Thanks—she really is! Appreciate your advice. Very interesting to think about submitting scores or not.
The higher score will help and the lower score will likely not hurt. That would be my strategy…
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Has your D spoken to her school’s counselor about submitting or not? If not, she should, and I defer to her counselor. With that said, I would lean towards applying test optional to the sub 20% admit rate schools in the US, which I think is all of the ones she is considering right now.
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Haven’t asked her school about it yet, but will with this feedback.
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Are you not applying for aid because you don’t qualify (and are you sure of that? Some of these schools are very generous) or because you think it will help in admissions? It was unclear from the way you phrased it. I would definitely run some NPCs and make sure as that might make the price differential a bit more palatable esp if you look at some schools that are slightly easier to get into. Some schools are need-blind, and even for those that are need aware that usually only comes into play if the kid is either on the bubble or if they are later in the game and need to accept fewer students. So I would definitely apply for aid if you think you might get any. I’m actually a big fan of ED, and do think it gives an edge, but only if she has a definite number one choice.
Wouldn’t the existence of tutorials mean that Williams is well resourced enough to offer some courses for which only 2-4 students may enroll in?
Some other LACs may be able to cover low enrollment courses through cross registration agreements. But some others may just have smaller ranges of course offerings in some subjects.
I think every college has some version of a class or group of classes where there’s a reasonably sure degree of predictability that no one will be interested in taking it. Why not call it a “tutorial”?
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I was going to suggest the Jesuit schools as an option. They provide an excellent education, and have a very strong mission of giving back to the communities. However, if she wants a rural location, these Jesuit schools might not be the best option.
You mention she liked the vibe at certain schools. IMHO, the most important part of the college selection process is finding a college where the student can see themselves being a happy student there for four years. All of the schools on this list have excellent academics. So, the student’s gut feeling about that vibe should be considered.
I will add…Amherst College isn’t exact,y located in a large urban area…it’s rural, in my opinion.
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Less resourced colleges would just stop offering that course so that the instructor could teach something with more students.
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OP’s exact words were
IMO, Amherst flunks the remoteness test. If she’s looking for a small, green and leafy NESCAC that feels pretty remote, I’d add Hamilton.
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That’s the NESCAC college superpower; they can afford to compete with larger universities on the number of small classes on obscure subjects available along with the added plus that each student’s work (likely to be written papers) will be graded by the professor and not a TA.
If the OP is genuinely interested in that sort of education, they should probably resort to what many Americans do and shotgun the RD applications. Is the Common App available to families applying from overseas?
Yes
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Looking for schools which combine the academic excellence of W & A and the vibe of B/B/M, I’d be looking at Colby and Hamilton. Both also offer week long orientation outdoor adventure trips for incoming freshmen to help build a sense of community. Similar to Dartmouth’s Outdoor Outing Club trips.
You have focused on New England schools. Is that to accommodate travel needs from London? If extended travel is not an issue, I’m thinking that Carleton College with its academic excellence and with its community and civic mindedness could be a great fit for her. It’s about an hour from Minneapolis and there are direct flights from London.
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The tutorials at Williams are usually not two students. They meet two at a time. My son is registered for one for the fall that has 20 people. I believe the max for most is 6-8 but I may be making that up
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To go back to the question of which school to ED, she should choose the one she would most want to attend. All of the ones she is choosing between have huge bumps for ED. My S24 is a rising junior at Williams, had a music spike, and applied because it was his clear first choice.
Yes, plenty of people actually do get admitted to Middlebury RD. And I think they mostly just found ways to persuade Middlebury they would strongly consider an offer.
So this makes me wonder if you have looked seriously at some LACs with merit as a possibility.
Like this made me immediately think of Grinnell, which is a wonderful school academically, sounds like a potentially great fit in terms of community and setting, and actually has merit, including an automatic merit if you apply ED ($20K/year), but that is not all they do for merit.
I also agree with the suggestion of Carleton, although it is not a merit school, just for the academics and vibe.
And then forum favorite St Olaf, in the same town as Carleton, would be very likely to offer a lot of merit and could be a good fit.
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My D took a few tutorials in the humanities, and there were always just 2 students in the class, but the professor teaches multiple sections of the same tutorial.
The video on this page explains the format well and features students who’ve taken tutorials. https://www.williams.edu/academics/undergraduate-study/tutorials/
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With LACs, especially Bates and Middlebury, for which the data and the admissions team themselves make clear, I think it’s worth at least considering an ED strategy.
