They are hard to come by since Covid and increase in applications.
In our experience smaller LACs rarely offered EA, only ED.
Last year, at least, there was unrestricted EA at Macalester, Colorado College, Soka, and a few others. Some schools offer both ED and EA. But I know things change from year to year so my info could be out of date.
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I suspect she’ll apply to Fordham, Clark and Sarah Lawrence - all have December EA, and all would be targets (and I think she has a very good shot at 3 for 3 for those).
Wheaton (MA) would be a safety, and they have EA, too.
I’m not sure what her final list will be, but we’ve been working on it together, and I have a good sense of what she’s looking for.
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Agree! And if applying I would submit a portfolio unless they tell you not to. Also overall acceptance rates can be much different than specific major acceptance rates. So your safeties may not be so for her major.
She can tour if accepted and has no other college options that are preferable. HOWEVER, if that school tracks demonstrated interest, then given two equal candidates and one spot, they will choose the one who did show interest, by visiting, meeting a rep, signing up for emails and opening them, contacting admissions if applicable, etc… They’re going to admit the kid they think will enroll over the kid who threw an app in for the sake of it. I’ve met a lot of kids over the years who didn’t get into schools they considered safeties. A LOT of colleges care about interest, even if they accept 70% of applicants.
You can check section C7 of the college common data set. It will indicate if interest is considered. Just Google it. If the college isn’t far away, I’d strongly suggest a visit.
Both of my kids visited safeties before applying. It was good because they both liked them and knew they would be happy there. They both got into safeties and reaches. In fact, when my son strongly considered his safety, I insisted he do an overnight to be sure he liked it, and that’s where he ended up. A lot of kids end up at their safety, so don’t dismiss it.
A safety school ≠ a bad school.
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In our experience it was common for smaller LACs to have EA.
Thanks, but she’s looking at liberal arts schools where you do not apply for the major.
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Its the “not far away” part that’s the problem. We live in Virginia. One example of a school that I think would be a safety is Wheaton in MA. That is not an easy visit, and we’d have to knock a different school off the visit list to make it happen.
Wheaton is smaller and more remote than she wants. I don’t think visiting is going to change that for her at all.
My original question was whether virtual information sessions, etc, could be enough. We understand about DI - just asking whether we actually had to do a physical visit.
My younger daughter has a chronic illness and needs more attention, so we need to reign the “visit” list in. The week of MA and CT over spring break needs to become a 3 day weekend in and out of Boston. The extra one-off trips requiring a hotel stay needs to be reduced from several to one or none. I understand she may need to attend a safety school - we just may not be spending $$$$ and time touring them.
I don’t know if you addressed this elsewhere…are her target schools affordable? It’s a great idea to do the targets EA, as long as they are affordable. Affordability is the third rail of college admission.
I agree with others that you don’t necessarily need to visit all the safeties you are considering…but it also sounds like you haven’t identified any true safeties yet in this process.
A safety (as commonly understood on CC) is affordable, guaranteed admission and the student would be happy to attend the school. It’s not a safety if your daughter would feel disappointed if she had to go.
That’s why safeties can take longer to find. Most people can find 2 out of the 3 conditions (pick any combo), but finding all three can be challenging. It might be a good idea to go back to drawing board with the safeties.
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She can show interest in other ways, as mentioned. Has she done that?
It seems Wheaton isn’t a great choice for a safety. If she’s interested in Wheaton, there are some schools closer by that might fall into the safety category.
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That’s fantastic she is so invested.
I think it’s fine to visit far away safeties after she’s been accepted but I would suggest she compromise on the small class size though and add at least one in-state public option that is affordable that has her major if there is one. It’s not going to hurt to apply and things change. She might decide to stay close up home. And in-state options are generally easier to visit. After COVID you just never know what’s going to happen. Good to have one option close to home in case the world goes to heck again.
Up until two weeks after high school started last year my D22 was sure she wanted to go to school overseas and had even rearranged her senior year class schedule to make sure she could meet certain requirements but she kept looking and thinking about things and ultimately decided she did want to stay in the US. Until Deptember or so she was seriously considering some schools in the Midwest ( we are in NC) and I was trying arrange a road trip on her fall break so we could visit them but then we visited a small in-state LAC and she fell in love with it. She ended up at that school, but also applied to two in-state public schools (one big) as safeties and two other LACs OOS that were targets (but not the Midwest ones). No reaches. She got in all of them.
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So glad everything worked out for your daughter!
Small class sizes are non-negotiable, unfortunately, due to learning differences.
I have sort of an out of the box idea of a college your daughter might be interested in. Lake Forest College in Illinois.
