My child was admitted to, and then took a gap year from Bates for the reasons that @NiceUnparticularMan posed - burnt out, needed a break before going back so school, wanted to gain some more life experience and maturity before returning to college. It worked out great - both the gap year and college once they enrolled the following year. Bates was very supportive of the year off, and it was incredibly easy to make the request to take the year, and then to re-enroll once it was time the following year. I’m not saying you should definitely take a gap year (and certainly don’t do it try to get admitted to other schools, as I agree with others that is very unlikely to be successful). Whether you take a gap year or not, please try to embrace one of these wonderful schools. They are both fantastic in very different ways, and you will truly be able to accomplish any of your long term goals from either school.
You are not being annoying and your feelings are really common! I’m happy you came here to vent and get support, and hopefully some new perspective about how much you have really achieved with your wonderful acceptances!
FWIW, GU Qatar is “easier” to get into than either Bates or Davidson with a 20% acceptance rate vs 12-13%.
I don’t know if campus visits are possible since you are abroad but trust us when we tell you that many US students would be beyond excited having these choices.
I hope you will take a day or two and process the sting of not getting into Princeton and then start getting excited about where you’ve been accepted. Do a virtual tour, look at student videos online, do a deep dive into the 4 year plan of study for your major, look at clubs and activities, ask to be connected to an international student on both campuses, and also start thinking about location (ME vs NC have VERY different climates and Davidson is closer to an international airport for transportation purposes) and vibe (Bates will skew more liberal and Davidson more southern conservative). Both will be very academically rigorous and both campuses are stunning!
I wish I could reach through the screen and give you a big hug! I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but you really have a win win situation here with two incredible schools! I say, job well done!
First of all, please get therapy.This is not a flippant comment – I feel like your family has warped your perspective about your own worth and the true meaning of success.
Second – you have two fantastic options. Lean into them! My daughter is a very happy junior at Bates, and I can’t imagine a more supportive and welcoming environment. Davidson is also a fantastic school (I just know less about it from personal experience). Both of these schools will give you academic rigor and all of the opportunities you could want – you just have to take advantage of them. If it came down to just these two, you have two fantastic choices – lean into one of them and don’t look back.
ETA: To be rejected from Princeton is not failure. It’s the expected outcome. Princeton could probably fill two or three classes – all equally qualified to the one they end up with – from the students they reject. It’s a crapshoot – a game of chance – and to lose a game of chance is simply the likeliest result of playing.
Assuming that Princeton admissions will not change its decision, to which colleges and universities would you apply if you took a gap year ?
And, why would you apply to each particular school ?
Do not let an admission officer who never met you and who reviews you application for 10-15 minutes change the way you feel about yourself, your goals, etc. It is fine to be upset for a day or two but then it is time to take a deep breath and move forward. Hopefully you have some nice and affordable acceptances.
No college guarantees happiness and success.– that is and always has been within you.
Disagree with the idea of starting a college with the intention of transferring. This will stand in the way of the OP developing friendships, creating relationships with professors,getting involved in ECs, etc. Then if a transfer doesn’t work out the OP is stuck.
Both excellent colleges…really excellent. Either one of these would be an excellent choice for a strong student.
Great tier gaps? She applied almost exclusively to schools that are reaches for everyone. My question would be why there weren’t more tier gaps and why there were no true safeties (maybe she thought Kenyon was a safety, but even though it has the highest admit rate of the schools she listed, I’m not seeing that as one of the schools she was admitted to – maybe she was admitted and isn’t considering it). If she had her heart set on Princeton, it is worth asking why there weren’t more colleges/universities that might offer a similar experience (size, setting, research opportunities, vibe, etc.).
But we can presume that OP made her choices for a reason. Don’t start college with a plan to transfer – what a waste of a freshman year! OP has fantastic options that will prepare her to do anything she wants. Sure, transfer is an option if it doesn’t work out. But don’t step into college with one foot out the door.
No, you don’t. Their is no one you need to impress, there is no one you must prove your worth to. You don’t owe that to anyone, not even your parents. You don’t have to prove yourself. You are enough, and your acceptances are enough.
And you have nothing to be sorry for.
You are on the cusp of adulthood and you are about to embark on your adult life. YOUR life. Where you are accountable to YOU and where your job is to make YOU happy. Focus on YOUR future, because it belongs to you and you alone. What do YOU want? Forget about trying to make other people happy. Focus on making YOU happy and finding the best path to do that. Is it Bates? It is Davidson? Is it a gap year where you travel or work or both? Is it some time at a community college where you can take some classes while you figure out your next steps? What’s going to work for YOU?
