Hey I’m a highschool junior and I have a few questions about colleges. Personal info is lower-middle class white male.
Assuming I get straight A’s this year I will have a 3.6/4.0 UW/W. I have a 34 on the act and I haven’t taken the SAT IIs yet but I think I can do well enough on them.
My freshman year was really bad because I guess I just didn’t care. I made it out with all B’s, two A’s and one C over the course of 2 semesters. Sophomore year was all A’s, one B and one C over two semesters. My EC’s are young republicans president, green society (which is a very active club, numerous local volunteering opportunities that I did), and baseball. Outside of school I have a job waiting tables, and this summer I went to a summer education program with the New York Times. This year I plan to intern at the children’s hospital my dad works at and I’ve also emailed local businesses about interning there. My planned major is economics. My question was do these schools seem realistic to you guys? My gpa really weighs me down and I really regret not trying more freshman year. It sucks that I’m held down by decisions I made when I was 14 but I want to work past it.
My safeties are Syracuse, and University of Colorado Boulder.
As for matches I want to get into Michigan, Fordham, and maybe NYU
Reaches are Cornell (ED) and Vassar.
What do you guys think? Can I make it into any of my reaches/matches. In order of which I would most like to attend are
@ClarinetDad16 I don’t think my school does that…it’s the top public school in my state and theres around 211 in my grade and I’d say I’m in the top 30-40 maybe.
With a 3.5 / 3.6 on your application, and not being top 10% in your class Michigan and Cornell are probably out of reach. Out of the other 5 you could get into two or three.
UMich is hardly a match for anybody from OOS. It would not be a match for you even if you are from Michigan. Your GPA is far below their admission average while they consider GPA (and course rigor) to be most important. ACT 34 would put you right at the 75th percentile. It is a reach for you due to your GPA and their low admission rate.
@billcsho I mean I’m looking at naviance right now and it says average accepted weighted gpa from my school is 3.8 which is around where mine is right now. Not to mention my dad went there but if my gpa is really that bad I guess it’s a long shot
GPA 3.6 and 3.8 is a big difference. In addition, Naviance data are from previous years. The admission stat of UMich has been going up in recent years. The admission average GPA this year is 3.87 while it was 3.83 a few years ago. So your school’s GPA scale is not far off from the norm. The mid 50 GPA is around 3.7-4.0. In other words, near a quarter of the class has GPA 4.0 in high school.
I said average WEIGHTED though. My weighted gpa is at 3.8 and if all goes well this year it will be a 4.0 weighted. My schools average weighted acceptance was 3.8 so technically I will be above average for my school. I get that it will be difficult but I’m still going to apply and pray that I can do it and hopefully if I don’t get in there I’ll get into fordham so I won’t have to go to my state school.
Why are you expending any energy on SAT2s? Do any of your colleges even require them after you submit ACT? You should check before you waste valuable time and money
Are you instate for Michigan?
if not, UMich is a reach.
I’m afraid your list is very risky.
Have you run the NPC on Syracuse and UC Boulder?
Those are poor safeties since they don’t meet need. They seem more like matches, and may
well be unaffordable unless you’ve already checked that your parents have 250K set aside for your
college (or can afford that off their income).
What’s your parents’ budget - have you shown them the NPC results for your favorite universities?
Note that UMich does not weight GPA but recalculate without subgrades. If the naviance data of your school does not have uwGPA, the wGPA may not mean much for assessing your chance.