You shouldn’t have to worry about admission for CU. Your kid’s stats are way more than adequate for CU (84% admit rate). Especially for an out-of-stater. CU is about 50% OOS enrollment lives off of kids like yours (with gobs of kids coming from CA and TX).
The only reason to apply to other schools is as a hedge against your kid changing her mind/interests over the next 11.5 months. Which does happen often.
So I’d keep looking at other schools just to make sure that CU is really what your kid is looking for. I’d especially look at other types of schools. Instead of state flagship Pac 12 CU vs. state flagship Pac 12 UCLA, what about CU vs. a medium sized private school?
There’s a LOT of schools (including plenty of privates) that your kid could attend for what CU OOS is going to cost you. But (as a Colorado tax payer) we will welcome your kid and your dollars to Boulder if turns out that she really wants to be a Buff.
Was on campus this weekend. Even though I’m local, I often forget how gorgeous that campus is. And, of course, the coolest mascot there is.
@northwesty we have also looked at Loyola Marymount, Berkley, NYU and University of Denver. Dd is anti private. she spent 4-8th in a private school and then switched at her request to public school for high school. Even though I have tried to make the case that private colleges do not have the reputation (unfair or otherwise) that many private schools have in our area (rich kids, homogenous etc) - she has decided she really wants to go to a public university. Boulder really does seem to have everything she is looking for (other than racial diversity and an ocean) and I will be really surprised if she changes her mind. It is a lot to pay but honestly it is a lot less than a lot of schools and we have it saved so want her to go where she is excited about and that we agree will be a good fit. Boulder also freezes tuition at your freshman year price which helps with planning as our second kid will be entering college when this one is a senior and then our third when that one graduates so if all goes well - except for one year - we should only have one kid in college at a time.
If you think that this college would be a reasonable fit for her and it is affordable, don’t worry about it too much. You get caught up in college madness, but they end up going to one college no matter how many they apply to. I would tell her to prepare for EA at UC Boulder but she is also allowed to change her mind and apply to others.
My DD ended up applying ED to one college…we looked at a bunch but she kept comparing all the other colleges to one college so I said “Why not just apply ED? Instead of applying to all of them and having to decide later?” She applied ED, got in, and has not looked back.
I would agree that it would be similar to applying ED. If she has one absolute top choice, it is affordable and she gets in EA then it is perfectly fine to buy a hoodie and bumper sticker and stop the process right there. If she has any lingering doubts down the road then it is also fine to put in some more applications.
@Clementine7624 I messaged you but I will answer you here. Yes - she lived in the Global Engineering RAP which was the best thing she ever did. She did have one class in her dorm which was taught by the woman who is also the faculty in residence for her program. My D says that the big classes are definitely big - physics had 400 in it, Calc and Chem (through the Eng school) had 150 but other classes only had 40. She made sure to meet her profs and go to office hours just to put a name with a face. She also sat toward the front when she could. There are many distractions in Boulder so you definitely have to be a self motivated student and CHOOSE to go to class because nobody will know if you aren’t there in the larger ones (you won’t get clicker points but they aren’t a huge factor in the grade). But that is the same for any large school.
The University of Colorado is wonderful. If she really wants to apply there to get an early decision, go for it. She only needs the one application if that is where her heart is. If she changes her mind, lots of terrific schools will still be available, several also in Colorado. If she is enthusiastic and academically motivated, there will be lots of options. With a few exceptions, there are genuinely good schools with and without the great reputation.
For example, I was heavily recruited but choose my college in fourth grade because of the beauty of the campus and an administration building that looked like a castle. As a college, it was perfect and led to great things for me. My only difficulty was disgruntled family when I applied and then their pressure on my sister to apply the next year.
As a fallback that is still near snow and in a beautiful location though much colder, how about University of Vermont? If she does not get in to CU for some freaky reason, it might meet her other criteria.
@LBowie we visited the table for Vermont at a college fair and she wasn’t interested. Said there wasn’t enough diversity. Ironically - the diversity of Boulder not much higher but she is so in love with the school that she forgives it there. Teenagers!