A couple of things I wanted to add based on our experience with S26 as a “lopsided” test taker (ACT 35, but with 36s in Math, Science, Reading and a 30 in English) applying to LACs.
- First off, at Middlebury, you actually don’t have to take a foreign language, despite the fact that they are well known for language instruction and talk about it incessantly on the tour (this turned my S26 off also, but the reality is different from the vibe they give off). You have to fulfill 7 of 8 of their general areas of instruction, and you can leave language out entirely if you prefer (note: some majors might require it so she should confirm whether or not the ones that do are ones she wants to consider). Would that change how she feels about it?
- Has she given enough thought to population/size and athlete vs nonathlete population? LACs can sometimes divvy themselves socially where the athletes are the dominant cliques on campus and those who aren’t involved in athletics can feel left out (I think this can be more of an issue for men, but, for example, Amherst has this reputation and it’s pretty well covered in reviews and their campus paper). You might look into the percentages of varsity athletes at the schools she is considering, and do some research into reviews, student panels, newspapers, etc. to see how the social life might be influenced. In S26’s case, he wanted a larger LAC to absorb some of this and to give him a larger class size to socialize with
- How much does an open/loose general curriculum appeal to her? It sounds like she has a preference for humanities topics? Schools like Amherst, and as others have mentioned, Hamilton, are super open (like Brown is famous for being). Others take a different approach and have more specific requirements.
- While it’s true that she absolutely seems like a well qualified applicant who will get into great LACs without applying ED, I do think a well-qualified, full pay applicant benefits at least a little in the minds of some of these schools (Middlebury and Bates among them). You might also look into “need aware” schools and think about how you feel about only paying for “top tier” schools, (and where that cut off is in your mind). For example, will you be happy paying for Bates full pay? Or is it Bowdoin, Amherst and Williams, then the UK schools, then Middlebury/Bates, etc. Being full pay is not useful at Williams, Amherst or Bowdoin, but may be at Bates or Middlebury
- If she prefers a more isolated experience, Middlebury hits a sweet spot, and Williams too. I think Bowdoin and Bates can probably meet that standard, as Maine is “remote” generally. Haverford is quite suburban and tied to Philly, Amherst is in a small town but part of a larger ecosystem, including a large state university,
- Doing ED (and getting in) also takes away the opportunity to know how it might have gone with other schools and taking the time to grow and change senior year and making a decision in May. My S26 did ED2 to Wesleyan and was accepted. He was super happy and Wesleyan is the right mix of everything he wanted, but he also felt a pang of loss when his friends continued to get news of their results and he was pulling all of his apps. Obviously you can only choose 1 school and that sense of loss will be felt no matter when the decision is made. But if there truly is no favorite, the right choice may well be to skip it.
- If it were me, I would probably try to go re-visit Williams and Bowdoin in the fall. To me they are the closest to what your D27 is looking for and worth spending more time at to make an ED1 call. Then I would keep Middlebury and Bates for ED2, and I would also give Hamilton a close look.
Good luck!
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I seriously question the benefit of ED bumps at these LACs. Typically the athletes are admitted in the ED round and that accounts for a larger number of these ED admissions. In addition, admission of hooked applicants is a real thing at NESCAC schools. Not just legacies, but children of big donors, faculty, and people who are “connected”. These scholarships are so small that admission of athletes and other hooked applicants has an outsized impact. NESCAC schools are very sports oriented despite their academic reputations. They offer every sport under the sun - as many as 32 sports teams being common. That can mean 175-200 athletes in an incoming freahman class + as many as 40-50 other hooked admits. When the freshman class only has 500-600 students - less at smaller schools like Hamilton - the outsized impact on admissions quickly becomes evident. The best situation at an LAC where the impact of athletic admissions is less is at Wesleyan because they have an enrollment of 3000 with a freshman class of 750-800. So, after the athletes are accounted for, there are more spots left for regular applicants vs a school with an enrollment of 1800-2000.
The best of all worlds for minimizing the impact of athlete admits in NESCAC may be at Tufts, which was a small LAC 50+ years ago when NESCAC was founded. Although it has grown into a small university (6800 undergrads) with its own med school, it is still an LAC at its core with small class sizes (10:1 student:faculty ratio) and a focus on arts & sciences. They have a small engineering school, which accounts for about 10% of their graduates. But the other 90% are all A&S. No undergrad business or other pre-professional schools.
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