Within a couple of hours of my child Sasha’s setting foot on its stunning campus in Tacoma, Washington, Sasha’s first choice for college was the University of Puget Sound. The UPS students we met were bright, engaged, diverse, and just plain nice. The college’s academic offerings appeared to be robust. The music offerings were outstanding. The campus was lush, green and peaceful, yet conveniently located between two nice commercial areas in a surprisingly interesting medium-sized city, with Seattle only a short drive away. The surrounding region was almost intoxicatingly beautiful. We visited several other wonderful colleges, but all of our family’s subsequent college-comparison discussions focused on where Sasha should go if UPS said “no.” Happily for us, after Sasha applied “early decision,” UPS said “yes” (as did the three colleges to which Sasha applied “early action”).
In the next few posts, I’ll describe UPS in more detail and then talk about some of the alternatives Sasha considered. My hope is that at least a few people perusing College Confidential in the future will find Sasha’s and my observations useful in deciding which colleges to visit, etc. Every kid is unique, but I suspect that quite a few families look for similar schools every year and would have similar reactions to ours. These posts are basically revised versions of notes that I wrote to myself over the past year. As I revised them, I was surprised by how much I learned through the process and how much my views on different subjects changed over time.
When we started the college application process in earnest during Sasha’s junior year, Sasha decided to search for a small liberal arts college located in a major city. Sasha is an urban kid who rides public transportation and likes to explore different neighborhoods. Sasha is fairly studious, musically talented and a good but not spectacular high school athlete. When our quest began, Sasha was especially interested in Occidental and Macalester. By the end, those colleges had fallen down Sasha’s list, behind not only UPS (which gave Sasha a huge merit scholarship) but also Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin (which also gave Sasha a huge merit scholarship and probably was Sasha’s second choice), Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin (a real hidden gem that also gave Sasha a huge merit scholarship), and Willamette University in Salem, Oregon (which also gave Sasha a huge merit scholarship and might well have surpassed Beloit and become Sasha’s second choice if we had visited it).
This week seems like a good one for me to post these observations. Our family is ecstatic at how the college admissions process has turned out. Other families we know are feeling pretty dejected right now, as many kids got deferred or rejected from their first choice colleges. If any of those families asked for my advice, it would be that they should keep in mind the fact that there are actually a lot more terrific options out there than most people discuss. Many applicants are making the college admissions process far more stressful than it needs to be. If Sasha had done what most of the kids in our community do—and applied early only to the most selective college that conceivably might say “yes”—then our family also would probably be gearing up for another two weeks of essay writing and form completing, to be followed by three-an-a-half months of anxious waiting. But Sasha concluded a while ago that “more selective” did not necessarily mean “better,” at least for Sasha.
When we looked at the stats for the colleges Sasha liked the most, we saw that they accepted a very wide range of applicants, including students with far lower grades and test scores than Sasha had as well as students with far higher grades and test scores (i.e., grades and test scores that potentially would qualify an applicant for admission to some of the country’s most selective colleges). A lot of high school seniors who are enduring miserable Decembers may have much happier Aprils if they expand their horizons a bit, and look for colleges that attract plenty of smart kids but also attract plenty of kids with only average credentials. Some of those colleges may actually be better fits.
I’ll give fairly detailed descriptions of UPS as well as Occidental, Macalester, Beloit, Lawrence and Willamette. Then I’ll comment in less detail about Wooster, Kalamazoo, Knox and Earlham (all of interest to Sasha, but of less interest than UPS, Beloit, Lawrence and Willamette); Reed and Lewis & Clark (intriguing because they are in Portland but not on Sasha’s list in the end), Grinnell, Kenyon, Oberlin, and Whitman (eliminated from contention early in the process, primarily because of their small-town locations), Skidmore, Vassar, Wesleyan, Connecticut College, Bard, Bates, Swarthmore and Haverford (eliminated even earlier in the process because Sasha did not want to attend college on the East Coast, where Sasha has lived since birth), Pitzer and the Claremont Colleges (eliminated for a variety of reasons), and the University of Michigan Residential College (eliminated because, though it has many great features, the “liberal arts college within a Big Ten university” isn’t really a liberal arts college). The last comment is not a criticism of huge research universities—they’re great for many people, just not Sasha.
Incidentally, “Sasha” is not my child’s real name. As I wrote this post, the sound of “Sasha” resonated with me more than “Ashanti,” “Ming,” “Pat,” “Peyton,” “Skyler” and all the other gender-neutral names that came to mind.
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