@PurpleTitan, true dat. And even if a fairly unknown (outside the US) LAC were considered for the quality of the education and the experience, such as Vassar or Bowdoin, the possible need for a UK masters in order to facilitate the job search should be factored into the financial equation.
There has been a lot of discussion about US brand name recognition in Asia, but very little about Europe/UK that I have seen. Maybe that should be a reason for the OP to start another thread.
If OP’s kids are set on attending college in the US, her kids MUST look at match and safety schools. There have been many good suggestions OP, but use a website like College Data and put in your kids stats to see if they have a chacne of getting in. (You will have to figure out US equivalents for your kids grades and test scores.) Coming all the way here and just seeing mega-reach schools is going to result in disappointment. The top schools reject full-pay international applicants all the time, just as they reject the same kinds of US students.
It sounds as if the kids are aware that every US school is at least a financial reach, and matches and safeties are being applied to back in the UK (where most every match with the exception of Oxford and Cambridge can be considered a safety, after all, since UK university admit on academic qualifications only.
^ Depends on how disappointed they would be to attend a top-tier UK uni.
As I said before, it makes very little sense for an American who has essentially guaranteed admits to UVa and W&M at in-state rates to apply to non-elite UK unis no matter how desperate they are to study in the UK (unless those UK options are essentially free).
And with the OPs daughters qualifications, most US matches will be “reaches for everyone”, and true admission safeties simply not worth the OPs money.
@tigerie, that’s exactly right re way we are approaching it /thinking about the process…
@PurpleTitan, @Lindagaf …appreciate this may not be the optimal approach …personally, am learning a lot by listening to all the different perspectives …so thank you very much for sharing … will be factoring in / considering with an open mind … the different points of view …as we go through the process …
@Lindagaf, thanks v much for the website detail …signed up and tested out several of the names on our original list. The ones I tried (e.g., tufts, Wesleyan etc) came out in the “match” space…I Guess a “match” at such Low acceptance rate schools is of no comfort … Will go through in detail later …or am I missing the point on how to use the website
Yes, that’s the problem. Tufts and Wesleyan have very low acceptance rates. To be a comfort wor match, the acceptance rate should be closer to 30% at least. Our school Val was denied at Tufts, perfect GPA and 2370 on SAT. You can’t rely on getting into any colleges below a certain acceptance rate.
With respect to travel logistics, I recommend no more than 2 college visits per day (one in the morning, one in the evening). You could spend much of an entire day touring some of the universities. Driving and walking on hot summer days, and dealing with traffic, may be more tiring than you expect.
Suggested Itinerary (15 to 21 days)
Day 1: fly to Philadelphia
Day 2: Philadelphia sightseeing (all day)
Day 3: taxi to Haverford/Bryn Mawr
Day 4 (morning): train to NYC
- optional: add an extra day in NYC to tour Columbia/Barnard/NYU/other -
Day 4 (afternoon): train/car to Vassar, then explore town
Day 5 (morning): tour Vassar
Day 5 (afternoon): rental car to Wesleyan, then explore town - optional: add 2 extra days to visit colleges in/around Amherst, MA (Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Hampshire, UMass)
Day 6 (morning): tour Wesleyan
Day 6 (afternoon): rental car back to NYC, then NYC museum hopping - optional: add an extra day in NYC for sightseeing -
- option 2: go directly from Wesleyan to Boston (possibly stopping at Connecticut College / Brown U)
Day 7 (morning): train/car to Boston
Day 7 (afternoon): Boston sightseeing
Day 8 : taxis to Boston College and Tufts
Day 9 (morning): rental car to Maine
Day 9 (afternoon): sightseeing in Maine
Day 10 (morning): tour Bates
Day 10 (afternoon): tour Bowdoin
Day 11: rental car back to Boston, then sightseeing - optional: add an extra day in Boston area for sightseeing or additional college visits-
- optional: add an extra day to visit Brown/other -
Day 12 (morning): fly to Chicago
Day 12 (afternoon): Chicago sightseeing
Day 13 (morning): tour UChicago
Day 13 (afternoon): explore Hyde Park, then return to hotel
Day 14 (morning): tour Northwestern
Day 14 (afternoon): Chicago sightseeing
Day 15: Fly to London
I’m not presuming to second-guess the college choices in your original post … but you must realize they are all very expensive and selective. If you want to ratchet down the average selectivity slightly, then along these routes you could add (or substitute):
Philadelphia area: Bucknell, Lehigh
NYC area: Sarah Lawrence
Connecticut: Connecticut College
Massachusetts: Mt. Holyoke (women only)
Maine: Colby
Google can project the inter-city distance and drive times, but be sure to allow extra time for traffic or other delays.