These are excellent small colleges. You can get a very good education at either of them. My understanding, if I got this right, is that they both have an acceptance rate around about 13%. This probably does not make them a safety for anyone, until you get your acceptance. At this point of course with these two great acceptances in hand they are now safeties for you, and excellent schools (assuming that you can afford them).
These are small schools. This is likely to make it easier to get to know your professors, which in turn is likely to help you get involved in research or coops or internships. Any of these can be very valuable.
One daughter by the way was a very strong student in high school, and attended a small primarily undergraduate university in Canada which is probably less well known compared to Davidson College and Bates College. She had the experience that I just mentioned, getting to know her professors relatively quickly which in turn led to great research opportunities. This helped her get a good job in biomedical research after graduation (back here in the USA). She is now studying in a very good PhD program in the US (one that your parents most likely would be impressed by, or at least should be). You really can get an excellent education at a small school such as Davidson or Bates, and can end up either on a great job, or in a very strong and highly ranked graduate program if that is your goal (and I have seen it happen).
I think that when you get on campus in September you will find yourself in a great situation, surrounded by very strong students and great professors and a range of excellent courses and opportunities available to you.
Choosing from among these two excellent colleges might not be easy.
This is not annoying. You are a high school student. A lot of the people commenting here are adults and parents with decades of experience. We are just drawing from our experience and trying to be helpful. If we can help you understand how excellent these two colleges are then this thread will be a success.
Then of course you will need to show up on campus in September ready to study hard and keep ahead in your course work. Given your acceptances to these two excellent colleges I expect that you already have a lot of experience keeping well ahead in your course work.
Is this applicant international? If not, I’m not sure why name recognition abroad is a factor.
I get that American LACs don’t have international name recognition, for the most part. Even in the US, they don’t have as much name recognition as bigger schools that are objectively less prestigious (schools that have big-time athletics, or are state flagships). But that doesn’t mean there’s a significant “tier gap” in prestige or the quality of school. We’re talking about schools with sub-15%acceptance rates. In the US, the people who need to know – grad and professional schools, employers – do know how great these schools are, and how hard it is to get into them.
I can actually see why someone interested in Princeton would also apply to Davidson. Bates is a little more of an outlier (because of vibe, not rankings). And I do wonder – if Princeton, then why not Dartmouth? Washington and Lee? Tufts? Emory? Or maybe schools abroad, like McGill or St. Andrews? There’s probably some crossover in the applicant pools to Princeton and Bates, but I see more likely crossover with Davidson.
In any event, it doesn’t matter now. The applicant has two great choices – she should select one and fully commit to it. If it doesn’t work, there’s time to transfer later, but why not make the most of the opportunities we’re given?
I can’t answer for the OP, but in my circles, LACs like Davidson or Bates would be considered rough peers of research universities like Georgetown or Notre Dame (I am trying to use examples that might be reasonably well-known internationally).
And then also in my circles, there are quite a few kids who apply to a combination of relatively undergrad-focused research universities like Princeton, and entirely undergraduate institutions like Davidson and Bates. In general such applicants are looking for very high quality teaching standards, very well resourced undergrad programs, and so on.
So the OP’s list is not inherently strange to me. Their initial reaction to their results is a different matter, but that appears to me more peer and family driven than anything truly related to the substantive qualities of these undergrad programs.
Not OP, but I do not understand how Bates College & Davidson College are peers to two outstanding National Universities as Georgetown & Notre Dame. I understand substantial differences and few similarities.
I understand why this sentiment is echoed repeatedly on this website, but it is not universally true.
I know many who entered LACs with the intent to transfer after one year. All were very engaged, but the key element in common was disciplined academic work & study habits to facilitate the transfer process.
I also know several students who received “guaranteed” transfers to Cornell University if they completed basic requirements at another school for their freshman year. All were very mature, disciplined students who always seemed to be well mannered and considerate.
This is also very common in Georgia for those receiving provisional admittance to Georgia Tech if they complete specific requirements elsewhere. Typically, these were friendly, diligent, kind students who maximized their first year college experiences due in part, just like the Cornell students, to being held to a higher standard.
Be assured, these are “elite” schools.
Guaranteed transfers are an entirely different matter. The OP does not have that as an option.
