2/3 A+, 1/3 A, no grade for any quarter is below A
Class Rank: Top 3%
ACT/SAT Scores: 1550 (E750 + M800)
Coursework
9 APs taken and scored 5 on all of them, currently planning to take 3 more next month, including AP Latin which is not taught in my high school
Awards
International and National Writing Awards (not famous), National Merit, National Latin Exam Perfect Paper, Some but not great school awards
Extracurriculars
Latin Club President, International Relationship Club Founder, Wrote articles, research papers and book in Latin, selective summer programs in Classics, senior member in Debate, MUN and Student Publication, a lot of CS hours every year
Schools
Likely * Penn State, Pitt, Rutgers, U-M Twin Cities (all waitlisted or accepted to alternative campuses)
Reach* All Ivies + top 10 schools, Vanderbilt, Emory, Rice, WashU, Berkeley, UCLA (all rejected)
I am not sure what should I do now? Should wait to and take a gap year/semester before applying again? Can anyone help me figure out what happened to my application?
A little bit confused - with your stats, this seems unlikely. And by that I mean UMN, Pitt, PSU. The rest I get.
There are still schools taking apps. See link. Also, if you applied to PSU and Rutgers - why not other publics - for example Arizona and Alabama - where you’d score huge merit. Closer to home and schools you applied to (Pitt), WVU is still taking apps. Even UMass Lowell is taking apps for first year students. And URI (except for nursing). Even a Michigan State is still taking apps - probably plenty of schools are.
All hope is not lost and wonderful opportunities remain. The three I mentioned - and there may be more - are sure admits. These are all fine schools - big flagships like you applied to. So applying to one would lock you in a spot and then you can find other schools more to your liking on the NACAC list as a just in case.
You applied super high. None of us can see your application so none of us know what happened. Maybe your ECs weren’t displayed in a way that was believable. Maybe you had many typos in your paper. Maybe your rigor wasn’t seen as you see it - did you self study APs or take classes. No one could know.
That said, you can go to a solid flagship (as I mentioned) for dirt cheap - both Alabama and Arizona have auto merit and if you have a 4.0, at Arizona you get $32K off - leaving you with like $8K tuition. At Bama, you get $28K off leaving tuition at like $4K - and lest you feel it’s beneath you, they have more national merit scholars than any school in America. You can also attend community college.
Gap year - what will you do? If it’s something meaningful such as earning money for a year or going around the world to help others - then perhaps. But will it help you with those same level of schools you applied to - unlikely. Frankly, going to a top school while great and can open doors, is not a panacea. Many kids who go to top schools work for people who don’t.
Thank you for the kind words, do you think taking a gap year and apply again would be a good idea? My parents and friends mostly recommend me to do that.
sorry - i was editing to add your answers - go back and take a look.
I would not take a gap year. I would go to school. There are fine flagships you can get into.
Taking a gap year to reapply is silly. If you had a purpose in the gap year - you were building housing in Nicaragua, etc. I get it.
There is no difference in life where you’ll end up by going to Alabama or Arizona or URI or WVU than Penn State or Pitt. Like anyone, you need to be in the right place at the right time with drive and dedication.
I work for a global 300 company. A guy in my group - Vandy - works for someone who went to Fairleigh Dickinson - which other than a solid basketball team no one ever put on the same page as - pretty much any school.
Where you go doesn’t necessarily dictate where you finish. It may help you start.
But guess what - if those top level schools didn’t put you in this year and I don’t know why, but it won’t change.
But frankly, find one that wants you - and you’ll be fine.
Go back and re-read my previous which I lengthened.
Get an app in tomorrow at a super safety - Bama or Arizona and then cherry pick from some of the others.
If you were willing to fly to Minnesota, then Tucson or Tuscaloosa shouldn’t be out of play. Yes, Tucson will have more diversity - and both are fantastic schools and great value for a smart kid. And i listed others close to home. Both those two you’ll have an acceptance within 7-10 days - and then you can look at others.
