I’ve already rambled about Scripps on this thread, and it’s not on your list currently, so I assume there’s a reason for that. But there’s plenty of intensity to be found at the Claremont Colleges. The strong dance department is at Scripps, but she could apply to Pomona and still take dance at Scripps, if she wanted the most Swarthmore-like school of the five. (Although she could take classes at all of the colleges, no matter which she attended. My Scripps kid took more Pomona classes than Scripps ones, because her primary major was based at Pomona. That said, she did not note any clear difference in “intensity” based on which campus offered a given class.)
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D25 has not been overly enthused about women’s colleges, which is the only reason Scripps isn’t on there. Scripps (and Barnard, for that matter) feel different, because they have interactions with co-ed colleges while still having the benefits of women’s colleges. I’ll talk to her about it again. Thank you!
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There are a lot of Scripps students who didn’t initially think they wanted a women’s college (my kid included)! Whether it’s a downside or best-of-both-worlds is a very subjective question. But in terms of looking for academic intensity with more than one digit in the acceptance rate, women’s colleges (and Scripps in particular) can be a good option!
That said, Swarthmore gives a really good ED bump! 
ETA: Also, FWIW, Swarthmore and Pomona have a domestic exchange agreement, although it only gets approved if there’s an actual counterpart-student on the other campus willing to switch places for the semester in question.
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My daughter was accepted for Psych/Dance at Emory. It is a wonderful school, and extremely diverse in its population if that is an additional plus for you. The dance program is great, and they were very supportive of her application. They invite you to come and take a class with them, or send a video. Their dance program is stronger in modern, but the dance faculty is very qualified and gives great summer opportunities to its students, most of whom will not be professional dancers. The school’s academics are A+. Emory is not a huge party school, which some people consider another positive aspect. There is plenty to do in Atlanta, however! You can send me a private message if you have any specific questions. My daughter decided not to major in Dance and to go for a more traditional college experience.
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Don’t know the first thing about Ballet, but when I think life of the mind, not sub-20% admit rate, beyond those you’ve listed, I think of St. Johns (MD or NM) - which is probably too small for your daughter - Reed, Oberlin, Lawrence, Earlham … I think (like Swat) the the life-of-the-mind vibe is easier to get at smaller LAC’s than larger schools, though not impossible.
At larger schools, you can almost always find pockets of students that are intensely interested in the life-of-the-mind, and that have a subculture that I suspect your daughter would love - but that is often harder to find or see on a campus tour (where the presenting culture might look quite different. So that might be an important discussion with your daughter? Some less known schools with a culture of small classes and faculty mentoring might be surprisingly good for your daughter.
Another way to look for options for life-of-the-mind schools is to use the percentage who go on to get PhD’s. I am perfectly aware that not at all life-of-the-mind kids want to get PhD,s but I think the obverse is largely true (most kids getting PhD’s are really interested in the life of the mind), and as a crude measure, it can be enlightening (and you’ll be SURPRISED at some of the schools on these lists). You can look at raw numbers, or adjusted per capita. I don’t have the links with me off-hand, but I’ve posted them before on CC, as has AustenNut, and many others…
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Have you considered Vassar? Good dance including ballet (the rep company includes at least a couple who did professional training prior to college and there are multiple levels of ballet offered each semester ), as well as good academics - acceptance rate is probably a bit below 20% for RD but in the ballpark. Ignore me if you’re already considered and decided not for you - it’s a bit different than others on the list but if she liked Swat …. I would not look at oberlin for a kid interested in serious ballet - they have a good dance department but very little ballet. Maybe Skidmore? My D didn’t like the feel of the school so we didn’t explore further but they have a large dance program. Smith if she changes her mind about women’s schools though we got the impression that you had to really lean on the consortium to get enough dance at a higher level. Temple would be an easier admit but not sure about the academics. Good luck - academics and serious dance are a hard combo to find!
