<p>
Just a minor correction, with no disrespect to ariesathena. American is actually IN Washington, DC, not its suburbs (which are in Md. and Va.). It is in Northwest DC, a largely residential section, so maybe that’s what aa is referring to. Great location. I haven’t been there in a while, but I would never have considered it a “rich kid” school. Maybe more recent visitors can comment.</p>
<p>SBmom–
Which 5 did your D apply to?</p>
<p>Sorry - I was referring to the fact that it’s in a more residential location (and some of the dorms are in Md) of DC. It doesn’t have the city feel the same way that BU is in Boston - if that makes sense.</p>
<p>Pyewacket, Personally, I think your daughters chance of getting into many of the schools on her list is very high Holyoke and Skidmore for example should definitely work for her. At the same time, I also understand however the importance of having a really safe safety and can empathize with your persistence. Being an international family, we also had the time restriction on visiting and probably over-intellectualized a bit in advance. All I can say is visit as many as you can. By taking the educated shotgun approach, you should find some that stick.</p>
<p>Its a narrow window between preppy and artsy most colleges offer a little of each, even colleges that are stereotyped as one or the other. If shes visited a school and nixed it, then its definitely off the list. If shes not visited, then dont go overboard with the too this, too that concern as our own experience is that first hand impressions can be very different, both negatively and positively. My son had about a 50% accuracy rate of what he thought hed like beforehand and what he actually did like afterwards. </p>
<p>I think just about every school that has been raised here is essentially liberal and has a good foundation in writing, theater and film, both in the classroom and outside. Some may lean more heavily toward one discipline or the other, but all will have a solid representation in the humanities. </p>
<p>All New England colleges are well endowed with cinemas, libraries, theaters. Some are aligned to small towns like Skidmore, Smith and Amherst; some are more rural and self contained like Holyoke, Dartmouth and Williams. The preppy appellation is to me a red herring. It can mean different things to different people clothes, money, lifestyle but for sure all of these colleges have a serious academic focus that supercedes the stereotypical social impression. </p>
<p>Now on the other hand, if she wants an urban or suburban environment, then you could go at the list with that as the starting point and focus on cities, including those that are not on the East Coast, like Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle. Cities come with urban issues. Suburbs come with shopping malls. Small towns come with isolation. It’s a trade off in every case. </p>
<p>I hope your daughter is as engaged in this process as you are as it sounds like she has set a limited range, geographically, socially, politically, intellectually plus concerns about security and accessibility. Might be time to let her pick the two or three less selectives that she wants to visit and live with the decision. Accept that the choice isnt going to be perfect and that trade offs are in order. Or to ask the question more positively, which college that shes already visited did you daughter love and why? Start there and maybe you could find an alter-ego even in a less desirable location.</p>
<p>Grinnell, Lawrence, Beloit, Carleton, & Kenyon</p>
<p>To clarify, We did NOT view Carleton, Kenyon and Grinnell as match/safety territory. But we figured they might be “matchier” than their New England counterparts (Vassar, Bates, Trinity).</p>
<p>Your D might also want to check out Oberlin & Macalester. These might also have made the list, except D was getting sick of doing apps and we didn’t want to be utterly ridiculous in the total number.</p>
<p>momrath, SBmom, thanks. Problem is my D is sure she wants to go to a US college with a wide liberal arts program–but no one else where we live is engaged in this process or gives her any input except me (and CC) . She liked some things about places we visited and disliked other things but didn’t “fall in love” with any school so far and doesn’t expect to. Somehow, she’s not the type to project herself into a largely unknown future situation. She specifies a few factors that are important and then wants to wait and see where she gets in. I think when the whole thing seems “real” to her she’ll be able to make a decision. Meanwhile, she relies on me, probably too much. And just says “no place will turn out to be what I imagine anyway and all schools have advantages and disadvantages.” I guess she’s right about that.</p>
<p>Goucher is a terrific little place (1200 kids) - plenty to do, very small classes, lots of time with professors, study abroad, etc.</p>
<p>St. Mary’s College of Maryland is similar (2400) - lovely campus, lots of time with professors (you can even take tutorials), very flexible, excellent support for the students. </p>
<p>Check them both out if you visit Maryland.</p>
<p>P.S. Both of them have excellent performing arts opportunities.</p>
