SAT: haven’t taken yet
Weighted GPA (my school doesn’t do unweighted): 4.5
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): My school doesn’t post rank, at least top 5-10%
APs:
World History
european history
chemistry
bio
stats
lang
gov
econ
calc BC
psych
spanish
taken honors classes throughout high school and whenever available (7 honors classes)
I have taken 4 years of spanish
ECs:
Cheerleading (varsity 11-12)
student council (class vice president 10, executive president 12)
key club
non profit organization working to provide clothes to children in ESL schools
NHS
spanish honor society
mission trips
more random leadership clubs
tutoring
youtube
essays will be focused on my love of spanish, making my non profit, and showing my love for helping my community
Intended Major: Chemistry or Marketing (i haven’t decided exactly yet)
State: Indiana
Ethnicity: White
Gender: Female
my college list so far (obviously not applying to all but i’m trying to bring my lost down)(wanting a medium size college, preferably private)
favorites:
ivies- yale, harvard, columbia, princeton, brown, cornell, upenn
stanford
MIT
usc
others:
notre dame
pepperdine
georgetown
george washington
ucla
uc berkeley
purdue
duke
unc
johns hopkins
boston college
boston university
nyu
usc
wash u
uchicago
northwestern
northeastern
Without test scores it is impossible to gauge your chances.
I will only comment on UCLA/UCB and USC. Yes they are Reaches especially for an out of state applicant (UCLA/UCB for OOS).
I would first check with your parents about your college budget. How much are they willing to pay each year towards your education? Do you qualify for need-based aid? Are you looking for merit aid?
UCLA/UCB give little to no financial aid to Out of state students so you will be expect to pay around $65,000/year to attend. Does your parents have that kind of money?
USC could be possible and they do give good financial aid if you qualify. Again, no test scores so no way to know how competitive you can be.
Even though your school does not do an Unweighted GPA, you can calculate it yourself. A weighted GPA means little to most schools, since there is no standard on HS weighting.
Here is the UC GPA calculator and it will calculate your UC GPA as unweighted, Capped weighted and Fully weighted. UC’s only use 10-11th grades in their a-g course requirements. Also make sure you have a Visual/Performing arts course (1 year) when applying.
https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/
Simple GPA calculator for unweighted GPA : http://gpacalculator.net/
I would also comment that UCLA/UCB do not have Marketing majors so I would look into possible “business” type majors that would fit you if you are still considering these schools.
My advice is so start from the bottom up on your college list. Find 2 affordable safety schools with a 100% chance of getting an acceptance. From there, find 3-4 Match schools that you have a good chance followed by a few Reach schools.
Good luck and post your test scores when you have them.
Right now, yes, uber reaches. You’re a soph with no scores. You haven’t mentioned how the AP test last year went, you’re projecting things like exec president in 12th. And you have no idea how the future AP load will go.
What is the charity? Here you say clothes to ESL kids. Other thread says gifts to hospitalized kids. They’re nice, but not taking on a challenge, not rolling up your sleeves. And if you may want stem, where are the math-science activities?
Spend the time digging into what your targets say they want. It’s more than stats and some “random leadership” titles. Or founding something (often better to join an existing, organized adult effort.) You’ll learn few Ivies even have business majors, much less, marketing.
You can’t strategize without understanding. Try it.
Have you gotten all A’s? If so, your unweighted is 4.0. If you haven’t got all As there will be many at your favorites that will have. How did you do on your AP tests?
You need to come up with a way to express “who you are through your application, especially your Essays and if possible encouraging your recommendations to highlight that as well.” Every person (ok, every non-hooked person) who applies to your favorites list will be just like your statsECs, and some will be much stronger especially if you don’t get 1500+ 34+ on your tests. You will have to differentiate yourself by “presenting” a complete person picture. BTW, the youtube might be a plus or a minus, depending on how you come across.
Your list is basically a who’s who of American Colleges. All of them could be considered reaches (I don’t know much about Pepperdine these days and Purdue might be a match because you are in Indiana. To be honest if I could have sent both of my kids to Purdue at instate tuition prices, it would be a steal. Especially with Purdue’s tuition freeze for seven straight years and their reputation as one of world’s top STEM schools. If you wanted chemistry or even chemical engineering, even the tippy top can’t beat it at the value/content rate you’d pay there.
You should also consider picking one to go for if you can afford and apply ED or SCEA as your chances for acceptance appear to be higher. There is some debate here. While the acceptance rates in ED and SCEA are higher then in RD, many of those spots are for hooked students. We were told in the process at Williams that the acceptance rate for non-hooked students is the same in ED and RD. I’m not sure that is the same everywhere.
