international applicants.)
Have her read this website, perhaps purchase the book.
http://publicuniversityhonors.com/
Go over every possible university with a good honors college: for example, UNC-W has the same cap as UNC-CH, it’s a strong university (stats are similar to Rutgers’, the NJ flagship) with a good honors program. Is it good for poli sci? Look into it. Do the same for various public universities with decent stats (TCNJ?)
You should have a handful of candidates your daughter likes from the above.
Then, add LACs that admit 40%applicants or more, preferably not in the Northeast - women’s colleges are fine, and do include Agnes Scott if you want diversity; Muhlenberg and obviously Goucher should be on her radar. After that, look at the CTCL’s and focus on the Midwest and Pacific Northwest.
American and GWU are just matches, NOT safeties, and your daughter needs to fill out the “request info form”, then click on every email they send her, to ensure she’ll be considered. If they feel she considers them a safety, they’ll put her on WL to protect yield. (Filling out the request info form and clicking on emails should be par for the course).
“Match” doesn’t mean “intellectual match”. You may find the academics at GWU weaker than you’d wish… but that’s not how you classify universities as “reaches”, “matches”, or “safeties”. The classification depends on the odds of your daughter getting in, considering her profile. Any college that admits only 20 or 30% of its applicants is an automatic reach. 20% or less is “reach for everyone”, even the 2380/4.0 kid who designed a revolutionary medical tool or competed in the Olympics, but for your daughter these colleges are basically out of reach for a variety of reasons so sprinkle them on top of colleges that admit 20-35%. Those would be your reaches and should be chosen LAST.
If odds of getting in are about one in two (and that means odds are one in two she’ll be denied), that’s a match, and for your daughter it means colleges with admission rates around 40% - focus on acceptance rate, then don’t look at average stats, look at the top 25% threshold : she should be above the top 25% threshold.
Finally, colleges where she’s in the top 5-10% according to the CDS AND that admit 45,50, 60% of their applicants (those with strong academics will be LACs since the selectivity is deceptive: the students are often self-selecting) would be safeties, as would Honors Colleges at flagship universities where she easily meets the Honors College threshold.
Above post is excellent.
Remember, for law school, it will be her LSAT score and her GPA that will matter the most. Not the name of the school on her diploma.
Please clarify…you have another thread going about financial aid, and concerns about financing college. Can you pay $50,000 plus a year for undergrad, because if the answer is no, you are looking at some unaffordable schools.
Berkeley, for example, will expect you to pay your EFC, plus the $23,000 differential between in and out of state costs, plus a student contribution. Very likely you will be full pay there in terms of need based aid. Yes, there are some merit awards, but they are very highly competitive. This school should not be viewed as a safety for admissions either.
This post – like my others – is provided in the spirit of helpfulness. In post #66, you indicate (as you have done previously in this thread) that you hope your daughter’s admissions opportunities at Berkeley and Wisconsin (Madison, I presume) will be enhanced by “legacy” (verbatim quotation follows: * “I think she has a good shot at these schools because her dad and uncle went to Wisconsin and my dad and his uncles went to Berkeley”*).
However, you really need to “do your homework” before developing a strategy. Specifically:
[QUOTE=""]
Berkeley does not recognize any legacy advantage (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/315047-uc-berkeley-legacy.html)
At Wisconsin, only “a slight” (I quote from page 26 of their PDF) advantage is applicable (http://www.news.wisc.edu/images/admissions_ow_fall07.pdf).
[/QUOTE]
I want your daughter to succeed, but a pragmatic, fact-based strategy (whether it concerns legacy admission or the realistic likelihood of admissions to the Cornells, Penns, Browns, Georgetowns, etc.) is essential.
I want to add my $0.02 here. We are also from NoVA and our son grew up here and we love the diversity of the area,. That said, he just finished his first year at the University of Alabama, which gave him a great scholarship opportunity. We didn’t know what to expect when we visited last summer, but I was totally blown away by the school and the people there. Bama is not a ‘southern’ school as people in the north would think. Its OOS contingent is over 50%,and there are every type of students there. There is not one stereotype description of the 35k+ students on campus except they are all rabid Bama football fans. I love the physical beauty of the school, its spirit, and the way everyone went out of their way to help. Southern schools do have their charms, and that’s a big plus in my book. I can’t say enough good things about UA. if you cross it off your list without even giving it some consideration, especially if you are looking for merit scholarships, then shame on you.