Seems like the obvious path is to start at community college and prepare to transfer to a UMass campus, or apply to (mostly less selective) colleges still taking applications.
If you do a gap year (meaning no college attendance after high school graduation), you need a new list of colleges, since it is unlikely that reapplying to the same colleges that rejected you the first time will give you different results the next time. Unless you have a meaningful gap year activity (could be working to earn money to pay for college), it may not be that great an idea.
Let me add as I look at the NACAC list - Allegheny, Willamette - great schools. And Tulsa - that’s your Vandy/Tufts like substitute - and tons of smart kids are going.
I was planning to eventually pursue a phd in classics and join the academia, so I didn’t feel like Umass would have been a good choice. I indeed feel like spring admission to umass seems to be a good idea for me.
I believe one reason might be my interest is very different from most of my classmates’, and our school had very limited humanities ap so I mostly self-studied them.
I am surprised you didn’t apply to your instate public. So that was an unforced error. But the past is the past.
You should take @tsbna44 's advice and apply to some southern schools.
You should then apply for a transfer to schools of your choice.
Since I don’t know which Penn State you got into, I can’t say whether you should pick it over Rutgers Newark or not.
But a gap year is not a good choice.
Be sure to have backup plans. Academia in general is fiercely competitive for tenure-track jobs (as opposed to adjunct / contractor / piecework jobs), particularly in fields where there is little or no industry demand for PhD graduates, since each faculty member at a research university supervises many more graduate students to PhD completion than needed to replace when retiring.
Yes, academia is very prestige-oriented when hiring, but it is based on in-major prestige of your PhD school. You may want to investigate how much your undergraduate school (probably in-major) prestige matters for PhD program admission.
Thanks for the advice, yeah I should have looked more at the schools before I applied. Everyone around me basically told me that I will definitely get into one of the match schools so I didn’t spend sufficient time choosing the proper safeties beforehand.
I know someone who didn’t get into USC as a freshman, went to JC for a year, and reapplied and got in. It’s easier to get into more selective schools as a transfer student, as they know some students will drop out or transfer after the first and second year. They need to ensure enrollment numbers stay high, so you might want to speak with your counselor about options.
I would only consider a gap year if you are thinking of applying to different types of schools than you originally applied to. If you apply to the same schools again, you should not be surprised if you end up with the same results. I am certainly surprised by the decisions made by the schools you considered your safeties…when did you submit the applications? Pitt, for instance, does rolling applications but may end up needing to turn down strong students if they apply too late in the cycle.
What is your family’s budget? Depending on if you have financial need, and how much, that could have played a factor in the need-aware schools.
Should you want to consider your options for schools if you want to go to college in fall 2023, these are some schools that you might want to consider that seemed to have strong programs in classical studies/Latin, assessed via the number of majors (or whether they had students receiving Master’s or PhDs in the subject).
Appears as though they’re still accepting applications:
U. of Tennessee: says they’re still accepting applications but that they have a waitlist…I’d call and see how they’re picking off that waitlist (i.e. they might place you at the front of the list… Link
This varies a lot by school. USC is one of the more transfer-friendly schools among the more selective private schools. Getting into Stanford or Princeton as a transfer is much less likely, especially for a traditional student attending college soon after high school (Stanford and Princeton appear to emphasize non-traditional students for the tiny number of transfer students they admit).
I’m not a classics savant, but many on here have labeled UMASS one of the premier classics departments. I never see it on lists but many on the college confidential say so.
And frankly - I was planning to eventually pursue a phd in classics and join the academia, so I didn’t feel like Umass would have been a good choice.
I’d ask - why not? What’s the difference between Rutgers, UMN, Penn State, etc. besides geography. The answer - nothing?
That said, look up the offerings on the list I sent you - there is nothing inherently different from the flagships I mentioned if they have the curriculum in the Classics area that works for you.
And many of the private colleges are solid names as well - that won’t keep you out of academia if you end up going that way.