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@kaslew , I have spreadsheets with the PhD in psych, and I made columns for raw numbers and numbers/size of school for the last few years. I’ve just pulled it up, and will take a deep breath before reading over the lists again. I totally agree that you can find subsets of life-of-mind kids—especially at larger Us where I feel like you can find your group regardless of what those needs are—but the smaller the school gets, the more wary I am of asking her to find a sub-group. She has not ruled out any large universities that have strong ballet at this point. In fact, after she had nixed Dickinson, her next comment to me was “Maybe I need to look at honors colleges at big schools.” I am a little daunted by that, bluntly, as honors colleges appear to run the gamut on what they entail, but am willing to try to help her suss it out. On that note, does anyone know about the honors college at U of South Carolina? I had initially put it on her list as a safety (the school, I don’t know about the honors college admissions) and then she was told externally to take it off bc “it won’t be academic enough for you/ the reputation is that there are many kids who go there to party and aren’t serious about school”. Maybe that person was wrong?
@Juno16 , I had her read about Vassar and she wasn’t drawn to it initially. I can’t remember why at this point. But it fits other criteria. Given the weekend’s upheaval, I think it may be worth a re-visit. We actually visited Skidmore on Friday. I had high hopes ahead of time. D25 watched at Ballet III class and was really disappointed at the level of skill/rigor of the class. It turns out the Christian group on campus is <=20 kids, D25 thought the campus was ok, the food was ok, and D25’s overall impression was “It was fine, Mom.” The psych department looks amazing, though. It might stay on the list, but we went to St. Olaf the next day and she liked it significantly more, so I suspect it will fall off. If the ballet were stronger, she’d be happier to keep it on. I think her hopes for what a non-serious BFA program will offer are probably too high. So while I’m crossing places off, I’m doing it in pencil. I think that’s why Swat surprised me so much. I think the ballet was probably roughly the same as what she saw at Skidmore, but something about the place made her happier to compromise on it. Skidmore did not inspire that willingness to sacrifice.
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With respect to honors colleges, I’d take a look at IU’s as it also has the ballet that your D wants.
With respect to U. of SC honors program, have you seen this thread? Is South Carolina Honors truly as amazing at it seems?
I’ll think more on other possibilities that might work for your D, but can you share which schools (besides Dickinson) have been penciled off as not being the right fit for your D (whether for academic vibe or other reasons)?
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Thanks, @AustenNut. I hadn’t seen that U of SC honors thread.
Oh, boy, I’m not sure how far to open this can of worms about what has been penciled out, but will list schools that had ballet to what I hoped was an appropriate level and seemed to have strong enough psych programs. The parentheses are admit rates last time I looked. Some of these are on, as noted below, others are off, or I’m unsure of now.
Hope (80)–on list
Loyola U Chicago (77) ?
Muhlenberg (68)–now off the list
Creighton (78) ?
U of SC (62) ?
U of KS (92) on?
Chapman (70)–this is really not ballet based, so isn’t really on, but I was reaching for safeties…?
Calvin (75)–no sig ballet but strong for psych
Tulane (practically safety if ED) (not worth doing RD 8, ED 68) probably off, since I don’t think she’ll want to ED there.
SMU–on
TCU on?
Ithaca College–D25 didn’t like what she read about it in Fiske. I could push her to reconsider.
Marquette–would have to do ballet off campus which is not ideal
Baylor (46)–ballet club
Matches/lower reaches:
Dickinson (34)–now off
Denison (28)–does not have ballet to any appreciable level–off
St. Olaf (39)–on.
Skidmore (23)–off?
U of Richmond (24) on (this is more a reach than a match)
Case Western (30)–modern>>ballet
Scripps (28)
UCSB (29)
Brandeis (39)–
Wake Forest (25)-off due to culture fit
UCI (28)
College of William & Mary (28) good fit intellectually; would need to focus on modern
Florida State (37) modern = ballet
U Rochester (38) ballet off campus
SDSU (38)–modern>>ballet
I’ve researched other schools, but I’m not sure you want the whole spreadsheet.
Of the four true ballet schools (Indiana, Butler, Oklahoma and Utah in roughly that order from 1 to 4), I’d say Indiana and Utah have the best academics (though IU is a super-challenging admit for ballet, unless you are a guy, IIRC they look for 12 male and 12 female dancers each year). Utah also has an honors college, though D found it was time consuming to complete all the requirements for honors alongside a double degree (unlike regular GEs, you can’t use APs to get credit for honors requirements).