<p>pyewacket, It’s true that kids living overseas don’t have a very good idea of what going to college in the US would be like (or even what living in the US would be like) especially in an area that they’re not familiar with. At a school where most of the kids go on to US colleges you would have the advantage of information from other families with kids already enrolled plus a counseling system geared toward American schools. It sounds as if you’ve pretty much had to go it alone. It’s hard uin any circumstances for many teenagers to decide and articulate what they’re looking for in a college, and doubly hard if they don’t actually live in America, so I think you’re doing the right thing in taking charge of the process.</p>
<p>I think your daughter could consider Holyoke and Skidmore as sure bets. If you could find one more that’s a very sure bet, she’ll be all set. I think you have a solid list and would just add more breadth, especially in the match/reach area. All of the schools on her shortlist seem within reach (as long as she presents herself well in her application), so do visit as many as you can, apply to as many as she’s up to and postpone the final decision to the future when the applications come in.</p>
<p>After you’ve visited, I’d recommend that you invest in some Collegiate Choice videos to help refresh your memories when it’s time for the decision to be made.</p>
<p>We just visited St. Marys College of Maryland, Susquehanna, and Goucher, in that order. St. Mary’s was extremely remote, Susquehanna in a quaint but small town, and Goucher felt as though it was an oasis in the center of the Indy 500 racetrack, with the Baltimore beltway a few yards away. All three school campuses were beautiful, but my D was sort of like Goldilocks, choosing Susquehanna as her favorite - not too remote, not too crowded, but just right.<br>
We were very impressed with Susquehanna’s music program and facilities. Not so much with St. Mary’s- they were oddly impressed with D’s ability to play typical college audition pieces, and we were told by some music majors that they were lacking talent in a few areas of the orchestra. There weren’t many ensembles either, although she was told she could start one. I got the impression that their vocal program was more developed. The rest of St. Mary’s however, was great - campus, academic programs, etc.</p>
<p>I’d be very careful about considering schools like Carleton, Macalester, Kenyon and Grinnell as safeties for your daughter. Carleton especially is a BIG reach, take a look at the Waitlist thread on their page and you’ll see tons of kidw with 1500+, great grades, EC’s etc. Mac, Kenyon and Grinnell are more prabably matches and her international background would likely help at Mac and Grinnell but again they have lots of great applicants. Mac could be agood possibility for her though because it does have a very high number of international students and is in downtown St Paul, and big city with a small city feel. </p>
<p>I would encourage you to try and make a visit to some of the Midwest schools, I grew up on the east coast and was raised to disdain this region but having lived in the Chicago suburbs for 15 years I have come to appreciate it. Some of the schools mentioned have beautiful campuses, Kenyon’s is out of a fairy tale, while the urban areas are far more cosmopolitan than your daughter might expect.</p>
<p>My d’s stats are similar to yours, slightly higher SAT but no international hook. She’s in at Grinnell, waitlisted at MAC and rejected at Carleton. Her safeties are Ill Wesleyan, don’t think your daughter would like it, Bloomington is an ugly town, and Denison where she was accepted into the honors program with a 50% scholarship. Denison is a beautiful campus and is working hard to raise it’s academic standards, it’s slightly higher ranked than some of the safeties you mentioned. My d’s going for a scholars weekend next week we’ll see what she thinks. Her brother, who is a soph at Grinnell, was impressed by Denison but felt the academic rigor of Grinnell was higher. At Grinnell he’s in the middle at Denison he would have been a star, not always bad.</p>
<p>Good luck but make sure you have some realistic safeties, we were sure our daughter would get in at Mac and wrongly considered it a safe match.</p>
<p>SRMom3:</p>
<p>Good point. It’s all tightening up eveywhere…</p>
<p>That is why you really need AT LEAST 3 realistic matches & 3 realistic safetys. Out of 3, if you pick realistically, you are pretty likely to get in to at least one. </p>
<p>Also: doing a safety or two EA or Rolling can remove the nagging doubt early in the process.</p>
<p>I definitely think the terms “safety” and “match” are very misleading now-a-days. The admissions process is saturated with deserving, solid applicants. My son applied to one reach, three match schools (his stat’s are toward the upper end of their range), and one safety. He was deferred everywhere except his safety. His GC was floored.</p>
<p>Who knows what it all means? I got into my reach, I was rejected from my safety, let’s see what my matches do…</p>
