I mean, SOMEONE out there has to take seriously dismantling the system from the inside, right?
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And they are. There are a LOT of people working in micro-finance right now whose goal is not only to bolster economic development among populations which cannot attract traditional capital, but to dismantle the system which tags certain types of loans as “risky” and others as “not risky”.
Ask anyone trying to get homeowner’s insurance on beachfront property in parts of Florida whether the risk assessment from their lender was at all in line with reality… Not!
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Yeah, joking aside, with the way people often define socialism today, combined with the many ways in which understanding of financial systems can be applied to various problems, from locally to globally and everywhere in between, I actually do assume there are a decent number of college students who would identify as some sort of socialist who are also in some way studying finance.
Now, are they actually majoring in Finance? Maybe not, but on the other hand, maybe? Or at least dual majoring, or doing a minor or concentration or such.
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@roycroftmom I think your point that it’s hard to get in is valid but W&M has a 28 percent acceptance rate for OOS students (according to their own website) and this person’s daughter as a 4.0 unweighted GPA - i.e. perfect grades. She definitely has a shot…and I would say it’s really pretty much a match/target school for her, or a low reach, not a high reach. Our out of state high school gets 2-3 kids admitted every year. Usually one of them is an athlete and usually 1-2 others. Good luck to OP!
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No harm in applying
Socialism and Finance (or Economics) are not opposing concepts, but parallel systems, after all.
Regardless of how ownership is structured, this doesn’t preclude a market economy, a monetary system, and financial markets.
Even Friedrich Engels had success in business.
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This is a long thread. So, I’m not sure if Gonzaga has been mentioned. It is a Jesuit University with no Greek life and a fairly well-regarded School of Dance. At 7500 students, its medium size and overall campus vibe could be a good first for your daughter.
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Even government businesses and regulators need to understand and implement finance.
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They should anyway. 
My D23 is a studio art major and a right leaning moderate. Might be the only one though.
Dance rigor and studio culture are super important to my daughter. We’re completely rethinking our original list. We’re thinking dbl major, dance and academic. We’re pretty psyched about Utah and Butler. Are there any others that you know of that may be worth a look?
Go to the earliest audition you can, especially the October/November ones, since the schedule in Jan/Feb is a nightmare. Some (including Utah) will also let you reaudition if the first one doesn’t go so well. And my D found it was easier to stand out in some of the audition tour events, where there are far fewer participants than the large on-campus sessions.
If you want classical ballet, then Oklahoma and Indiana are the other two obvious schools.
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For the OP, your daughter might decide about her direction in dance in the next year or after summer intensives. It adds a layer of stress to the research process because strong ballet programs (Indiana, Butler, etc.) might not be first choice for academic programs or location.
If she decides to pick a school for an academic major but wants to pursue dance while in college, she needs to research the options. The “best” dance schools might not offer classes to non-majors. There are plenty of schools with many dance classes and opportunities for all levels (audition, non-audition), etc. You might want to check under courses and clubs/activities and then look at instagram to get an idea. Courses can be for credit or just audited depending, and some of the non dance colleges have amazing faculty. But if dance is not your major it can be tricky to fit the classes in with your academics. However, if she has trained at a high level she might decide to take a break from dance at some point. It can feel odd to go from training 20-30 hours a week to just a few classes.
I think psych is a popular and strong major at most (?) colleges but maybe she could look at the faculty and courses offered to make sure any particular focus is available. Many schools have research opportunities available to undergrads.
I understand looking for a collaborative environment and friendly people - after competitive high school d20 realized she was not interested in that in college (but did want the academics) and took Georgetown off the list based on counselor rec as example. But you all get all kinds of opinions on whether a college is competitive or not so that is tricky. Also varies by major.
I know she has visited a few schools - just the ones in NYC? Are you hoping to narrow the list for some more to visit? There are plenty of good suggestions skimming through this. Coming from California I would also consider the actual travel to some of the east coast schools that seem easy with a direct flight but then are 2 hours from the airport, etc. It makes for long travel days.
Good luck in your search!
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Super helpful. Thx
After a few months stewing, ahem, carefully looking at options, here’s a brief update and a follow up question:
Update #1: using availability of pointe classes (available to a non-major if she isn’t doing the BFA route) or strong ballet clubs is a very easy way to narrow the list of options. It has actually been somewhat discouraging, as it’s easiest to find at the sub 10% admittance rate, and not so easy outside of that. I want to do a bit more research before placing that list here, but will return, probably once she has done testing as well.
Update #2: D25 is mellowing out about the Greek system. She still doesn’t want to participate or have it totally dominate the social scene, but it’s become more of a “Eh? As long as I can find my people.”
Question: @parentologist recommended a link talking about clinical psych programs (grad school) and the helpfulness of coming from a “well-respected undergrad instution (and one where they’ve taken advantage of research opportunities” and @AustenNut gave the baccalaureate origins of doctoral recipients. I’ve spent time looking at both.
If it does, indeed, help to come from an undergrad that produces more PhDs in psych (as a proxy for a solid psych program), does it need to be top 10, 20, 50, 100? Obviously, the higher the better, but a lot of them (I’m looking at you, OOS U Mich, Cal, OOS UNC Chapel Hill) are reaches. I would love input on this.
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Quick answer to your psych question-
Your D should spend time with the course catalogue and doing a deep dive into any college she’s considering. There are several pathways in psych- and it will become clear once you see the actual course sequences which programs are designed for kids interested in Master’s programs for school counseling, social work, something criminal justice related, etc. vs. kids targeting the doctorate programs. I don’t want to seem elitist- and the world needs more counselors and mental health professionals of all kinds- but the bar is different at the programs considered rigorous by PhD programs vs. the counseling oriented programs.
