can't put together a good college list... help!

College Search & Selection
1

I am a junior, but I still don’t have a good idea of exactly where I want to apply, my stats are

SAT: math: 800 / english/reading: 730 – composite 1530
ACT: english: 36 / reading: 36 / math: 33 / science: 30 – composite 34

I don’t know what my weighted GPA is yet, my school doesn’t compute it until the end of junior year, but I have a 4.0 unweighted, and have taken 3 APs, 3 honors, and 1 dual enrollment.

I’m a founding member of my schools Girl Up! club (UN affiliate) and an officer, also, I joined student council last year, and will be senior class treasurer next year (elections were in march)

I have a varsity letter in ice hockey (2 years, and probably next year too - I skipped this year bc I tore my ACL)

I’m thinking about:
Duke Kunshan
University of Michigan
Stanford
NYU
Columbia

…but I’m not really sure about those, and I feel kind of lost. Does anyone have suggestions? (note: I am interested in an urban college, and not afraid to go intl… obviously lol)

2

DKU is an interesting choice. Duke itself would be considered an “urban” college but Durham is no NYC or Shanghai.

I think you have a good shot at Michigan, DKU, and NYU. Columbia, Duke, and Stanford are significant reaches (specially S).

Your ECs seem a little too generic. I would work on remedying that. Keep your grades up!

3

Intended major?

4

I would consider Stanford and Duke and Michigan more suburban. Schools like GW and NYU and Columbia and GA Tech are urban. In the heart of bigger cities.

5

Ann Arbor is not really a suburb of Detroit. While you can get to Detroit in 45 minutes or so, Ann Arbor is its own city. I would call it an urban environment in a smaller city.

6

Most consider “urban” colleges to be in the middle of a big city. UF is in a “city” but I don’t consider it “urban”. These are small cities. Not technically a “suburb” but not like NYC or Dallas or what have you. A city of 100k provides a different feel and experience than a city of 1M. Perhaps the OP can clarify what they are looking for. College town? Small city? Big city? Does it matter?

7

Do you like urban, suburban, or rural? Also how much is cost an issue? Just a could of good colleges that you could think about are BU, BC, UW Madison, Purdue, and Georgia Tech. Honestly, it really depends on what you are majoring in. If you want humanities/business/pre-law you should apply places like BC, Brandies, USC, Fordham, Wake Forest, William and Mary, UVA. If you want to do STEM and Engineering specifically a lot of flagship state schools are the way to go like UMich, Purdue, Ohio State, UIUC, Georgia Tech, UW Madison, UT Austin, University of Washington.

8

Michigan is still a low reach if you are out of state. What is your financial situation? I think you need more matches.

UTAustin, GTech are real reaches unless in state (and GTech rejected some in state students with better stats than the OP’s this year).