MATCH ME: female STEM (math/science/pre-med not CS) with ADHD, 3.4 UW/1380 SAT [PA resident]

Chance Me / Match Me
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@arewethereyet.24 all my comments are based on the idea that your D does not get selected as a soccer recruit. If she does, it’s a totally different ball game. That said, she needs to have options if she doesn’t play varsity soccer in college.

From the schools in the original post, here are my guesses as to your D’s odds of acceptance. I am not an admissions professional, and these are just my guesses.

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

Likely (60-79%)

  • Clark

Toss-Up (40-59%)

  • Dickinson

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • Brandeis
  • Oberlin
  • Union

Low Probability (less than 20%)

  • Bryn Mawr
  • Case Western
  • Franklin & Marshall
  • Lafayette
  • Lehigh
  • Skidmore
  • Smith
  • U. of Richmond
  • William & Mary

Very Low Probability (less than 5%)

  • Bates
  • Bowdoin
  • Colorado College
  • Davidson
  • Haverford
  • Hamilton
  • Vassar
  • Wesleyan

As previously mentioned, I have serious concerns about the lack of schools in the likely and extremely likely buckets. Folks have offered numerous possibilities. Has your D looked into any of them? Can you share what attracts or repels about any of those options?

The extremely likely schools should form the foundation of a college list, and I think it would be best if she found at least a couple that she likes and would be happy to attend. That way, regardless of whether she gets a recruitment offer or an acceptance to a highly rejective school, she knows that she will have a choice between happy landing spots. It can be a serious comfort and source of stress relief when going through the recruiting process and/or the college admissions waiting purgatory to have some sure things that she’d be happy with. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to prioritize this part of the college search.

Since OP did such a nice job keeping us updated with the older kid, I’m optimistic we’ll get updates with #2, because we are DEFINITELY feeling invested here!

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Right now, I’d say her focus is more on demographics overall - “who else goes there, where is it, what will it feel like to be there, are professors connected and do they know my name” as much as “what do they make me take” and “what could I study while i”m there?” And, of course, is there a craft store within 5 miles? As of right now, planning a big tour over spring break in a short while that will include a peek at Wooster, Kenyon, and Oberlin, SUNY Geneseo, Union, Ithaca, and WPI, which I just discovered has an incredibly interesting looking Architectural Engineering program that can be converted to a 5 year masters program. Even though “SLAC” is what we think is best for her best chance of success with EF, WPI isn’t too big and offers some incredibly cool approaches to both interdisciplinary learning and hands-on learning that I find really appealing - so hoping to give her context so that when we throw apps in, she’s OK with it. Also, I don’t want to waste energy on a set of apps that are for schools in areas she is disinclined to spend 4 years. So we’ll explore and make sure she likes what’s there, and could see herself there. E.g., she dislikes how Dickinson is right in Carlisle but it’s “OK” and she could live with it because she likes other things about it. Strategically, if recruiting leads to a dead end, she would probably ED to a top choice school, and then for her “target/likely” list, at top, Dickinson (they accept a good number from her school with less good stats), F&M (they don’t reject from our school - many with far lower stats are in, her current SAT is at their 50% mark and I expect she will have a higher SAT score going forward), William Smith and/or Ursinus would be “safeties” at the moment I think. That’s from our existing list. We are visiting a few other schools, as mentioned, that may change this equation. I also think she’d be a likely at Skidmore due to her sister being there, them wanting a STEM population equal to their arts/humanities, and their overall approach to creativity and neurodivergence. But I could be wrong. And I’m pretty sure she’d rather not attend her sister’s school, even if it was a perfect fit (likes to cut off her nose to spite her face, does my second born). For the safeties, really hard to gauge what she’ll do. I think she’ll be stubborn and won’t apply places she genuinely would refuse to attend for whatever reason. And that was my point about “what’s a safety anyway” – because a weird essay, or sudden yield protection, or whatever, and what should be a solid in is not. Using her Naviance account for her school, the “collegematch feature” using her GPA that’s in the system is 100% Match for Whitman, Ithaca, Bryn Mawr (she’s being recruited here), College of Wooster, Conn Coll, Colorado College, Wesleyan, Skidmore, Juniata, Muhlenberg, Bard, Davidson, Sarah Lawrence, Air Force (like what?), Bentley, Denison, Dickinson (potential recruiting here), Depauw, Berea, Bucknell, Kenyon, Stonehill, Clark, F&M, Lafayette, and Clarkson, among others, and “safeties” are Luther, Endicott, Wash & Jeff, Randolph, Quinnipiac, Illinois Wesleyan, Beloit, Elon, St. Olaf, and Elizabethtown. I’ve never heard of many of these, I have no idea how Naviance comes up with these things, and just really am struggling with how splitters like her are evaluated. Lots of work to do still. Think we’ll know more by the end of the month when she gets SAT scores. Whew! Thanks @AustenNut for always getting it, and for keeping focus where it should be.