<p>This might be a bit of a reach, but what about JHU? It may still be one of the places where being a girl is an advantage, and I believe they are still in a position to actively seek out humanities types. </p>
<p>And I do think AU is a bit of a rich kid school. I didn’t realize they now have dorms in suburban MD, though. My guess is that most kids do go into DC for nightlife, though (Georgetown, Dupont Circle, etc).</p>
<p>My D received a rejection letter today from the first of 5 schools which I considered to be her match/slight reach schools. I really thought she had a good chance at this one, but in reality, she probably had less than a 50/50 chance, which is not great. </p>
<p>I think I’m more disappointed than she is - says she didn’t expect to get in. I didn’t expect it either, but I think I thought she had a better chance than she did. She’s been accepted to a number of very good schools including UC Davis, Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz, U of Washington, U of Puget Sound and Lewis & Clark, but I was hoping that she would be able to make the decision of whether or not to go back east. It’s now looking like the schools are going to make that decision for her. </p>
<p>Besides wanting to vent a little, my point is that schools that look like matches or slight reaches on paper are getting more and more difficult to get into. The average SAT and GPA for most of the more selective schools has risen dramatically since last year. It’s probably a good idea to throw a few more match/safety schools into the mix, rather than rely on luck.</p>
<p>“Basic Well-Rounded White Kid”. Nothing ethnically interesting, no Olympic sports ability, no Intel prizes, but bright, hardworking, B+/A- student, right? We just went through this. We did WAY too much work trying to cover every base. What we did right:
a. Figured out size, location, and interest areas (in our case, NO tiny schools, NO midwestern schools, must have business as well as French, must have rah-rah sports – so Haverford, though lovely, was out.) That helped a bit.<br>
b. Worked appropriately on essays. Your essays don’t really matter unless they’re really stupid. The lucky kid who gets in based solely on his brilliant essay is SO rare that you should not count on it happening.
c. Kept reminding her that college should be FUN, so don’t sign up for another four years of killing yourself. Go someplace where you can excel and kick back a bit while pursuing all that interests you.<br>
d. D studied her butt off junior year to get the BEST grades she could, then got a summer job.<br>
What we did wrong:<br>
a. did not visit colleges over the summer before senior year, due to near-death in family, so
b. did not apply EA/ED to her REACH school. Your chances of getting into a reach (for a 1200-1400 SAT kid, Colgate or Emory or Tulane or maybe Northwestern, for the hell of it) is HUGELY better EA or ED. (Example: about 25% EA for yale vs. 3% for RDs who are not legacies, athletes, Eskimos, Intel winners, etc.)<br>
Our school’s college counselor advised against applying early. She was dead wrong. Kids with my D’s stats–or lower-- applied early and got into schools that later turned my D down. Those kids wrote ONE application, got in, and were done. No pain, no worry, no small fortune spent on application fees, no endless hours writing custom essays.<br>
c. Stupidly, we allowed our D to apply to six REACH schools. Reaches are by definition chancy; you should expect rejection. She got one admit, one waitlist, and four rejections all in one day. Naturally, the four rejections were her first choices. Two reaches would’ve been plenty. We knew from the outset which one she’d get into (Berkeley). We should have allowed ONE more, and no more.
d. D was totally honest. A girl’s chances of being accepted to a college is better if she claims she’s going to major in math or science. My D refused to put that down, in spite of the fact that she had As in math and science and the chem teacher recommended her. Friend with identical stats but no compunction about lying got into schools my D didn’t.<br>
e. This last one is hard to recommend, but here goes: don’t tell everyone where you’re applying. IT doesn’t hae to be a deep dark secret, but don’t advertise. My D told all her friends, many of whom had done no research and had similar grades/test scores/ECs, where she was applying. A small liberal arts college will only admit a couple of kids from your high school. If three kids apply, all very similar on paper, your child may be the loser. Mine was–beat out at two colleges by a friend who otherwise would NEVER have applied to those schools, but just copied what my D did.
Good luck to you.</p>
<p>Susu, very useful info…and I always wondered why people I knew going through this were so hush-hush about where their kids were applying…some of its pride, too, I think…</p>
<p>I don’t know if you want to venture south, but University of South Carolina Honors College is an awesome school and has higher SAT Average than Yale. Imagine that. But it is an awesome school and they offere great FA, especially for out of staters. Although the SAT average is high, they base admissions on stats and pragmatic things, it isn’t by any means a crapshoot.</p>