<p>I am a junior. Yep. I have been looking at colleges for the past year or so, and was wondering if you could give me some insight on how i can better my chances on getting into these colleges.</p>
<p>My current statistics are as follows:
GPA: 3.45 (W 3.6)
SAT: 1700
ACT: 27</p>
<p>Activities</p>
<ul>
<li>Policy Debate</li>
<li>Tech Leader (tech support at our school)</li>
<li>Acting</li>
</ul>
<p>Major: Computer Science
Minor: Theatre</p>
<p>Colleges</p>
<p>Reaches:</p>
<p>Northwestern University (Dream College) (EA)
University of Chicago
NYU</p>
<p>Goals</p>
<p>University of Washington - Seattle
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
University of Wisconsin - Madison
DePauw University</p>
<p>Your GPA and ACT/SAT scores are too low for your reaches. If they are not within the 25-75% percentile, your chances are very slim especially at schools with sub-10% acceptance rates like UChicago. If you can retake the ACT and aim for a 32+, that would help out a lot. </p>
<p>Have you taken a difficult course load at your high school? </p>
<p>You can still apply and try for it, but it would likely take a miracle at Northwestern or UChicago. A very slim chance at NYU.</p>
<p>Have your parents assured you that they will contribute enough so that you do not need scholarships or financial aid? Or have they given you a price limit to work with? List price at expensive schools can be over $60,000 per year.</p>
<p>You need to start your list with a safety that you know you will be admitted to and know that you can afford.</p>
<p>DePauw seems like an outlier in this list, as it is a small school where most students join fraternities and sororities.</p>
<p>It could be that with a salary of 125K your parents will find it difficult to contribute as much to your education as the colleges want. Find out what the colleges want by running the net price calculator at each school with your parents’ help.</p>
<p>1° Run the NPCs. Even if your “long story” is unrelated to family income, get an idea of how much each college will cost and bring the results to your parents to discuss. Get a firm number from them.
125k will NOT pay for public college OOS. As a freshman, you’re only allowed to borrow 5.5k.
2° GPA and test scores aren’t even within reach category for your current reaches
3° UWA for CS is VERY competitive. You’d need to get higher grades than that, with all A’s in AP Calc, bio, chem, physics (potentially CS), and MUCH higher stats for that major. Right now, you’d be admitted to UWA but not to the major.
4° UIUC for CS will require better stats, too.
5° UWI is a possibility if your ACT gets to 30 and you’re on an upward trend.
6° You need to find actual matches and safeties.</p>