Northwestern questions

EmmyBet
Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:11:43 +0000

My older D applied ED to THE ONE school that felt so right it was a like a rock hit her in the chest the minute she walked on campus. Research only reinforced that feeling over the next two years, and we let her apply ED. She got in, went there, and was very happy. She also knew she could have been happy at other schools, but she had no regrets.

D2, while just as passionate about going to college, knew she needed her entire senior year to decide what was best for her. She loved several schools, for various reasons. The two she loved best had fall auditions and ED options, but she knew she wasn’t ready to apply nor commit at that time. She did apply EA and rolling to as many schools as possible, but her choice took until May 1, including a prolonged decision period after she was accepted to one school off the waitlist.

Your D might love both of these schools enough to commit ED to one of them. But if there is any chance she could have a “what if” experience or simply would just like more time to think about where she wants to go the most, I don’t think ED is for her. When admissions rates clearly favor ED applicants, that is only a tipping point between ED and RD if the student was considering ED at that ONE school already. I don’t think it’s a good strategy between two ED schools, since as has been said above, the statistics aren’t really reliable. Plus, even though NU does not audition, it is absolutely unclear how they factor in the student’s resume when deciding whom to accept for the theatre major. I think that nullifies percentages, for those kids.

As for choosing between NU and Brown - I think if your D doesn’t know now which one is clearly better for her style, because no one can tell you one is a “lesser” school, then she just needs to do some personal searching before she decides. My Ds both weighed a lot of factors - curriculum, location, size, “style,” etc. - in choosing a school. D1 found everything she was looking for in one school, much to everyone’s surprise. D2 found different things at different schools; one school that probably “had it all” ended up rejecting her, and the schools that accepted her were all on different spots in her spectrum of needs and interests. She had to think and consider (repeated visiting was not really feasible) and ultimately take a chance by choosing the school where what it HAD was more important to her than what it DIDN’T have. In the long run, this has played out very positively for her.

My opinion that a kid who has done extended visits to two schools and still can’t decide which she likes better needs some time to decide what is THE most important long-term factor, or to let a gut feeling emerge. I know your D will do very well and end up someplace great. In your shoes I’d go with RD for both - and some EA and rolling as other options - and let her spend her year digesting this important decision. While I appreciate as much as anyone the fear that a school you love will reject you, that can happen for so many reasons that the needs of the student, in my opinion, really do end up being most important.

Another factor: I recall that the NU application required a significant “Why NU” essay - if your D can’t write this with a fully empassioned voice, at the level at which they would expect an ED candidate to, I wonder if she might realize she’d rather apply RD, when she wouldn’t have to sound like she doesn’t want to go to any other school.