Also, EDing to UChicago makes it a realistic option. Especially ED 0.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These are the 40 schools with 5 star academics per College Transitions (from their book, Colleges Worth Your Money, 2023 ed):

Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Brown
Caltech
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Olin
Hamilton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Swarthmore
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt
UCLA
UChicago
U of Notre Dame
UPenn
U of Virginia
Washington & Lee
WashU
Wellesley
Williams
Yale

lol nice source "College Transitions" They left some pretty big players out. I'd stick with this.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

The OP's daughter has not expressed an interest in engineering.

I thought OP stated STEM was the interest of study?

Subsequently the OP said that her daughter has not mentioned engineering as an area of potential interest.

Sorry for the confusion. Yes, "STEM" is probably too broad. Her top 3 interests right now are chemistry (theoretical), physics, and math. But I would love it if this kid settled on something practical like cs or engineering.

UChicago is very strong in all three. They even have a "molecular engineering" program which combines the two and is somewhat oractical.

Also, physical chemistry is a theoretical field that best combines the three. TMP chemistry is a good YouTube channel for that material.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Looking for a school for a student who particularly excels at STEM but also wants a strong academic experience all around. Loves learning, loves a challenge, and possibly wants to go to grad school for academic research so undergrad research opportunities are important. She would love to be around other students who are enthusiastic and passionate about science. So far she has all A's, 1520 PSAT, will be maxed out on math/science courses at her school. Very involved in music oriented extracurriculars and would want to continue these in college for fun. If she could pick the school of her dreams, it would be MIT for sure, but she not have national/international level recognition or research experience. I am hoping to steer her towards schools with a similar "spirit" but which are less selective and more achievable. Any suggestions for schools to focus our search? We will likely be full pay. I think the school community and academic strength would be top priority for her rather than the setting of the school.

In my opinion, as someone who filtered out of STEM without ever actually getting a grade below a C plus: If a student isn’t creating the list of safeties herself, encouraging her going to a super selective science program is a bad idea.

She should be thinking of a place like WPI, Kalamazoo, Juniata or Lewis & Clark as her dream school, not a place on the various Top 20 and Top 40 lists people are posting, and not any state’s flagship.

Even if she takes the SATs again and does better, she should look at the Niche.com scattergrams and find private schools, that will appreciate her money and have a strong incentive to keep her, where a 1520 is clearly in the top 10 percent, not even schools where she’d be in the top quarter.

The problem is that she’s going to need nurturing, not a place focused on weeding her out.

People here laugh at schools like Boston University and Wash. U., but I don’t think the people laughing have taken a physics course for majors at those schools. It’s not easy staying in a STEM major in a school like that.

I think the bare minimum for succeeding in STEM there is that the students had an encyclopedic knowledge of the college admissions process when they were high school sophomores.

If you try to take kids who aren’t that independent, obsessive and precocious and boost them up into a Case Western, maybe they’ll get in, but they’ll be the seat warmers. They may get less faculty love and learn less than if they’d gone to a mellower school. So the goal should be looking for schools with STEM professors that are a little beneath her, not schools that wow DCUM people.

Note that the OP reported that this student reached a perfect score of 1520 on the PSAT and has yet to take the SAT.

Anonymous wrote:Looking for a school for a student who particularly excels at STEM but also wants a strong academic experience all around. Loves learning, loves a challenge, and possibly wants to go to grad school for academic research so undergrad research opportunities are important. She would love to be around other students who are enthusiastic and passionate about science. So far she has all A's, 1520 PSAT, will be maxed out on math/science courses at her school. Very involved in music oriented extracurriculars and would want to continue these in college for fun. If she could pick the school of her dreams, it would be MIT for sure, but she not have national/international level recognition or research experience. I am hoping to steer her towards schools with a similar "spirit" but which are less selective and more achievable. Any suggestions for schools to focus our search? We will likely be full pay. I think the school community and academic strength would be top priority for her rather than the setting of the school.

In my opinion, as someone who filtered out of STEM without ever actually getting a grade below a C plus: If a student isn’t creating the list of safeties herself, encouraging her going to a super selective science program is a bad idea.

She should be thinking of a place like WPI, Kalamazoo, Juniata or Lewis & Clark as her dream school, not a place on the various Top 20 and Top 40 lists people are posting, and not any state’s flagship.

Even if she takes the SATs again and does better, she should look at the Niche.com scattergrams and find private schools, that will appreciate her money and have a strong incentive to keep her, where a 1520 is clearly in the top 10 percent, not even schools where she’d be in the top quarter.

The problem is that she’s going to need nurturing, not a place focused on weeding her out.

People here laugh at schools like Boston University and Wash. U., but I don’t think the people laughing have taken a physics course for majors at those schools. It’s not easy staying in a STEM major in a school like that.

I think the bare minimum for succeeding in STEM there is that the students had an encyclopedic knowledge of the college admissions process when they were high school sophomores.

If you try to take kids who aren’t that independent, obsessive and precocious and boost them up into a Case Western, maybe they’ll get in, but they’ll be the seat warmers. They may get less faculty love and learn less than if they’d gone to a mellower school. So the goal should be looking for schools with STEM professors that are a little beneath her, not schools that wow DCUM people.

Anonymous wrote:Maybe look at Claremont McKenna's new integrated science program. (Although, I guess an acceptance rate double MIT still doesn't make it easy to get into.)

