<p>I'm currently a junior in high school, and I have a list of about thirteen colleges I'm interested in applying to. Obviously, I'm not going to apply to all of them, which is where I need help. I need to know whether or not I'm being realistic and should cut out some of these reaches and add more safeties. My unweighted GPA is 3.7 (weighted is 4.3). I have good AP test scores, lots of community service, and strong extracurriculars. I have good relationships with my teachers, so I'm hoping for good recommendation letters. Also, I've been obsessed with creative writing since I was really young and am confident I can write very strong application essays. Finally, my majors of choice is astronomy/physics. (On a side note, would it help my application if I put down my major as undecided for colleges that allow it?)</p>
<p>Here's the list of colleges I'm interested in:</p>
<p>Reach: UC Berkeley, Oxford, Stanford, NYU</p>
<p>Match: UC Davis, UC Irvine, Edinburgh, Pennstate, Rose-Hulman, St. Andrews</p>
<p>Safety: CSU Fullerton, Point Loma, SUNY Stony Brook (which I'm considering removing because I'm not that interested)</p>
<p>Is this reasonable? (I'm aware that several of my matches are borderline reaches.) What should I cut out?</p>
<p>Stanford is seriously like the most selective school. your GPA is honestly not great. if you get a 34 or above ACT or above a 2250 SAT, I would consider applying. also, strong ECs are very different by person. one person would consider five clubs strong, but many people applying to Ivy League schools have something exceptional along with the ordinary, like starting a clothing brand or helping numerous political campaigns (I’ve seen both on this site). If you get good scores, you should apply to some of those reaches because you might just get in.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention, my SAT score is 2200. And some of my extracurriculars include:
Abolitionist Society
Recently began volunteering with survivors of sex trafficking
Hundreds of hours of volunteer work with dogs at an animal shelter
Currently applying for a job at a bookstore, so hopefully I’ll be able to add that to the list
Marched with my school’s marching band in the Rose Bowl Parade that was televised to 80 million people
AMSE minor at my school - AMSE is my school’s program for students interested in “Applied Math, Science, and Engineering.” I’m a minor, so I take additional science and math classes every yer, in addition to being involved in four AMSE-related clubs, regularly attending talks/meetings and writing reports on them, etc.
(One of those AMSE clubs has put experiments on the ISS space station.)
Etc.</p>
<p>For Oxford, you will need to take the Physics Aptitude Test (which is a serious make-or-break), have a 5 in AP Calc BC, and at least 1of the AP Physics, plus a 5 in another quantitative subject (you can replace some of these with SATIIs in the mid-700s). From the website, Oxford is looking for:</p>
<p>Motivation: a real interest and strong desire to learn physics.
Ability to express physical ideas using mathematics; mathematical ability.
Reasoning ability: ability to analyse and solve problems using logical and critical approaches.
Physical intuition: an ability to see how one part of a physical system connects with another; and to predict what will happen in a given physical situation.
Communication: ability to give precise explanations both orally and numerically.</p>