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Thanks for sharing some of the info from Naviance. If you bold or call out the names of the schools you’re not familiar with, there are folks here who can probably give you some intel on them. I’ve heard of these schools, but then I am slightly college obsessed :wink: . But there are some excellent colleges on the list.

I’ve never interfaced with Naviance, so I can’t help you there, but I would definitely reach out to your school counselors to get their feedback on interpreting your school’s results.

(Like maybe your school has very low settings to determine a “match” as in, there was one student five years ago who had similar stats who got into the Air Force Academy, but that kid was also the captain of three varsity team sports, an Eagle Scout, and had hundreds of hours of community service helping disabled veterans…so we have a student who matched your kid’s stats get in, but it’s super hard to get in, so we’ll call it a match as a very made up hypothetical). Additionally, they will have context about the students getting in to these schools and if there are extra factors that influenced an admissions decision, and they may have a better idea of how “splitters” like your kid do, and which schools prefer a higher GPA/lower SAT split as compared to a lower GPA/higher SAT split.

True, no school (barring schools with auto admit criteria) are guaranteed admits, but when a school with an 85% acceptance rate is much less likely to provide a surprise rejection than a school with a 50% acceptance rate or a 35% acceptance rate. But that’s another good reason to have more than one extremely likely school on one’s college list. If there does happen to have a shocking rejection in there, the other school is still likely to end in an acceptance. Additionally, as you may recall with your older kid, getting an early acceptance also qualifies as a “safety,” so even if a school might otherwise be a toss-up or whatever, once you get that admit, it’s a guaranteed option. So looking at schools with rolling admissions is another good thing to keep in mind.

Is she looking for few requirements? Or broad distribution requirements that are easy to find some class of interest? Or schools that will take her AP or DE classes to fulfill her distribution requirements? (It doesn’t sound like she wants an extensive core curriculum, but let me know if I’m misinterpreting her statement.)

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How long are the spring breaks where you live? Unless your D’s school gets 2-week spring breaks (if so, call me green with envy!) then this itinerary seems as though it could produce some touring fatigue, and opinions on later schools may be declared less on the school itself but rather its order in the spring break tour. How gung ho is your D about touring various colleges? Is it something you think she’s going to love every minute of, or is it something that she will likely need to have plenty of “vacation” breaks away from?

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@goldbug had some epic college visit trips, including one that went through some of those same Ohio schools. If she’s still around, she may have a good perspective on getting the most out of a spring break trip visiting colleges.

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In the end, will she find it (WPI and/or others) appealing and if not, the trip was still worthwhile. You go to find what you do and don’t like so the don’t matter too!!!

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She does better when she’s interested, and I suspect she will want to have more autonomy in choosing what she takes - but I also think that she will find college classes interesting so it probably won’t matter?

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So we are bookending some things around some soccer dates that are kind of locked in at the beginning and end. Starting in OH for 3/28 visit to CWU, and stretching through a few full days to land at Colby on 4/3. We’ll get SATs the day before we leave, which could cause us to totally pivot a bit. Luckily, D loves to drive, so good road tripping, with good music and/or books on tape and flexibility on the itinerary, it should be OK. Working in a day of skiing in Maine for her, and a swing by her sister at Skidmore, to keep it interesting. We tend to do OK as a family as explorers, working in “fun” stops as we go. A good number of the visits won’t be long visits - probable drive throughs with a quick walkabout kind of stops - just to get eyes on the space and the location - and a kinetic feel - and at a few we will schedule official tours and that should keep it interesting. Every single new place is a new data point - her brain was kinda built for this kind of assessing. But I remember well from our oldest that there can be a “sameness” that creeps in that can be hard to be objective about. We tend to take a lot of videos, and that helps with later re-review (and memory).

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Great trip. On the videos, make sure to recurs her immediate reactions b4 u leave. Yes, kids tend to forget it as you call it sameness - so you don’t just have videos of the place but her, right when we are about to leave, reaction to revisit when you need to rightsuze the list.

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Jumping in late here with a couple of thoughts based on our winter break trips over the last couple of years.

  1. On both trips we massively ran out of steam by the sixth day or so and the last couple of schools we saw suffered by comparison.

  2. She sounds super STEM-focused and I’m glad you’re going to check out WPI. We were advised when we were looking for my STEM-focused ADHD kid that the heavy humanity core courseloads for some of the LACs on our initial list could be problematic.

  3. We spent a lot of time falling in love with LACs that didn’t offer engineering, only to have our son eventually decide that engineering was in fact what he wanted to study. If you’re thinking of paring down your list, that + soccer considerations (recruiting and/or walk-on potential) might be useful filters.