I understand this is cultural. When I hear someone is going to Bates or Davidson, I am as impressed as when I hear Ivy League. Some people prefer liberal arts colleges for the focus on undergrads and more personal attention, and these are both top liberal arts schools. Is it possible your family could be educated on this?
Several of us have mentioned counseling. The fact that you want to give up college entirely, at times, because you didn’t get into Princeton, would suggest the need to talk to someone before making any decisions. It is possible that seeing a therapist is also culturally discouraged but I hope you can find someone.
Again I really hope you attend one of the colleges you got into. They are excellent.
My kid graduated (in 2023) from Middlebury College, which is the equivalent to Bates college . She was accepted to a post-Bac position at MIT when she graduated, and from there she was accepted to a PhD program that is a top-10 program worldwide (not in the USA). A friend is in a PhD program at Yale, another is in a top law school, another is at her first choice medical school, and the rest of her friend group are working at their dream jobs. Again, these are not just random choices of friends, these are the eight people in her close friend group.
These are the outcomes of an eight-person friend group: two in top 10 PhD programs, one in a top law school, one in their first choice medical school, three in their dream jobs, and one at well paying job. There are no colleges in the USA which will provide you with better outcomes than that, and Bates will provide you with the same opportunities as Middlebury.
Your goal should NOT be “being accepted to an Elite College”, or even “Attending an Elite College”. You goal should be “attending a college which will allow me the best opportunities after college, while also helping me develop socially and intellectually”.
Across academia and across most industries, graduates of LACs are as well regarded as graduates of well known research universities.
Many people who are sitting outside of these fields and industries have negative ideas about LACs, for various reasons. However, these are mostly are NOT the people who decide on admissions or on hiring. As I wrote, though, this is not the prevelant opinion among the people who are accepting graduate students (for the different professional Masters degree programs, Law Schools, Medical Schools, and PhD programs) and among people hiring for all levels of positions across industries.
You most likely don’t understand this because you are likely unfamiliar with the circles that @NiceUnparticularMan is talking about, which, if I’m not mistaken, are mostly in academia.
I will second the opinion of @NiceUnparticularMan that LACs like Bates or Davidson are considered peers of Georgetown or Bates in academia, and undergraduates from these LACs are considered to be as well trained, if not better trained, than the graduates of the two universities.
If you would take the time to look at the NESCAC thread, you’d also understand that in many industries, graduates of LACs like Bates are as heavily recruited as graduates of many Ivies. I don’t think that this would be the case if the recruiters from these companies shared your opinion that graduates of a college like Bates are inferior in any way to graduates of a colleges like Georgetown.
Two schools that turn down more than 6 of every seven applicants. Two of the top rated schools in the country.
What am I missing here?
You got two home run admits where a student could easily choose over Dartmouth (your sister’s school) if given both choices.
Ya see, this is what happens when all you have to go by in order to judge American colleges is the U.S. News rankings. Americans know it as a failed magazine that now specializes in creating a lot of FOMO around the idea of picking the “best” of a variety of products, including hospitals, doctors, high schools, medical schools, colleges, etc. You get the picture.
Unfortunately, when it came to American undergraduate colleges, the publishers chose to create two different rankings, one for liberal arts colleges and another for research universities. This was despite the fact that with certain exceptions (like engineering and business) both places award the same basic undergraduate degree in what Western countries have traditionally called, “the arts and sciences”.
Americans are accustomed to making the connection and think nothing of applying to both liberal arts colleges and research universities for their baccalaureate (undergraduate) degrees because most research universities include a liberal arts college within their systems; it’s one of the ways they can provide great educations to larger numbers of people (it’s called, *taking advantage of the economies of scale.)
Liberal arts colleges (the stand-alone kind) are much less concerned with economies of scale and often pride themselves on their small, intimate settings.
It also doesn’t help that the English word, “college”, has an ambiguous meaning outside of Britain and the United States. So, I get it. Bates College and Davidson College may be tough sells in your part of the world. Which begs the question, how did you decide to apply to a liberal arts college in the first place since you would have to know they exist in order to even locate that part of the yearly rankings?
They are “rough” peers in terms of the overall perceived quality (in my circles) and selectivity of the undergrad programs, and associated things like support for placement in selective next-steps (graduate and professional schools, and selective employers).
Of course there are also notable differences in terms of things like the size of the overall undergrad programs and everything associated with that, presence/absence of various specialty programs, and so on. Hence “rough”.
But again, in my circles some kids apply to both research universities and undergrad-only institutions, see where they get offers, and then make a final decision.