This is the worst major choice for OP's daughter. Stay away from these experimental, predatory programs. Even a chemistry major at Pomona will launch her much further than this foolishness.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These are the 40 schools with 5 star academics per College Transitions (from their book, Colleges Worth Your Money, 2023 ed):

Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Brown
Caltech
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Olin
Hamilton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Swarthmore
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt
UCLA
UChicago
U of Notre Dame
UPenn
U of Virginia
Washington & Lee
WashU
Wellesley
Williams
Yale

lol nice source "College Transitions" They left some pretty big players out. I'd stick with this.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

The OP's daughter has not expressed an interest in engineering.

I thought OP stated STEM was the interest of study?

Subsequently the OP said that her daughter has not mentioned engineering as an area of potential interest.

Sorry for the confusion. Yes, "STEM" is probably too broad. Her top 3 interests right now are chemistry (theoretical), physics, and math. But I would love it if this kid settled on something practical like cs or engineering.

Even if your daughter maintains an interest in, say, theoretical chemistry, an interdisciplinary approach to her education could introduce her to more practical fields. For example, data science (available as a major at many schools) combines statistics and computing with a chosen applied domain, such as theoretical chemistry.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These are the 40 schools with 5 star academics per College Transitions (from their book, Colleges Worth Your Money, 2023 ed):

Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Brown
Caltech
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Olin
Hamilton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Swarthmore
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt
UCLA
UChicago
U of Notre Dame
UPenn
U of Virginia
Washington & Lee
WashU
Wellesley
Williams
Yale

lol nice source "College Transitions" They left some pretty big players out. I'd stick with this.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

The OP's daughter has not expressed an interest in engineering.

I thought OP stated STEM was the interest of study?

Subsequently the OP said that her daughter has not mentioned engineering as an area of potential interest.

Sorry for the confusion. Yes, "STEM" is probably too broad. Her top 3 interests right now are chemistry (theoretical), physics, and math. But I would love it if this kid settled on something practical like cs or engineering.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These are the 40 schools with 5 star academics per College Transitions (from their book, Colleges Worth Your Money, 2023 ed):

Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Brown
Caltech
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Olin
Hamilton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Swarthmore
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt
UCLA
UChicago
U of Notre Dame
UPenn
U of Virginia
Washington & Lee
WashU
Wellesley
Williams
Yale

lol nice source "College Transitions" They left some pretty big players out. I'd stick with this.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

From what I've found, it seems Rowman & Littlefield published the College Transitions book. Overall, the book appears to have offered a form of opinion that the authors were reasonably qualified to express. In any case, I credit the DCUM contributor with explicitly citing a source, including the year of the edition used for the content of the post.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These are the 40 schools with 5 star academics per College Transitions (from their book, Colleges Worth Your Money, 2023 ed):

Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Brown
Caltech
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Olin
Hamilton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Swarthmore
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt
UCLA
UChicago
U of Notre Dame
UPenn
U of Virginia
Washington & Lee
WashU
Wellesley
Williams
Yale

lol nice source "College Transitions" They left some pretty big players out. I'd stick with this.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

The OP's daughter has not expressed an interest in engineering.

I thought OP stated STEM was the interest of study?

Subsequently the OP said that her daughter has not mentioned engineering as an area of potential interest.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These are the 40 schools with 5 star academics per College Transitions (from their book, Colleges Worth Your Money, 2023 ed):

Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Brown
Caltech
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Olin
Hamilton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Swarthmore
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt
UCLA
UChicago
U of Notre Dame
UPenn
U of Virginia
Washington & Lee
WashU
Wellesley
Williams
Yale

lol nice source "College Transitions" They left some pretty big players out. I'd stick with this.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

The OP's daughter has not expressed an interest in engineering.

I thought OP stated STEM was the interest of study?

STEM is very broad. There were follow-up questions already. From 4/28:

Anonymous wrote:
Not ruling it out, but DD has never mentioned wanting to be an engineer, so most likely end up in a basic science department instead of an engineering department.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These are the 40 schools with 5 star academics per College Transitions (from their book, Colleges Worth Your Money, 2023 ed):

Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Brown
Caltech
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Olin
Hamilton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Swarthmore
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt
UCLA
UChicago
U of Notre Dame
UPenn
U of Virginia
Washington & Lee
WashU
Wellesley
Williams
Yale

lol nice source "College Transitions" They left some pretty big players out. I'd stick with this.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

The OP's daughter has not expressed an interest in engineering.

I thought OP stated STEM was the interest of study?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These are the 40 schools with 5 star academics per College Transitions (from their book, Colleges Worth Your Money, 2023 ed):

Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Brown
Caltech
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Olin
Hamilton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Swarthmore
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt
UCLA
UChicago
U of Notre Dame
UPenn
U of Virginia
Washington & Lee
WashU
Wellesley
Williams
Yale

lol nice source "College Transitions" They left some pretty big players out. I'd stick with this.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

The OP's daughter has not expressed an interest in engineering.

Anonymous wrote:These are the 40 schools with 5 star academics per College Transitions (from their book, Colleges Worth Your Money, 2023 ed):

Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Brown
Caltech
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Olin
Hamilton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Swarthmore
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt
UCLA
UChicago
U of Notre Dame
UPenn
U of Virginia
Washington & Lee
WashU
Wellesley
Williams
Yale

lol nice source "College Transitions" They left some pretty big players out. I'd stick with this.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate?_sort=rank&_sortDirection=asc

These are the 40 schools with 5 star academics per College Transitions (from their book, Colleges Worth Your Money, 2023 ed):

Amherst
Barnard
Bowdoin
Brown
Caltech
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Claremont McKenna
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Davidson
Duke
Emory
Olin
Hamilton
Harvard
Harvey Mudd
Haverford
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Middlebury
Northwestern
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
Swarthmore
US Naval Academy
Vanderbilt
UCLA
UChicago
U of Notre Dame
UPenn
U of Virginia
Washington & Lee
WashU
Wellesley
Williams
Yale