edited to delete incorrect info which I had shared about IU Honors and Jacobs School. As corrected by @AustenNut below, Jacobs ballet students can do Hutton Honors for their College of Arts & Sciences work.
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deleted bc I was more blunt than I should have been on a public forum.
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This is incorrect. Students majoring in any college across the university can participate in Hutton Honors College. To remain in Hutton students need to either be on a pathway to graduate with honors (i.e. a Latin notation based on GPA), honors within their department/major (including Jacobs, Arts & Sciences, Kelley, etc), or to earn the honors notation which is based on taking a certain number of honors classes (it used to be 15 or 18 credit hours, but the current minimum is unclear). That said, my sense is that the majority of honors classes are within the college of arts & sciences, but these classes qualify as fulfilling distribution requirements for graduation.
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Both dance and Psych are strong at UofU and the honor’s program is great. Academic vibe is fine - it will be higher in honors classes and some upper-division psych classes, but there will also be non-academic kids mixed into every class.
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Hi. My DD is looking for a high level of dance, a dance minor, bio major, a mid size school, social and economic diversity, not in the NE, not rural, good merit aid. No test score yet but 1/150 class rank; 4.0 gpa and 4.8 weighted. Any ideas?
You may have better luck starting your own thread to get more eyes on your question, but Butler was the first school that came to mind.
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Is your dancer focused on one genre of dance? That can influence the list a lot. If it’s not ballet, I’d definitely start your own thread, as I find that there are more high level modern/contemp dance programs than ballet.
It’s not ballet so will do. Thanks.
Not off the top of my head! My D looked at very different things - we are a high need family so we were looking at meet needs schools as merit was pretty unlikely to get us where we needed to be without good need-based aid as well. She wanted small, not mid-sized and preferred the northeast. So pretty much the opposite of you! Northwestern would be one to look at if her test scores are also high, but not sure if they do any merit. Others would know better about schools like IU, etc., that have strong dance programs but not sure about minors instead of a bfa. Good luck!
My D was an unhooked OOS student who not only got admitted, but as a Monroe scholar with a 4.0 UW, very high verbal SAT score and significantly lower math score. She did apply ED so that might have made a difference (but since she got the Monroe designation I’d like to think she would have been admitted RD). She is now finishing her junior year. I think the school has become even more competitive but I do think your D does have a decent chance, especially as W&M does like geographic diversity for the students who are OOS. If your D has a solid SAT or ACT score it might help her chances of admission. My D is not heavily involved in dance anymore (took ballet sometimes up to six days per week growing up) but does take ballet classes as W&M. She is not a fan of modern/ contemporary ballet for herself so she is not further involved. She does love the school! She was on the fence ( more negative than positive) about Greek life but in the end did join a sorority sophomore year. As someone who does NOT like social exclusivity myself, I will confirm that her sorority experience has been very low-key…a nice, but minor part of her life. Her best friends and apartment mates are from different sororities/no sorority. It’s not a school where friendship lines are drawn by Greek life! Her S. O. Is not in a fraternity. i think the so-called “top” two or three sororities may fit the stereotype a bit more but there are seven or eight that are very down to-earth and, I’m sure, count many non-Greek students among their friends. My D is also in a non-Greek honor service fraternity ( gender inclusive) that she seems to spend more time with. Her freshman roommate ( now apartmentmate) is involved in a Christian fellowship group that seems to be pretty open-minded.
I do think that St. Olaf could be a very good school for you to take a close look at/visit. It checks a lot of boxes. We didn’t visit as it is far from us and, well, pandemic limited the number of schools we were able/willing to travel to. It was with regret that I let that one go . No regrets now, W&M seems to have been a near-perfect fit for my D (who thought she was sure she wanted a LAC). Feel free to PM with questions (my D is a campus tour guide… she can fill me in on almost anything I don’t know 
).
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In reading more of your thread, I will amend this somewhat regarding dance at W&M My D’s most active ballet years (5-6 days per week) were in middle school but geared down in high school because we lived too far from the better pre-pro classes she supplemented our local options with. It was just too far to attend these better classes every day. Without moving to a different city she simply could not have gotten the pre-pro schedule and quality she needed to advance. Even so, she auditioned into the advanced ballet class at William and Mary though her technique had gone downhill in her high school years. If your daughter is very serious about dance (especially classical) W&M may not be enough for her. Its contemporary dance offerings may be at a higher level, though, I really can’t speak to that.
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WM is mainly a modern/contemporary program at this time and does that very well. My son dances with the company and takes the highest level modern class. With the new facilities open, there are plans to expand the dance program and add a major.
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June, 2024 update:
Junior year is done! Yippee!!!
GPA: UW 4.0, UC weighted, capped 4.4, UC unweighted 4.9; CSU GPA: 4.7
If you include frosh year and PE, her weighted GPA is somewhere between a 4.4-4.7, depending on if you count the concurrent enrollment as 2 grades/semester or 1.
SAT: 1430. She really wants 1500+, so is planning on testing again.
Here’s where we stand now:
Safeties:
Hope College
U of South Carolina
Muhlenberg
Elon
Matches:
St. Olaf
Dickinson
other options: Loyola Marymount…and we’re still struggling with this part, so would love thoughts!
