Got my ACT scores back this week and was very pleased to see a 34 after a summer of hefty studying. However this is offset by a rather unflattering GPA that’s wavered between 3.3 and 3.4, largely due to my abysmal freshman year when I was under-motivated and under-performing. The high school I go to is among the top in my state and I’ve taken almost all honors and AP classes, so that might tilt the odds somewhat in my favor, but I’m still somewhat skeptical as to what caliber of school I can make it into. My extracurriculars aren’t all that colorful compared to some of my friends, but by the time I send in my applications I estimate that I’d have accumulated a year and a half each of Model United Nations and art club, 24-ish volunteering hours, two internships, and about half a year each for three other clubs I’m part of.
I’ve been through a few college finder websites and the results vary rather wildly. One site had a list of mostly B-tier colleges/universities that it listed me as having a good chance of getting into, but out of nowhere, UChicago was on the list, which I immediately found suspicious given that their admission requirements are crazy high compared to the other schools on the list. Another gave me around a 50-60% chance of making it into both UW and NYU, although I suspect its data was a year behind (can’t be sure about this). The problem with such sites is that their math is based on averaged student data for an entire year’s worth of admissions and doesn’t consider factors like curriculum rigor, extracurriculars, essays, and the other qualitative traits that the colleges claim to be looking for.
And so I come to you guys. Any thoughts or guesses as to what you think would be the best college or university I have a chance of getting into? I’m not going to go into my preferences for type of campus, setting, student body etc. because I haven’t quite considered those and am not interested in that information at the moment. The barometer of quality here is essentially selectivity. I should note that I consider myself a good writer/essayist and have always received good grades on such assignments/projects in class, but essay evaluation tends to be more subjective/qualitative based on the college, so it’s not all that big a factor at the moment beyond my ACT, GPA, curriculum rigor and extracurriculars.
Is your GPA weighted or unweighted? If weighted, then you also will need to tell us how it was generated or what your grades are since there is no consistency on how weighed GPA is calculated.
What is your GPA by year? Is it pretty much consistent every year, or did it vary year by year? There are a few schools that don’t consider your freshman year at all (most of them are in California or Canada).
What state are you from? What preferences do you have for a university?
A 3.3 will get you into a lot of universities, although not the very most selective “tippy top” schools.
Always start with applying to your in state public university system. Many have admissions formulas where your u would know for sure that you are getting in, but if yours does not, choose more than one campus to be on the safe side.
“I’m not going to go into my preferences” is a ridiculous attitude. Your preferences should have much higher weight in the college search process than “what’s the best ranking school.”
you’ll need to provide the info that DadTwoGirls mentioned, your gpa for 10 and 11th along with uw or weighted. Do you have any hooks, legacy, urm, etc.?
can speak to my school smu -they are working on pushing up act scores so possibly there and get some scholarship money - my sister did that with a 33 and unweighted 3.3 gpa
@DadTwoGirls the 3.3 is unweighted. I had a 2.89 freshman year, 3.2 sophomore and a 3.7 junior year. From state of Washington. My preferences are still mostly undecided but if I were forced to think of an answer I’d say medium-sized college in an urban or suburban location, no religious affiliation, and a good balance of STEM and humanities for their academics.
Western Washington might work - Bellingham is a good-sized town and they have a full set of liberal arts requirements to ensure all students get a well rounded education regardless of major.
Start there and apply now. Getting a first acceptance (they have rolling admissions) will relieve your worries and then you can reach for more selective schools.
One important issue that you need to consider: What is your budget? You need to find out what you can afford, and run the NPC on schools that you find interesting and see whether the pricing is okay. You should try to avoid debt for undergrad if reasonably possible, and if not possible then at least minimize the debt.
Your ACT score and your strong uptrend in grades are both going to help you. Obviously your freshman year will not.
Also, you really do need to think about what you want in a school. Your freshman year and even your sophomore year and to some extent the ECs will make the really tippy top schools such as Harvard and Stanford very unlikely if not impossible. However, there should be a lot of schools in the “very good” range that you can get into. You will be able to get into a lot of schools that will vary widely in many overall characteristics, but will probably not vary much at all in terms of overall academic quality.
Two obvious ones that come to mind immediately are of course the University of Washington and Washington State. I am suspecting that UW might be a bit of a reach due to your overall GPA but I personally would be tempted to apply there and I would expect you to have a chance. Since you are in Washington state you are of course close to three very good schools on the other side of the border, of which UBC is both the highest ranked and by far the most expensive for an international student. I don’t know enough about other schools in your part of the country to know what to suggest, but there are probably 100 different schools across the US that would be reasonable to consider looking only at your stats and with no idea regarding your preferences.
@DadTwoGirls UW meets OP’s desire for urban/suburban, but depending on major and course rigor could be a reach. WSU is rural. Neither is medium-sized. Western is still pretty big, but is smaller than those and undergraduate focused like many smaller schools.
@UniBat If you can talk a bit more about family income, EFC, and budget, we can talk about where to look beyond.
SeattleU comes to mind as urban and medium. They are Catholic, but students of all or even no faiths can be happy there. There are a number of Catholic colleges in other urban centers as well. But we need to know budget and EFC before picking more schools.