Finally, if you are a high stats student, go for it. If you apply for Financial Aid at UChicago the application fee is waived, other schools probably do the same. It is only time you are out. But go in with eyes very wide open. The world (and that is who you are competing with) is full of UW 4.0 GPA 1600SAT students. You may not get in to the tippy top, but places like Purdue are very special places (if you can’t tell from my alias, I know something about Purdue, and have 2 degrees from there) and even if they aren’t a CHYMPS (Chicago, Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, Standford) school, you should be excited to get the opportunity to study there.
I would also run the Net Price calculators for each school of interest before spending time on schools that are unaffordable. Each schools website should have a NPC.
You have some super replies, from some very experienced CC posters. And you are clear about what you want: an “elite” college- you and tens of thousands of other students.
To recap:
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start with affordability. unless your parents have explicitly said “we will pay for 100% of whatever college you get into, even if it costs $75,000 per year”, you need to figure out what you can actually afford. Even students accepted to ‘meet full need’ colleges have been surprised to find that there can be a difference between what the family sees as their need and what the college sees as their need. And it is a true thing that students have had to turn down tippy-top names in favor of much less fancy names, b/c that is what they can afford. Better to figure that out now.
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build from the bottom up: your list (as @BrianBoiler pointed out) is basically a list of big names. Your chances of being rejected by pretty much all of them run from 75-95%. It is easy to fall in love with shiny things, but as @CValle recently noted, top scores + top grades + good ECs does not = acceptance. To borrow from @CValle’s post-admission cycle reflections: no dream schools, just focus on a few reaches and a bunch of likely schools. For every school that you actually like (see #3), find several similar schools with higher acceptance rates.
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some research on the schools you have listed will cut it down pretty quickly. As other posters have pointed out, most of the ‘elite’ schools don’t really do ‘business’ or ‘marketing’ majors (Economics is the closest). Want a strong ‘core curriculum’? then schools like Columbia, UChi, ND, etc are for you- but some of the others are not. There are are lots of factors: large / small; urban/suburban/rural; greek life; team sports, etc. Even things like religion: you have a bunch of Catholic schools- and Pepperdine, a strong Church of Christ school. While Pepperdine’s faith-based/service-focused community might appeal to you (“my love for helping the community”), if you/your parents are Catholic this may be a consideration. One area that comes through your post is a commitment to community service, but of the Catholic schools that I associate with that you only list BC- not the Loyolas or Creighton, for example. Other schools that I associate with community service include Pitzer, Tulane, Brandeis and the Coast Guard Academy (CG Academy is random- I just happen to know a student there!). Really, really work on finding colleges that fit the kind of student that you really are.
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going forward: focus your ECs- from what you have here I see a student having a pretty normal HS experience- but I don’t see any strong threads, or anything that shows depth and commitment over time.
As an anecdote, a current UPenn student I know had a 3.9UW GPA / 1550-1600 SAT / massive student leadership roles all 4 years / member of choral group with national awards / Model UN leadership + prizes, etc., who was deferred ED, waitlisted RD and actually cleared the WL (one of about 120 from a waitlist of 2500 who did). The other posters here can all cite similar examples- sometimes referred to on CC as ‘average excellent’!
Weighted GPA of 4.5 could mean an unweighted GPA from 2.5 to 4.0, so giving just the weighted GPA is meaningless outside of your high school.
Your list is filled with Reaches. Please do some homework to understand the kind of credentials that successful applicants present to those top extraordinarily selective schools. I used to serve as an alum interviewer for one of the Ivy League schools. I was shown data that over 85% of valedictorians who applied to my alma mater were rejected. So do a bit of work to understand your prospects and focus your attention on realistic goals.
I think all the schools you listed were because of name and not because you want to go to them. You say you want a medium sized college well Cornell isn’t Medium and so aren’t USC and your many other schools listed. You have also listed all ivy league schools - and I think you should cut that at 2-3 choices if you’re going to be daring. You definitely have a lot to back yourself up but you have to remember that scores still play a part in your application. It’s better to have less on your application because admissions can see that you have a direction and established bonds with your work.
I am currently at Northeastern and I must say I wouldn’t even get in now if I applied. It’s getting more and more complicated as the years go by. That being said, really look into schools that give aid. Ivy leagues are great if youre under a bracket but these are essentially high reaches and not only your grades, but also the way you stand out is important.
“It’s better to have less on your application because admissions can see that you have a direction and established bonds with your work.”
Nope. It’s good to have depth and breadth. This OP needs to re-view her ECs, after she learns more about the colleges and fine tines a bit.