  4. As you think about the process of adapting to college and becoming more independent, consider this micro-detail: is she on meds for ADHD? if so, look into how easy it is to get and refill prescriptions. This is the kind of thing that can stymy a kid who’s playing a sport AND doing a lot of homework – remembering to request refills, figuring out how to get to the pharmacy before they close, and (in states like MA in particular and maybe others?) you really don’t have much margin for error. If no meds, disregard.

We liked a lot of the Ohio schools. Oberlin had such a great little college town, summer internship funding, and a lot of academic freedom. Wooster was cozy but felt a little comparatively provincial and I think that independent project requirement can be rough for the ADHD kids. Kenyon is lovely but feels pretty isolated unless you have a car. And it’s quite humanities-focused although the science departments we visited looked close-knit and active. Case was our favorite of the engineering schools we visited during S25’s senior year. Make sure you go on a tour of their maker space building (you have to register for it separately.) Based on what you’ve said, I’m glad you’re also checking out Union. The facult seemed VERY hands-on and excited to engage with their students.

Links to my visit reports:

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You may be doing this already, but I’d be focusing almost exclusively on the recruiting at this stage. So visiting schools/doing ID camps at schools where your daughter has coach interest. This alone is fairly overwhelming, without adding nonsoccer schools at this point.

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I live in CT, and my family lives in Ohio. I’ve done that drive between Ohio and the east coast many many times. You have a lot of driving time in this trip…a lot. I personally think you would be better served to do a Midwest tour (the Ohio and nearby colleges), and a second tour of the schools further east…here is why.

It is often suggested (and I agree) that you should get to the college tour destination the night before the tour and have a morning tour. That way, you are not rushing in the car to get someplace in the morning. Have your tour, and drive to the next place (unless you are lucky enough to be close enough to two colleges and can spend the night in the same place…I don’t see that on your itinerary).

We did couple of 7 college trips over 10 days…and even with that, we found that any tour in the afternoon really wasn’t a success. And as noted, by the end of both trips, our kid was done with college tours and info sessions (many of which seem very much alike).

You also want to allow enough time to at least explore the towns where the colleges are located…have lunch perhaps and see what is there. If you need to rush to hop in the car for the next destination, that won’t be possible…and it’s an important component of the college search, in my opinion.

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I hear you, and as I said before, we are traveling between ID Clinics for soccer in Ohio and, potentially, Maine (that’s the plan for now but in a few weeks will know whether we are adjusting that part of it) that are fixed dates in geographically disparate places - the driving is broken up a lot by stops, including seeing friends from last summer’s precollege who live near Worcester, and I don’t expect to be doing “official tours” at most of the places. We are a big driving family, as a rule, tend to drive more than fly so I don’t think it will be terrible, but we are keeping it flexible with, in many cases, not even hotels booked in advance to give us flexibility. The coach interest piece is tricky because her team wasn’t in good position to showcase - so she isn’t an “i saw you play” recruit. She has been working the system through emailing coaches with film and concentrating on the academic fit of the schools – so it’s a little bit of both is I guess what I’m saying. She has to like the school to pursue the recruiting, and that’s some of what we’re doing with this trip. . . exploring location and fit before pursuing recruiting with a number of places.

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Yeah - we “vlog” about what we think, funny things we remember, quick initial impressions etc. They are goofy, and really just to jog the memory but also to record the physical plant - good and bad.

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Has she tried looking at the online tours that many colleges have? Or looking at videos that people share about the campuses and/or surrounding areas? If many of the stops won’t include tours of spaces and other interactions with the university to find out about school-specific opportunities, then online tours/videos may help to narrow in on what your D thinks is likely to be acceptable to her, as this seems to be a an important component for her well-being.

One school you mentioned via Naviance that I’m not sure has been mentioned here is Endicott. Based on some of the things you’ve mentioned, I think it could be worth investigating. There are about 3200 undergrads so it’s a relatively smaller school, but there is more of a focus on being prepared for a career after graduation. Students are required to have at least three internships (one of which lasts a semester) and they have a senior project as well. They have majors in Architectural Studies and Interior Architecture, with ABET-accredited programs in Bioengineering and general engineering. With these types of majors, it’s unsurprising that they boast about their maker spaces. If your D decides she’s more interested in the “pure” physical sciences, though, I’m unsure if this would be as good a place for that kind of preparation. Endicott is located in Beverly, 20 miles north of Boston with views of the ocean from the campus, which seems as thought it would might appeal to your D’s love of natural beauty. I think Endicott would be a likely admit for your D.

