Well, except for the womens’ colleges. 
Since the OP said that her daughter was interested in Barnard, perhaps some of the other 7 sisters should be on her radar. Barnard won’t require calculus, but has gotten very selective (admission rate currently around 15% or so) – so a reach or at least a gamble for everyone-- but Smith, MHC, & Bryn Mawr all are excellent schools that might be very appropriate targets as match schools.
@swtaffy904 – I’m curious about something – you wrote:
Many of the reach schools you are targeting are quite expensive and do not offer merit aid --so while I agree with @MYOS1634 that Bard is more of a match than a safety - I am puzzled as to why it would present a financial barrier whereas apparently you are not concerned about Tufts or Wesleyan.
If your concern is that Bard does not guarantee to meet full need – keep in mind that it does meet full need for its strongest applicants. So if any school seems like it is “safe” based on stats, there is also a fairly high likelihood of getting a generous aid package. If you are looking at stats as to average need met, you would be misinterpreting those numbers.
Have you run the npc on each college?
@melvin123 As for EC hours, I do think there are kids who can do it all. I know kids personally who have probably 30 hours of ECs per week and can get straight As in honors/AP classes. Our S19 is friends with a student like this. The student is just super bright. Doesn’t need as much time as S19 to pull out all As. It’s actually pretty remarkable.
S19 works his butt off for those grades. He has more like 20 hours of EC per week. I also think an EC that can be done on the weekends is easier. Our S19 doesn’t get home until 5:30 from XC/track for the whole school year and has maybe four-five hours of homework. He’s typically in bed by 11:00 because he is nose to the grindstone from the time he gets home until the time he goes to bed except for a quick shower and a quick dinner. He doesn’t have as much going on for the weekends (maybe a committee meeting or photos to take for yearbook or an art piece to complete) so his pace is more relaxed on Sat and Sun and he doesn’t have more than 4-5 hours of homework for the weekend.
Our D21, who is about to head into high school, is a ballerina and dances each weekday from 5:30-9:30 and nine hours on the weekend. She will take a study hall next year. So, she will have one hour in school to do homework and from 3:00-5:15 to get more work done. I expect she will have about another hour when she gets home. Hopefully, she will also be in bed by 11:00.
My point is that kids can have heavy EC loads and get good grades. But…there’s very little social time outside of the ECs, no Netflix, and very little to no down-time on the weekdays. As long as they love their ECs and see them as also their social time, it can work. And they certainly have to be able to focus when they are doing homework (no phones near them!) and need enough sleep! Their schedules are driven by them, not by me or my husband, and we’ve told them they can cut back on their ECs if they’re struggling. We keep a close eye on any stress.
I will add, too, that my husband and I support the kids in their ECs and recognize their demanding schedules. We keep the house quiet when they are working. Many times, my husband will sit near them and do work while they work and I’ll do the same. I think it makes them feel like we respect how hard they are working. And it’s great to chit chat now and then during their homework time to see how they are doing. I’m a math tutor and I’ve been in houses that are loud and crazy and that situation is NOT conducive to kids being able to focus.
One of my kids is a dancer and didn’t do senior year at all. She got a GED and later an online diploma. Admissions seemed to love her as an “outlier” There are many ways to appeal to admissions but the main thing is to live your life as you would without the admissions factor. Then instead of fitting the kid to schools, you can fit the schools to the kid.
Any student who is stressed before the mega stress of senior year should probably downgrade something and I personally feel something like drama is more valuable than taking calculus, unless she is going to be an engineer.
I agree that Drama is more useful to her as a future Humanities ‘major’.
Ok, hard to respond to everything here. I am new at this. D and I will sit through this week and weigh out pros and cons of her schedule. Likely she will add calculus at some level. Will also look at switching AP Psych to AP Euro instead. Or keep the AP Psych if she does AP Calc. In her school 3 APs are full rigor.