It has self designed majors so even though it doesn’t have a film studies major, it could still work for her because she could create her own film studies major. Especially with their Lake Forest in the Loop internship/studies program. They have partnerships with Columbia College Chicago as well as Art Institute of Chicago where Lake Forest students can take classes/do internships and live in the loop (in Lake Forest College housing) for up to 3 semesters I believe.
This would give her the LAC experience, the small class sizes you are looking for (and they tout their academic advising plus success coaches in the career center) as well as close proximity to Chicago (about a 45-50 min train ride from down town Lake Forest to get to downtown Chicago), and the ability to take film classes from Columbia and Art Institute.
They also have very good merit aid. I don’t know if that would be something your daughter would be interested in, but it might work.
ETA: They are also rolling admission (I think) so she would have answer fairly quickly. And getting to Chicago fairly easy via plane from most places.
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Bee, that’s creative, and I’m impressed - thank you! DH and I want her closer than that, but we know we can’t have everything.
I appreciate everyone’s concern that she doesn’t currently have safeties that she loves. She’s just a junior, and she’ll need to make compromises when she finalizes her list (in 10 months). I’m really not asking for help identifying other safeties, though. I just wanted feedback on the necessity of visiting safeties at the expense of visiting other schools (which also track interest).
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No worries, and as I said, it was pretty out of the box. But there may well be other LACs closer to home that offer those kind of partnerships that she might be interested in. Going beyond just the schools with dedicated film studies major may help find safeties she likes better. SLAC are great because of the flexibility they often have to help students create their own personalized majors.
I don’t think you need to worry about visiting schools in person if you really can’t afford it (time and money). Most people can’t spend either of those for the luxury of searching residential college. She can show interest in other ways, I don’t think most, if any schools actually expect all their applicants to be able to visit in person.
I think the interest issue really come in for ‘safeties’ when people think of target/match schools as safeties. It’s the schools (the CWRUs of the world) which aren’t really safeties for anyone but some think they are safeties (due to stats) that come back to bite applicants in the bottom. If the schools on her list are actual safeties, don’t worry about getting there in person.
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There are plenty of kids who didn’t get to visit any college during COVID and just had to make a decision based on the virtual tours and YouTube videos so you definitely dont have to visit all her safeties. But I do think that visiting schools was hands down the best thing for helping my D22 make her decisions. Might not be the thing for another kid, but it really helped mine.
I would encourage you to start now and work in as many as you can around the other needs of your family, even if it’s just a casual drive-by. We eliminated a couple that way. We also visited some over the summer and just walked around on the campuses and didn’t do an organized tour. If you’re somewhere on vacation or visiting relatives and there’s a college nearby if it works out to spend an hour walking around on the campus or just driving by that can be really helpful.
We visited VCU over the summer when it was locked down and my D22 and I really liked Richmond a lot. She definitely would have put that on her list if it had been in-state, but didn’t make sense $$ for us.
If your D would be interested in a women’s college Hollins might be worth a look. We have a friend who is there and really likes it. It is a very supportive environment. They have a Film program.
Would Mary Washington or Christopher Newport work for her? They are smaller. Maybe Mary Baldwin? Another friend got a big scholarship there. Great for theater, not sure on film.
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We did one college visiting trip with each kid, and only hit four or five schools each. The goal was for them to see different kinds of campuses and schools to learn what they might like. We didn’t visit every school either one applied for. The fact is that we live way off the beaten path (SE Alaska), and there was no way to visit more.
My D20 found her ED school on her tour and is happy there. My D22 was only able to do a self-guided tour at the school where she she wound up. It all worked out. We saw tours as a way to look at types of schools, rather than as a complete exploration.
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It doesn’t seem that you have found safeties that she will like, and I think you answered your own question about whether or not to visit. If previous safeties came off her list based on visits, and visiting the new safeties won’t change her perception of them, why are they on her list? What will her response be if/when she is accepted?
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OP- why does the entire family need to go? Your D can visit a college on her own, have admissions set her up with a student to host her in the dorm on an air mattress, so the only expense is bus/train.
I did the “official college tours” with all my kids- but then new colleges popped up, and spouse and I were out of vacation time so the kids did some schools (particularly ones where the Greyhound/Amtrak connections were easy) on their own. Admissions offices were great about facilitating the visits- they understand that hotel rooms and food for an entire family is a budget buster for most people.
So no- the entire family does not have to visit. But it really makes a difference in senior year if your kid has at least one safety they are honestly and truly excited about!!! And don’t forget- March/April is really, really busy for HS kids. How many accepted students days can a kid visit? The decision window is pretty narrow, and there are school commitments going on every single day and weekend as well.
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Excellent point. From my own experience, I saw…um…elements of the colleges that I might have missed if I were with my parents everywhere.
(This doesn’t change my advice to “wait and see”.)