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William & Mary and Rochester are both on your list it appears, but seem like solid options.
I know nothing about Dance but Kalamazoo seems like a Psych college worth checking out if at all workable.
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Given her new-found willingness to compromise on size, I’ll look into Kalamazoo. It previously fell into the way-too-small category.
Kalamazoo is in close proximity to Western Michigan U which is quite large. Opens up the number of college students close by. There is also cross-registration between the two campuses.
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Thanks for sharing your (narrowed down 
) list. First, there’s no need for your D to apply to a huge number of schools. I’d recommend a minimum of 2 sure things that she’d be happy to attend.
Then there’s the number of strong ballet programs (6? 4?). There’s obviously no guarantee that she’d get into any of them, but then I think @twoin18 said somewhere that if a dancer’s not getting accepted to the top programs, their chances for going on to dance professionally are pretty slim.
Then there are the other schools that really interest her, of which Swarthmore seems to be one. There’s no need to fill up all 20 Common App slots (especially when thinking of all the essays that some schools require). Your daughter might end up only having 10 schools on her list, and that is totally fine. Or maybe she’ll fill up all 20 common app and then move to the coalition app to continue to apply to more! But basically, I wouldn’t be afraid to have a smaller number of schools if she’s happy with them (and there’s at least two sure things that she likes).
For some of the schools, I just don’t know enough about them to know if they’re sufficiently academicky, as I would have thought that Dickinson would have been, based upon what I’ve read. And some of the schools I’ve thought of are already on the list (or penciled off!). But we seem to have a shared trait of wanting to search high and low, behind every bush and under every rock, to make sure we’ve got the best list of possibilities. So with that said, these are some more schools your family may want to investigate:
These are big schools that your D may want to consider, and to see what their honors colleges are like:
- Ohio U. – Their honors college is tutorial based, I believe.
- Rutgers – New Brunswick - @DadOfJerseyGirl might have more insight, though I believe that the honors college here is very selective
- U. of Arizona: Well-reputed honors college…there are 7100 students in the honors college, so she would hopefully be able to find her tribe even within that larger group, though perhaps it’s too big of one for her tastes?
- U. of Florida
- U. of Iowa
- U. of Oklahoma
- U. of Wisconsin – Madison
I know that you currently have U. of Kansas on your list and I’d keep it in consideration (in addition to these). Wisconsin, Florida, and Rutgers would not be sure things, but the others would be for general admissions, and I’d check whether for honors, too.
If thinking about small to mid-sized schools, then here are some others to consider:
Highly Likely Admits
- Goucher
- Bennington
- Gustavus Adolphus
- Beloit
Mid-Difficulty Admits
- Connecticut College
- Kenyon
- Smith
- Loyola Marymount
Hard Admits
- Wesleyan
- Hamilton
- Johns Hopkins
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I could be mistaken, but it appears WMU has a pretty well-regarded dance program, including in ballet.
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My son is in the modern dance company at William and Mary and is involved in other student run dance groups. Feel free to message me if you have any questions about dance there.
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I know you just came back from MN, but has she considered UMN? Great in psych and a stong dance program (not sure about ballet or specifics). They offer a BA, BFA or minor.
I’m sure she’s already seen this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYut0NME_Lg
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I just checked. Sadly, Kalamazoo has no dance–no dance major, no dance minor. I get that she could cross-register at Western MI, but for something that is a huge part of her life, I’m not sure that’s ideal. Will ponder more.
I had UMN on the list earlier. The ballet is pretty much non-existent, although modern is very strong. We literally ran out of time this trip, but it’s still loosely in the background bc I realized it’s ~10 min (something like that; I can’t remember exactly) to St. Paul Ballet, which would be great training assuming they’ll let her participate.
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If thinking about Minnesota, I’d also think about Gustavus Adolphus, which also has a dance major (though I don’t know how much is ballet vs. not).
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