Another school that she may want to consider is Roger Williams (RI). It has about 4k undergrads and has a NAAB-accredited architecture program (though it appears they’ve switched from a B. Arch to a B.S. in Architecture with an accelerated M. Arch that follows). It’s also ABET-accredited for computer science and general engineering. It appears to offer more robust programming in the pure sciences (than Endicott) as well, and its location is right on a bay leading to strengths in marine biology as well. The gen ed requirements also appear to be quite broad with students taking at least one course in each of the “themes” of writing, creativity & the arts, global perspectives, systems thinking, social inquiry, and quantitative inquiry. For a student with a lot of intellectual curiosity, these “requirements” seem as though they’d be pretty easy to fulfill. I’d classify Roger Williams as an extremely likely admit for your D.

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FWIW, since I noted the wanting assistance with EF issues stuff - WPI has recently launched a program called PEAK that is for personalized EF coaching (info here: Office of Accessibility Services | Worcester Polytechnic Institute) We haven’t partaken in it (my WPI kid is dyslexic and ADHD, but his EF skills have improved enough that this wasn’t a need for us), but I’m on the parents FB page for families that use the Office of Accessibility Services, and the one person who has reported back there about this new program was finding it helpful. Looks like the PEAK program has weekly hour long check ins - which shouldn’t be too challenging to accommodate - if not during the rest of the day, all classes have an afternoon break to allow for clubs to meet or sports, so there will be free time every afternoon/early evening. (This is not true at every school; my younger boy is at Clemson and he often has class in the 4-6pm time slot, with exams scheduled for 7 pm. It’s hard for him to focus in those later sessions, so if that’s an issue for your child you may want to either (a) ascertain if the school does or doesn’t have those and (b) if they do try to get an accommodation for early registration to avoid the evening class or a morning test time or whatever it is that you need.)

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I just wanted to add that the last part of junior year and senior year was when S23 made the biggest advances with EF. The list of schools we were thinking he’d apply to sophomore year looked very different than the schools he ended up applying to senior year. I think the hardest part was for me to recognize that he wasn’t his ADHD and that improvement was possible. I think we had just gotten so used to thinking that he was never going to actually follow the darn rubric or write his papers in an organized manner that when things changed we were a little slow to change our expectations about where he could thrive (we knew he could survive many places, but we wanted a place he would thrive).

At this point, I don’t think a very long list of schools is a bad thing. She doesn’t need to apply to them all. Just have them on the radar so that you can adjust as needed a year from now. It’s great that she’s gathering information about what she likes/doesn’t like and cuts can be made later as you fine tune where you think she will thrive. Or, more importantly she thinks she will thrive. Turns out, S23 was right when he told me he wanted x,y and z in a school even though it’s not where I originally pictured him.

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I can’t figure out how to edit my original post, but came back here to note that after 2 SATs in March and April she has earned 1510 superscored SAT result. Looks likely that she will be 3.4/3.9 GPA by end of Junior year. Adding some schools to her list after visits and recruiting and list is looking more like:

Reach/Unlikelies - Wellesley, Smith, Wesleyan, Bates, Colorado College, Haverford, Case Western. Will likely employ ED1 and ED2.

Target - Brandeis, Bucknell, Bryn Mawr, F&M, Kenyon, Lafayette (haven’t visited yet), Lehigh, Skidmore.

More Likelies - Clark University, Union, Wooster, Conn College, Dickinson, Univ of VT (maybe?).

Based on the above, are any similar SLACs or even medium sized schools you know of that I’m missing?

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You wrote in the first post - we should qualify for aid. I didn’t see a budget anywhere else. On these privates, have you run any NPCs. If you have a budget, that does first - before you apply anywhere - to ensure schools will hit.

Then you want to see - who has services that meet the need of the student’s ADHD.

Have you done that?

Can you re-update - i looked at a bunch of posts and didn’t see answers.

A school list without ensuring at least one will and others can hit budget - is not really a worthy list.

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Totally fair point. Most NPCs come out about the same for us and the differences won’t be signficant enough to be outcome determinant. Once we see what packages look like, it may sway an outcome, perhaps, all other things equal but $ is not a current influencer for our list. In terms of services, from the school we’ve looked at nearly all have disability centers, and all have tutoring centers. Having the smaller classes/close relationship will facilitate comfort in using accommodations to the extent she needs them. Very few schools have what she truly needs in terms of EF but where they do, it is noted as a plus in their favor. Mostly focused on stem environments where she can find herself more fully, and thrive.

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You might look at this thread for some names - go back about 25 messages from the end to start. You’ll see some merit $$ and COAs.

I think you’re in better shape than you think - some kids with not as high stats are getting in places with money - likely less students. You are mainly (not totally) in blue states - you have Ohio on there - but then I’d add Furman (in a red state), Allegheny, Ithaca, Hobart, Gettysburg, Kalamazoo as buyers - meaning they are paying up. There’s many more but that’s some. You have UVM - so why not UNH?

Can more graduating/graduated seniors do “actual results” threads? - Chance Me / Match Me - College Confidential Forums

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