@NewWaveMom, I’m going to throw out another idea, a strategy used by a number of kids at my D’s school to compensate for disappointing admissions results at US schools- look abroad, University of Edinburgh, St. Andrews, University of Dublin, McGill, American University of Paris.
We, likewise, were totally blown away when we visited Bama’s Honor College. Gorgeous school, and we had 2 amazing tour guides, one of whom was African-American (I mention it because OP is concerned about diversity/discrimination).
Our initially skeptical DS surprised himself by saying he could see himself at Bama. Of course, our springing for 50 yard line seats for a football game after the campus tour didn’t hurt… 
Even though my son chose not to attend Alabama at pretty much the last minute, we, too, were blown away by this school! To be perfectly honest, we weren’t too hot on “the South,” back then, either, but we kept an open mind and visited a handful of really good southern schools. Bama was impressive! Loved the honors college, the kids we met, the dorms, the beauty of the campus, the music program (it would have been a minor, not a major), all the super smart kids, the fact that kids come from all over, the faculty and staff that showed us around, and of course, the amazing scholarships! We ended up visiting 3 times to really check it out. Loved it.
I wonder if, by “diversity,” OP really means the international kids. I took a look and Bama says 5%. W&M 8% and then you get Cornell, depending on which numbers you find, maybe at 20%. Someone may check my figures, but I was surprised.
Everyone I know who went the Alabama route- in real life or on CC- appreciated its merits. Are you going to drive down the street and find (omg) southerners? Sure. But also plenty of others. Same, btw, for Charlottesville.
...University of Alabama, which gave him a great scholarship opportunity. We didn't know what to expect when we visited last summer, but I was totally blown away by the school and the people there.
We, likewise, were totally blown away when we visited Bama’s Honor College. Gorgeous school, and we had 2 amazing tour guides, one of whom was African-American (I mention it because OP is concerned about diversity/discrimination).
Our initially skeptical DS surprised himself by saying he could see himself at Bama. Of course, our springing for 50 yard line seats for a football game after the campus tour didn't hurt...
Roll Tide!
Anyway, while Alabama has a growing and active Hillel and a new temple on campus property, the OP’s D sounds like she wouldn’t like the “rah rah” aspect of Bama.
http://hillel.ua.edu
But for others reading this thread, Go Bama!
Someone mentioned ASU (Arizona State University) - your D could also probably get some merit aid there. https://scholarships.asu.edu/estimator Check out this estimator - plug in her stats and class rank (if she has one).
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ Check out these scholarships. You don’t have to borrow tens of thousands for your D to get a good education.
This is a really useful website listing of schools that offer merit money. There are separate lists for private universities, LACS, public universities:
http://www.kiplinger.com/tool/college/T014-S001-kiplinger-s-best-values-in-private-colleges/index.php?table=all
Click on the “non-need-based aid” columns.
If your DD is planning to continue on to grad/law/bz/med school, then it’s imprudent to impoverish yourself for an undergrad degree.
I get that OP doesn’t want her kid to go to Anywhere State. But I can’t get a read on how much research she’s really doing. It seems like the list just keeps growing with non-safeties. The opinion returned on safties that have been mentioned doesn’t seem (I could be wrong) to be vetted. Just impressions. If you have a motivated, well performing kid, you can’t go on impressions. Nor on ranking reports.
So, where are we? Right now is when many of us feel a search should be in pretty high gear.
Yes, I get that OP is not in love with a “Big State U” kind of place at this point, but realistically speaking, her might need to consider a couple of those if she can get a good scholarships. I don’t think the “we’ll borrow enough for any college” attitude really makes sense, especially if her D wants law school. I wasn’t clear who was taking that debt on - the parents or the D?
And given the employment prospects of lawyers of late, law school could be a very risky investment.
^ ^ ^
I understand and generally agree, although many JDs follow non-law career paths.
You can lead a horse to water …