Remember these schools will review her holistically. Stats only reflect a portion of what’s needed.
Whatever you do, be sure to have your daughter take thorough notes on each school, what she liked/didn’t like, impressions, questions, etc. Visiting this large # of schools in a short period of time, the memories will run together I she doesn’t take notes as she visits.
One thing to keep in mind is college tour fatigue. Near the end of our 2 week trip, we/DD started getting tired of seeing colleges and DD wanted to cancel the last two visits. When we went to cancel the interview, the website basically said “we will remember you did this” so did not. That school surprisingly ended up as one of her top 3 choices so she would have missed out on that.
Long way of saying, I would suggest limiting the number of official school visits to around a dozen max. We did drive throughs at schools we happened to be nearby but not sure that was helpful as DD was not that interested in them to start with and applied to none of them.
D16 is a US citizen who applied to US schools from Canada this year. Her profile is otherwise very very similar to your daughter’s. We visited 12 US schools over the course of a couple of years. We spent thousands on those visits. She applied to 10 schools including 4 that she didn’t visit. Out of the 10 schools, she got one admittance, to the least selective school on her list and she may not have received that admittance if she hadn’t tagged a visit to that school onto a visit to another nearby school.
Be prepared for the possibility that she may not get into any school that she wants to attend. If she does get in, the cost of attendance will be 70K+ per year. Net price calculators on schools’ websites aren’t necessarily accurate.
^^ That should be “cost of attendance MAY be 70K+ per year.”
@valent2016 : From my experience, CC stats may be inflated and occasionally exaggerated. Using your daughter’s profile, it’s unclear to me why a top 10%, rigorous course-load student with a 33/780/780 and good ECs would be denied at a school at which the reported middle-range ACT is 28-32 (as can be found in your list), for example. This has nothing to do with whether or not these are fine schools, of course. However, some appear to be fine schools at which your daughter would have a good chance of acceptance.
For a handy list with which to roughly compare the selectivity of a range of colleges, see “The 50 Smartest Colleges,” Business Insider. (An adjustment for test optional schools should be considered.)
@merc81 Have a look at this year’s admissions results for USouthernCal on CollegeData. http://www.collegedata.com/cs/admissions/admissions_tracker_result.jhtml?method=selectCollegeWithDefaultYear&schoolId=1138&classYear=2020&profilesCount=1023 It’s not a lot of data, but it is surprising.
@merc81, denials of profiles like that happen at those schools all the time these days. Plenty with a profile like that get in as well, but plenty are also denied.
A good rule of thumb is that for a school with a 50% admit rate, being above the 75th percentile means you have good odds (given expressed interest).
At schools with a 25% admit rate, it’s chancy for an unhooked applicant.
Arrghhh
With this schedule, the OP will miss the highlights of Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
^ Plus, that’s a 2 week trip, not a 3 week trip. And you miss a lot of the US and Canada that way.
@bouders : The scattegram does indeed appear to show a surprising pattern. Of the eleven students accepted, ten of them reported SAT scores below 2100. And, in one case, an accepted student reported a credulity-straining ~1300/2400 score. My tentative inference would be that the data points themselves are self-reported/unreliable.