Chance a junior planning college visits

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>As implied by the title, I'm a junior who is exploring colleges to look at over February/spring break. Rather than travel to schools that I have no chance at, I made a chance thread to get an idea of reasonable schools. Here we go...</p>

<p>Basic Info:
- Upper-middle class white male
- Competitive public school in NY that sends 10-15 kids to ivies, stanford, caltech, etc... every year
- Potential majors: physics, computer science, or aero engineering (double major???)</p>

<p>Stats:
- 3.95 UW gpa, school doesn't weight
- Rank: school doesn't rank
- SAT: 600 CR, 770 math, 650 writing, 2020 total (yuck)
- ACT: 35 composite, 35 math, 35 english, 34 reading, 34 science, 7 essay
- SAT II's: haven't taken yet, but planning on Math II, biology, and physics
- AP's: physics B (5) and world history (4) sophomore year; computer science, chemistry, biology, and us history junior year; probably calc bc, physics c (mechanics and E+M), government (comparative and us), and econ (macro and micro) senior year</p>

<p>EC's:
- business manager/writer for school newspaper
- science olympiad
- tutor 3-5 graders once a week
- Helping club (3 day retreat sophomore year)
- piano lessons
- working on starting a FIRST robotics team
- signed up to volunteer at local animal shelter over the summer</p>

<p>I don't have very many EC's and the ones I do have don't date back very far because I had to deal with a major mental/physical health issue in 9th and 10th grades.</p>

<p>Schools:
- Columbia
- Cornell
- Swarthmore
- U of Chicago
- U of Michigan
- Georgia Tech
- U of Rochester
- U of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
- U of Maryland - College Park
- Ohio State
- SUNY Stony Brook</p>

2

<p>Your SAT score is going to hurt for Columbia, Cornell, Swarthmore, and U Chicago. I would send your ACT scores which are much higher. Your ECs are good, not great. Nice GPA; I would just make sure you do well on SAT IIs. Then I think you stand a good chance at the aforementioned schools. The rest I’m not too worried about.</p>

3

<p>Anybody else? And I thought that I had to send the SAT along with the ACT. Can I really just send the ACT?</p>

4

<p>I think you’re grades are great but otherwise you’re weakened by your ECs. I would skip Columbia and Cornell because while they want your scores, they generally want over-achievers who do it all.</p>

5

<p>Like I said, my EC’s are weak because of the health issue I had. If I were to talk about the problem in an essay would that make up for the lack of EC’s? If it weren’t for the issue I would probably have 2-3 varsity sports to add to that list.</p>

6

<p>Bump Bump Bump</p>

7

<p>Holy cow, 6 replies!?!? This thread must be hoppin’!</p>

8

<p>Bump Bump Bump</p>