<p>Hi! I'm a rising senior who's attempting to solidify his college list. I'm wondering if some of the colleges I plan on applying to could be considered matches or safeties. This is particularly influenced by the scattergrams available on Naviance and the (incomplete) data of GPA and SAT scores of past applicants. We're a relatively small school in a pretty small town where major competitions like Intel are not very well-known (my friends and I just found out about it a few months ago... a bit too late unfortunately). :(</p>
<p>GPA: 3.71 UW/ 4.25 W (our weighted GPA is the same thing as the UC GPA)</p>
<p>Rank: N/A - our school doesn't rank</p>
<p>PSAT: 229</p>
<p>SAT: I took it 3 times; 2320 in one sitting with a 2340 superscore</p>
<p>Courseload Rigor: I've taken ALMOST the hardest course load offered (I was supposed to be on track for AP Calc BC this year but instead got "held back" twice and just finished Precalculus (CP) instead... self-studied Calculus, however, and took the AP test). I've taken 7 AP classes so far (3 sophomore year, 4 junior year), 1 UC approved honors course (Chinese 3 awwww yeah), and I took 9 AP tests this year.</p>
<p>The reason my GPA is relatively low is because our AP Euro class was incredibly difficult in terms of rigor. It is notorious across the county as being the most difficult, equal to (but a lot harder for me than) the difficulty of Calculus BC. There were only probably ~5 A's given in a class of 25-30; the difficulty of this class unfortunately adversely affected the grades in almost all my other classes. The positive effect of this, however, was that it made my junior year a lot easier for me in adapting to an actually lighter load of work. Besides that, for some reason, I received a C in APCS, so I'm going to be e-mailing my teacher about this. (that was all my sophomore year; I received only 1 B+ in AP Chem junior year, and had A's for everything else).</p>
<p>Senior Year Courseload: 6 AP classes/1 CP/1-2 community college classes: AP Chinese, AP Government/Politics, AP Macroeconomics, AP Calculus BC, AP Physics 2, AP English Literature, Life Skills (CP)... I may take Pharmacology/Organic Chemistry/Calculus III (maybe not) at the local CC for the fall/spring semesters (still deciding which one(s)!).</p>
<p>EC's:
- Student Intern/Volunteer at Free Clinic (9-12, patient interaction, 300+ hours)
- Mentorship intern at a biopharmaceutical company (this summer, 40 hours x 7 weeks, going to be doing a research project while I'm here)
- Creative Director/Member of Academic Decathlon team (9-12, 6 medals jr. year with 2nd highest individual score for Scholastics at regional level... we got 4th though so, yeah.)
- 10 years of piano (Certificate of Merit for MTAC... which is standard stuff) and 5 years of clarinet
- Member/Program Designer/Show Director for local nonprofit orchestra (9-11)
- Varsity Tennis (9-12)</p>
<p>I have a few other ones but they are not very substantial/haven't even been begun yet.</p>
<p>I've won a couple of awards for regional competitions, but nothing major. One of them was for a team project assessing local water quality that I'm planning on continuing next year. I'm also hoping to maybe use the research of this summer for a supplement or something (maybe enter competitions, but I don't expect much from them, especially when most of them are after apps are due). </p>
<p>I'm an Asian male (oh no), but a CA resident (hooray), which may greatly improve my chances for UC's, and is partly why I believe so relatively many people from my school have been accepted with similar objective stats to so many of the UC's. I intend on majoring in Biochemistry. </p>
<p>Here's a list of some of the colleges I plan on applying to that I may be considering my safeties/matches (only based on the scattergrams):</p>
<p>UCSD
UCSB
Boston University
University of Rochester
Emory University </p>
<p>I'm also curious as to my chances for UC Berkeley and UCLA. I'm thinking these may be high matches/low reaches largely due to how low my GPA is. The only thing is that nobody from my school who had my GPA also had my SAT score (or higher), so it's harder to tell. Generally, though, there seems to be a small box of particular GPA and SAT points past a threshold indicating almost guaranteed acceptance. This may, of course, not totally be true as there is no guaranteed admissions; however, this is a trend I observed.</p>
<p>I apologize for the relatively long post and value your opinions. As I've said before, I know there is no such thing as guaranteed admissions, and I know that these schools are quite well-known. I am just curious if I could consider these my matches/safeties at all for the sake of my list of colleges to apply to. Thank you!</p>