I’ve been doing some college tours along the East Coast (my preferred location for schools) and am honestly feeling a bit lost and overwhelmed so I thought I might try here and see if anyone has some good advice.
Right now, my dream school is Yale which is absolutely not what I wanted. I understand Yale is not really a school anyone can count on getting in to and I’m not necessarily “perfect” as far as academics go. What I loved about Yale was the environment, dynamic of students passionate about multiple things, academic structure, campus and community life, and a feeling of just belonging and confidence when being on campus.
I have a 4.25 gpa and my SAT combined score (most recent at least which has improved from a 1490 is now a 1520). I have first attended an all girls catholic, college prep, pretty intense high school on scholarship that I was an active member of the community in for freshman and sophomore year. As a junior and now senior I have moved across the country to study ballet more in depth than I had before on a scholarship through a high up training academy. We dance around 40+ hours a week and are often also rehearsing. While living with a boarding house and doing online school and online AP classes it’s definitely been a unique experience and a challenging transition to still keep up the academics I pride myself in. While ballet was going very well, I am now faced with injury that may take a professional career out of the running for my future. I am also very passionate about perusing premed studies through bio majoring because of a past with being involved in volunteer work for hospitals and family medical related stuff that I plan to go into in my essays. School has always been a huge part of my life for the sake of being passionate about everything and determined to make things work despite a family without the financial means possible to fund most of the huge dreams I have.
Any ideas of other schools to consider or my chances of actually getting into Yale would be appreciated. All I really want is to find a place that provides the same inspiration and passion that I have been lucky enough to be a part of so far in my life.
“The environment, dynamic of students passionate about multiple things, academic structure, campus and community life, and a feeling of just belonging and confidence when being on campus.” The good thing is that Yale is far from the only school that has this and you can find that at many college campuses.
If dance is important to you: Dancers on this site tend to praise Connecticut College, Dickinson, Skidmore, and Vassar. Vassar would be a good match for you and the others would be low matches bordering on safeties, except that you cannot take them for granted because they consider demonstrated interest.
Not sure what else you seek in a college, but the things you said you like about Yale are possibly things you can find at many other colleges. If you give more details of what you seek, maybe posters can give you better suggestions of colleges to investigate.
The reason I’m applying to college in the first place is for if dance doesn’t work out in a company. I have little interest in pursuing it in a college setting, and would much rather be at college to pursue my medical ambitions.
Some other details of what I’m looking for in a college is somewhere that’s either in a suburban or urban area, is around the same size as Yale (I’m thinking like 5-9 thousand is my best range) and I want a walkable or bikeable campus. It is really important to me to have teacher connection along with community involvement and a lot of resources to help students beyond college with med school application and research. I also think I would really enjoy a slightly flexible curriculum (somewhere in the middle of the spectrum) where I can get involved in a lot of different activities on campus. Thank you guys so much; any help is appreciated.
Yes, Rochester and Brandeis. Wesleyan… Wake Forest… William and Mary… CWRU. And Tufts, which is only one notch less reachy than Yale, but if one notch is all you need it could be perfect.
I agree with @aquapt on Tufts. It was the first one that came to mind reading your post.
Ime, you will have more interaction with professors at slightly smaller schools than you are targeting. You may want to visit a few of those to see how they feel to you. Haverford/BMC for example (for your interests).
I think you would like Duke. Durham is home to the American Dance Festival every Spring which could be neat for you.
Durham is like the Brooklyn of the South – very hip and cool and (small) urban feeling. Duke itself is very bike-able and of course the university has tons of resources.
