<p>Hello, </p>
<p>My D is only a HS frosh, but we want to make sure that next year we visit a variety of schools. DD currently has a 3.7 GPA, but we want to compile a list of schools for B students as we never know what can happen over the next 2 years. If the school has an open Dance Dept or dance minor, that would be a BIG PLUS.</p>
<p>ETA: we’re looking at each coast & nothing down south if possible. We live in MN.</p>
<p>BU, Tufts, Duke, Michigan, Wellesley (big department for LAC).</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins and Brandeis, too.</p>
<p>The latter one has a small department, but very enthusiastic faculty. One is known to bring her dog, and cookies, to class. Brandeis also puts a lot of emphasis in study abroad.</p>
<p>St. John’s College.</p>
<p>Tufts and Duke might be of interest but aren’t B student schools.</p>
<p>Smith is an option if you are looking for both a good dance department and a strong classics program. It’s the central school for the Five College Dance major, and one of Smith’s few graduate programs is an MFA in Dance, so there is a good confluence of dancers. Plus the classics program is great, one of the original programs at the college and offers a special classics major only study abroad program in Rome at Duke’s Classical studies center.</p>
<p>If she has a 3.7 as a freshman then she’s well positioned, but she’ll want to make sure to keep her grades high and take challenging courses.</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr and College of the Holy Cross both have excellent classics departments.</p>
<p>Schools for “B STUDENTS” everyone. </p>
<p>Brandeis, Johns Hopkins, Bryn Mawr, Michigan, Duke, Wellesley, Tufts and Smith don’t usually make the list for “Great Schools for “B” Students.”</p>
<p>McGill and Toronto both have excellent classics departments. Both of them would accept an American student with a B+ average and good SATs. I know nothing about dance at these schools, including whether it is offered at all. But they are both in big, vibrant cities, where there is lots of dance happening at all sorts of levels, and have big, vibrant student bodies with clubs and the like, some very serious.</p>
<p>Michigan has a fabulous classics department. Probably not a B-student school, but again, maybe if paired with really good SATs. Probably not easy to minor in dance, but see above.</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr, absolutely. I’m sure Wellesley, too, but I’ve met a lot of Bryn Mawr classics majors and they are ultra-impressive. Bryn Mawr takes students who get Bs in strong, challenging academic programs.</p>
<p>If you look at the recent NRC graduate program rankings, a number of public universities do pretty well, including Ohio State, Iowa, Wisconsin, Texas, and, yes, UM-TC. Also a number of the less-popular UC campuses, Irvine and Riverside in particular. (UCLA is a top school in this area, too, but not a place for out-of-state B-students to apply.)</p>
<p>[Academic</a> Programs - Denison University](<a href=“http://www.denison.edu/academics/programs.html]Academic”>Denison University | A top liberal arts college located in Ohio) Denison (OH) </p>
<p>Has Classics & Dance.</p>
<p>@hudsonvalley - Normally for the B student I wouldn’t put in a lot of the schools listed above, but the OP says his daughter is a freshman with a 3.7 GPA as a freshman. That’s high enough for a lot of these schools, provided her grades remain steady or increase over time and do not decline. And that she has some good EC’s, teacher reccs, etc to make a well rounded application. So I think everyone was responding to the GPA that he gave, which would make alll of these schools appropriate.</p>
<p>St. Olaf has both Classics and Dance.</p>
<p>Surprised that no one has mentioned Pittsburgh</p>
<p>I second Bryn Mawr and Smith. Not for the “B” student exactly, but these schools have outstanding academics and rather high acceptance rates (right around 50%), making them attractive match/safety schools for many women. Their acceptance rates are high because, as women’s colleges, their potential applicant pool is half the size of coeducational LACs; compounding that, many women will refuse even to consider a women’s college. As for classics, Bryn Mawr has one of the strongest programs in the country. Smith is also very good.</p>
<p>This method of college selection often isn’t terribly helpful. A good many schools will be overlooked (Barnard is a glaring omission thus far), and lots of schools with strong classics and dance programs vary considerably in selectivity, cost, location, and campus climate. Without specifics (college size, location, estimated EFC, etc.), it is difficult to provide accurate suggestions. </p>
<p>It’s also useful to know post-college plans. Does she plan to become a classicist? A professional dancer? A lawyer? The strength of the program(s) necessary will vary depending on her plans. Some schools offer dance as a regular arts & sciences major (e.g. Scripps); others offer it in a separate school (e.g. NYU and FSU).</p>
<p>
It’s too early to be visiting specific colleges of interest, I think. The best (and cheapest) thing to do at this point is to simply visit a few colleges in the area – perhaps U Minnesota, Cornell College, Kalamazoo, etc. </p>
<p>Visiting often helps students start thinking about what they want in a college. Urban or rural? Small compact school or large sprawling school? Large Greek scene or none at all? Co-ed or single-sex? Residential campus or off-campus housing? Once she has those criteria figured out, it becomes much easier to create a suitable (and shorter!) list.</p>
<p>^ I agree with much of what warblersrule says, and would add that focusing on a particular major with a HS freshman may not be so helpful. My own D1 was very clear as a H freshman and sophomore that she wanted to major in classics in college. By the time she actually applied as a senior, however, classics was at best a secondary interest. That’s not at all unusual. A strong majority of college students change majors at least once, and HS students’ academic interests tend to be even less stable. So I’d take the present expressions of interest in particular subjects with a very large grain of salt. On the other hand, visiting a few schools that do have the current major of interest might be a good way to start the ball rolling on the criteria-refining process warblersrule describes. We visited quite a few colleges beginning when D1 was a HS freshman and it triggered just that kind of thinking, which made the actual college selection process that much easier when the time came.</p>
<p>I second Holy Cross–very strong department, especially relative to the college’s size. Also, Villanova has a 5 year bachelor/master’s program in classics if she decides she’s interested in pursuing a graduate degree in that area.</p>
<p>I know you said you’d prefer colleges not in the south, but the University of Dallas has an excellent classics progam, and admission would be very doable for a B student. It’s a small Catholic college in suburban Dallas. Worth a look at their website.</p>
<p>Yes…UDallas has an excellent Classics major.</p>
<p>
Duke’s “down south.” 
Has an open [dance</a> program,](<a href=“http://danceprogram.duke.edu/prospective-students]dance”>http://danceprogram.duke.edu/prospective-students) though.</p>
<p>UMASS Amherst has a good Classics department and offers Dance as well.</p>
<p>A B student will not get accepted at Holy Cross. 67% of accepted students at HC are in the top 10% of their high school class. The remaining 33% are recruited varsity athletes for the 27 sports teams the college sponsors with a 3000 student body.</p>