Reaches:
UCI
UCSB
U Richmond
USC (legacy)
WashU
Princeton (legacy)
Duke
Swat
all ballet program artistically (U Utah, U OK, IU, Butler, SMU, TCU)
Note: will she probably apply to nearly all the UCs just to have some options, even if they don’t do dance well? Yes. Will she apply to some Cal States (Fullerton has the strongest BFA with ballet, but we will likely throw in a number of others) to increase her options? Yes. Do I think a few of the reaches will get dropped as she starts to do apps? Yes again.
I confess that I’m a bit concerned that after the top ballet programs (IU, U OK, U UT, Butler) that her next choices are SMU and TCU, bc I’m not at all convinced that these are cultural fits for her. A casual friend of hers graduated from TCU and said, “Yeah, D25, I think you’ll be ok if you’re in the dance dept, but if you aren’t, it’s probably not the school for you.” I’m not sure how to read that. She has to visit these schools to audition when they are in session, so we can at least do a vibe check then, so I think I’m just going to ride this one out.
If her top choices don’t pan out, and since I call them the “Ivies of the ballet world” they are unlikely, I’m not sure if there will be a massive mourning and then a 180 to focus on academic schools that don’t have high level dance (looking at you U Rochester, Emory, W&M, Rice, Case Western) or not. I know she can’t picture her life without ballet, even if she doesn’t ever go pro. I think we’re in for a wild ride over the next 6-9 months!
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Try to find some ballet auditions in October/November to give you an idea, and then you’ll get some feedback before December deadlines.
My D did UT Austin and Utah on campus auditions in late October/early November (Utah is always the first weekend in November). Both let her know by Thanksgiving, even though she didn’t have formal acceptances at that point.
Then Jan/Feb were hugely busy, with 1-2 auditions each weekend. Fortunately several had tours with visits to SF and/or LA. She did auditions with UCSB, UCI, IU, Oklahoma, Butler, Utah (again, she was waitlisted the first time), Fordham and Julliard (didn’t get invited to USC auditions). Dance acceptances at UCSB, UCI, UT, Fordham, Oklahoma (but modern only) and Utah. U Mich was another she was recommended to consider but didn’t apply in the end.
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@Twoin18 , do you happen to remember which ones came to CA? I just assumed there would be a lot of plane flights Jan/Feb, but staying (anywhere) in state would be a gift!
Yes, the only Jan/Feb OOS travel was Oklahoma and IU, all others were either SoCal or NorCal. I don’t know if audition tours are still quite as extensive post-pandemic, but the colleges with summer intensives usually had a tour as those are moneymakers and high schoolers aren’t as willing to travel for auditions. It’s great to audition for college admission alongside younger students auditioning for summer intensives, because it’s easy to stand out.
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Hi everyone! I’m back; it’s hard to believe that nine months have past since the last post, that D25 has made a list, applied to schools, and gotten all her results! Because I really appreciated seeing end results for others’ kids, I wanted to update how it all went here. Before I do, though, I should say that D25 changed a lot from when I started this thread. She decided that she wanted programs that weren’t solely focused on classical ballet, so while she did apply to some of them (change is hard), she found herself gravitating to schools that had more ballet + modern BFAs. She also decided to apply to a number of schools that had BAs + strong academics in case she either didn’t do well with dance auditions or wanted to prioritize what those schools could offer.
In hindsight, she overapplied to non BFA dance programs. I would not have changed the dance audition applications. But she’s my first kid, I thought she might fall into “average excellent” territory and be rejected by all reaches, and I really wanted her to have more wins than losses. And, honestly, she says she would do the same thing again, because it didn’t feel predictable.
She was accepted to 23/25 schools academically and to 6/10 audition based BFA or BAs. The remainder of the dance programs did not require an audition.
Accepted (including artistic, if separate):
St. Olaf (merit+dance scholarships) COA: 36070
UCSD (Regents) COA: ~37476
Hope (merit) COA: 38160
U of South Carolina (honors college + merit) COA: 38404
Muhlenberg (merit) COA: 38574
UCI (Regents) COA: ~40234
UCSC (Regents) COA: ~40621
Utah–accepted for modern, WL ballet (merit) COA: 45590
UC Davis COA: ~46764
UCSB (Chancellor’s Reception) COA: 47038
Dominican/Lines (merit) COA: 47375
Point Park (merit) COA: 52850
Dickinson (merit) COA: 58372
U Richmond (merit) COA: 65847
WashU COA pending
Swarthmore COA pending
UCLA COA pending
William & Mary COA pending
Accepted academically but denied artistically (so she could technically still go and major in something other than dance, but this is not appealing to her):
Butler (merit + honors) COA: 39070
TCU (merit + honors) COA: 58072
SMU (merit + honors) COA: 59678
Fordham (merit) COA: 69898
Waitlisted:
Princeton
Denied:
UC Berkeley
We are grateful she has so many great options. Thank you all for being part of the process.
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wow - that’s an embarrassment of riches. Lots of choice. now to choose 
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