She does many many hours of EC. ALL her choice, not mine. I have suggested less this club or less shows, she loves theatre and wants to minor in that (which also greatly affects the school choices). Up to now I have mostly let her make the decisions and it has been fine.
I should mention that we have all decided she should mostly take the summer off. She will have a small job but otherwise relax, be with friends and work on college essays and such.
My #1 priority is a happy healthy kid so I will make sure I keep that in front of my face at all times.
As for school choices again I recently found this site, thank God I did! I had no idea about NPC and ‘middle class donut’ and all the things I am learning. So we thought Bard was a safety because she could likely get in. I now realize it is not a safety financially. We have started looking for some true safetiys that meet all the criteria.
New ones I want her to consider are Clark, Wheaton, UConn and U Rochester.
As for other women’s colleges Smith and Bryan Mawr are both very, very much on the table. I would be thrilled if she went to Smith. More importantly she is also interested in Smith and Bryan Mawr.
First of all, it’s Bryn Mawr – not Bryan Mawr. They offer merit to a maximum of $30K, I believe.
If she is willing to look at all-girls schools, Mt. Holyoke offers up to full tuition. I’m not sure if Smith offers merit; I know that Wellesley does not. Wesleyan has one full-ride merit scholarship for playwrights/theatre-makers (thank you, Lin Manuel Miranda). Other schools with good theater programs that offer merit include Muhlenberg, Oberlin, and USC.
Seconding Muhlenberg for theater.
AP Stats, AP Euro, AP Lit, Drama, Foreign Language 4, an elective science and a fun class (is theater tech available?) would be a great schedule. 
Alternatively, Honors Calculus, AP Euro, AP Lit, AP Psych, Drama, Foreign Language 4, and an elective science (unless Psych “counts” for science) would also provide plenty of rigor.
Either one of the above without elective science but philosophy through dual enrollment would also work. (Added bonus: it’s a semester class, so she could take it SPRING semester, after she’s done with her apps in the Fall, and it’d count since it’d be on her schedule for senior year. And in essence she’d have a free period in the Fall without decreasing rigor.)
Yeah spell check brought it to Bryan Mawr. I am aware that it is Bryn Mawr.
I heard that Muhlenberg was focused on musical theatre. Anyone know if that is true? D has already said she doesn’t want theatre that is in the shadow of MT.
@MYOS1634 both is those schedules look good! Her last class is honors orchestra (violin player).
Did you mention your D’s SAT score? You said she took it in May, so how did she do? Also, maybe I missed it, but I stil don’t understand WHY she is planning on taking AP calc rather than regular or even honors calc.
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend a 2nd semester dual enrollment unless a student has either an EA or ED acceptance in hand at a school that works for him/her, as the combination of accepted student visits and senioritis might be a killer. Also, if OP’s D is vying for competitive merit requiring scholarship “weekends” (that are never on the weekend and can kill 3-4 midweek days plus travel) would make a dual enrollment class less than optimal.
Yes she got SAT results. She got 1490, 760 eng, 730 math. Essay she got 7/7/7. I felt that’s it, one and done. She wants to do it one more time in august to see if she can get math up. I’m not convinced it is worth the time. I’d rather her focus on applications but I am not going to fight that battle.
@Lindagaf she is trying to work in 3 AP classes. Already has one in English and will do one in history. Her language canceled the AP level
I thought AP psych was an option? If she already has completed a lot of APs, having three senior year isn’t going to tip anything in her favor.
So she actually doesn’t have a lot. Her high school doesn’t offer them before junior year. She did two junior year and was aiming for 3 senior year. The AP Psych is through history department. Currently she is signed up for AP Psych and AP Lit.
Got it. So if the school offers only limited APs, she is not going to be penalized for that. Our school is much the same. Sophomores can only take an AP with permission, and maybe only ten kids do that. Juniors and seniors take APs, but there are only so many a kid can fit in a year, especially with scheduling conflicts.