Right now she may not care. And she may never care. But if she’s looking for the kind of rigor in an undergrad program that will, in fact, make her a competitive applicant for a PhD Clinical Psych program, there are a bunch of schools which she can probably take off her list.
I’ve seen a lot of kids who started college as Early Childhood majors switch over to Pysch-- and then get a Master’s in counseling. The belief is that is pays more- which of course is more of an indictment of how poorly preschool educators are, but I digress. It certainly sounds more prestigious of your family is in to that.
And these are nice kids and I don’t fault anyone who goes into a helping profession. But there’s just no way on earth any of them would have been competitive for a reputable clinical psych program.
But I think if your D spends time tracking which programs have which requirements she’ll figure this out pretty quickly.
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@blossom , Thanks for this. I’ll have her compare some of the requirements for schools that send lots of kids to psych PhDs vs other schools, so she (and I, because I’m curious) understand the differences.
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Dance mom here chiming in. D24 sounds a lot like your daughter. She is highly academic but also loves dance. She really loved Emory - our tour guide was a dance minor. They have a good dance program and, obviously, top notch academics. It’s in a city but not urban feeling. Campus is beautiful. She liked that she can do dance AND something academic. Greek life is not a big deal at all. She hasn’t committed yet but it does tick a lot of boxes. The other academic schools that had dance programs she liked - Michigan, barnard, wake forest, northwestern and WashU. Emory is the only one of these she ended up applying to for other reasons. Good luck!
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i will say as a prospective psych major and a dancer (although not at nearly as high as a level as your daughter), i remember passing by the dance studio on a clark tour and thinking it was GORGEOUS.
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It is beautiful! Thank you for sharing! We’re still in a waiting period right now, testing, figuring out a list, etc.
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Ok, update here and a modified query after a whirlwind trip. I’ve modified my title to reflect the new priorities. I’ll give a longer summary on each school we visited on the “colleges that moved up/down” thread, but will repeat some of it here in the hopes of getting better advice.
This was intended to be a safety/match trip, and I purposely chose the schools that were smaller than what D25 wanted, because I needed her to see if she could see herself at a smaller school. That ended up not being an issue at all; what was an issue was how she perceived the academic vibe and the level of ballet available. Let me say up front that I know something is going to have to give here, but the schools I originally chose were supposed to have “strong ballet” even if they weren’t producing professionals.
We visited Dickinson first. Details will go elsewhere, but the money quote from the visit was this, after informing me that she didn’t like it. “Mom, it’s not academic enough. I want to be pushed in college. I’d rather have all of us in a class get a C and feel like we’re learning a ton.” I’m not interested in debating Dickinson’s academics, and I know that the (unfortunate choice of) tour guide likely affected her perspective. But we talked about it later, and I asked if we had had a different tour guide if she thought she would have come to the same conclusions. Yes, and she gave other reasons/observations from the info session, etc. For now, at least, we need to move on. But this response to Dickinson through me. Kiddo, this was one of the only matches on your prospective list! I won’t throw the next school we were going to visit under the bus since we didn’t actually go, but I know that it’s academic reputation is lower than Dickinson’s, so cue screeching of brakes, two phone calls, and me looking at Google maps and saying, “Eh, it’s 2.5 hours in a different direction, but you want academic, kid? Swarthmore here we come.”
Honestly, if I had realized how beautiful Swat’s campus was, I might not have taken her. (Not really, but golly it’s easy to fall in love with it.) We had to self-tour bc it was admitted students’ day, but this kid glowed when she saw all the psych labs and what they were studying. Two professors made a point of talking to her: one when we looked a little lost on campus, the other when we were observing a ballet class (beautiful studios and you can watch from the floor above and she waved her downstairs so she could talk to her and offered to let her into the classroom to watch). And the woman at the coffee shop had worked there for over a decade, asked my kid her name, praised Swat and said that while intense, it was a collaborative intenseness. Meanwhile, I’m walking around holding up seven fingers and saying, “You can apply here, but your list cannot be all schools like this.” But for the first time, I saw D25 super engaged–looking up the Christian group on campus, checking the course catalog to see how many ballet classes are offered, volunteering to take the virtual info session/tour when we got home, etc. It turns out (at least for the moment–I give 17 year olds grace to change their minds regularly!) D25 wants a strong academic vibe and will sacrifice other things to get that as long as there’s some reasonable level of ballet. (She also said she got a pit in her stomach because going to Swat means “I’ll never dance professionally”; she’s still in inner turmoil about making those decisions. But I reminded her that she doesn’t need to make those decisions today, and that she can pursue multiple paths and see which one feels right a year from now.)
All this to say, can you help me suggest schools that have more of the “life of mind”/academic vibe? WashU, Emory, U Rochester are on her list now. I’ll re-look at the rest of the Egghead Eight (minus NYU–she really doesn’t want NYC). They all got reviewed at one point and taken off for various reasons, but will re-check. Massive, massive bonus points if they are not a sub-20 admit rate. This girl needs some safeties and matches!
Here’s a tentative list at present (yes, there are huge schools and tiny schools on here). She’d prefer a mid size school (2.5-9k), but this is flexible for either academic or dance reasons.
Hope College
St. Olaf
U Richmond
SMU
WashU
Emory
U Rochester
U Kansas
UCI
UCSB
U Utah
U OK
Butler
IU
Princeton
Swat
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