I would think that your daughter would be a solid match for Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, and Smith. They all offer merit, which it sounds like she may have a chance for as well. Is she a good violinist who wants to continue with orchestra in college? She may want to contact the conductors to set up meetings with them. Admissions interviews are recommended at these schools as well if you can swing it. If you’re looking for merit, it can only help to show each of these schools that she is interested and would be able to contribute to the college community.
The other remaining “Seven Sisters”, Barnard and Wellesley, have lower acceptance rates and don’t offer any merit.
For someone strongly interested in theater - who likes Bard-- another possibility is Sarah Lawrence. Quirky, so may or may not fit what your daughter wants in a college – but currently has around a 50% admit rate. Does not guarantee to meet full need but can be very generous with some students. (As a general rule of thumb, colleges which leverage their need based aid or combine it with merit aid can be more generous for those students who it most wants to attract – though the extra dollars offered often come at the expense of other needy students who are “gapped”. This is called preferential packaging-- and is just one more wrinkle on the financial aid game).
And back to the financial “safety” issue – will you qualify for need-based aid? Or does your D need merit aid to meet your budget? The “top” schools tend to be more generous with need-based aid, but difficult for merit aid, whereas schools that are less selective can be far more generous with merit aid for top candidates.
Maybe the first step is for you to figure out what your college budget is and to run a FAFSA calculation to determine what your likely FAFSA EFC will be.
“Will also look at switching AP Psych to AP Euro instead”
At least when my daughter took it, AP Euro was a LOT of work. I refer to it as “the hardest A- that I have ever seen in my life”. Some of it (such as John Law and the Banque Royale) was interesting to me and might be applicable to understanding today’s situation, but there is a lot to read and a lot to learn in AP Euro.
My daughter assures me that premed organic chemistry was harder, but that is faint praise for the ease of AP Euro.
“If an admission officer told you the first thing s/he looked for was calculus, s/he was either 1)very idiosyncratic or 2) trying to provide you with an element that’s make sense to an audience s/he knew would consider this reassuring doe their progeny, all of whom were likely on track for calculus.”
This was given to a general audience, and even if you don’t want to believe this AO, the OP said that Weselyan was a top choice for his daughter and they specifically mentioned Calculus on their website.
“Just like all-humanities-ap’s wouldn’t be expected from a kid with a clear stem profile, calculus and AP science are not expected from a humanities kid. And yes AP foreign language, philosophy, etc, absolutely ‘equals’ calculus for admissions.”
"You’ll find examples at all top LACs where a kid with a strong humanities and social science background will be preferred over yet another kid who took calculus.
Again, that’s debatable, I talked to an A/O from top LAC (not Harvey Mudd) about a student that was going to major in history or international relations and she said, we don’t care about AB or BC, if you have the opportunity to take Calculus, do it. So they realize that all schools don’t offer it. But LACs get a lot of applicants take calculus, APUSH, APLang and a AP in science.
“The real way it’s done at most privates is not ‘look at transcript for calculus’.”
Ok, take a look at this from an A/O blog from Tufts:
See the line where she says:
“Yes, AP Statistics and AP Calculus are both advanced level math courses, but you and I both know which one is harder. (AP Calc is harder. There. I said it.)”
AP Calc is given the respect it does because AOs know it’s hard.
“Starting high school in Algebra1 and finishing in honors pre-calculus would be seen as strength.”
As I’ve said before, that’s totally fine, but it’s not an advantage but neither would it be a concern, the issue is not taking calculus when you had the chance to.
“I honestly think it’s silly to go through major stress due to one reach college where odds of admission are by definition very low.
It’s much more important to find 3-5 colleges with 40+% acceptance rates that are affordable.”
The question is what do AOs think of Calculus not whether we think it’s important. AP Calc along with APUSH AP in a science, AP in a language and APLAC are the gold standards of high school courses. You don’t need15 AP courses, students are taking too many, I don’t think anyone would disagree with that.