Hi guys! Please help me, I’ve been feeling very anxious lately after finishing all my college applications. I wanna get a better understanding on what my chances are.
Schools I applied to:
UCB
UCSB
UCSD
UCLA
UCSC
UCI
SDSU
SJSU
Cal Poly SLO
Cal Poly Pomona
Boston University
NYU
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
University of Washington
Northeastern University
Purdue University
Major:
Business/Economics
Stats
UW: 3.3
W: 3.7
SAT: 1440
Superscore: 1470
Extracurriculares/ Volunteering/Work
Volleyball for all 4 years
Club volleyball for all 4 years, won regionals last year
Volunteered at summer camp and a club at school
participated in leadership program at school
Worked at target
Interned at a business company over summer
Earned AP scholar award and a leadership award and volleyball award
You should get into at least half of those schools. My D was admitted to SDSU with slightly better grades and a much lower SAT score.
Most of those UC’s will be tough.
So the first 4 UCs on your list are high reaches/very little chance. Irvine is a reach and UCSC is a a high match.
San Diego State and SLO are pretty competitive as well. Those will be reaches. Cal Poly Pomona and San Jose State are matches.
The OOS state and private schools are all reaches.
Assuming that you’re Chinese from your username, your GPA is much too low and your SAT is good, but not at the level that most of your schools are looking for.
This is not to say that you will not do well in college, but the reality is that many Asian females (especially Chinese) will have 4.0/1500+ and even then many of them will be outright rejected at Top 20 schools, although they will have slightly better chances at admissions than Asian males.
UIUC has a pretty competitive business school. If you were in-state, your chances would be good, but OOS it is a high match. Can you afford it? There is no FA for OOS students.
@Hamurtle , can I ask if my highschool also effects decisions? I go to a super hard and competitive highschool that is ranked high nationally, so it is harder for students to get good grades there.
Since I am from the Northeast I figure I can just guess at some of the schools in this area.
I think that Northeastern is a reach. I am not sure whether BU and NYU are low reaches, or high matches. My guess is low reach. None of these are safeties nor even regular matches. If you get into any of them I would expect you to be full pay. For us at least full pay at BU or Northeastern was rather daunting but fortunately DD wanted to go elsewhere.
My guess is that U.Washington is also a low reach. UCB and UCLA I would put as very high reaches, but I am not from your part of the country.
I am not sure if any of the CSU’s on your list would count as safeties.
Ditto what DadTwoGirls said. I am not as familiar with the UC schools. Your stats could get you into Purdue for business, but then again, it’s a state school, and if you are OOS, it isn’t a sure thing. You’re probably going to get into at least a couple of schools on your list, but I agree with the other posters that your list tilts towards high match/low reaches. If you’re from CA, the UC schools are going to be your best bets.
@yuweiwei I tend to agree with @Hamurtle on the chances per school- if your high school is super hard, do you have naviance to use as a comparator? My daughter got into NYU with what looked like a relatively low gpa (not as low as yours though), but it was in the accept/waitlist range for her school on naviance.
Since you mention California, I don’t think rigor of your school will help you unfortunately in your case.
I’m more familiar with the Bay Area/Silicon Valley pressure cookers (Gunn, Paly, Lynbrook, Monta Vista, Saratoga, Mission San Jose) and each of those schools have over 100 students with over 4.0 weighted GPA and 34+/1500+ ACT/SAT scores in their graduating classes.
Even the so called ‘second tier’ (think Mountain View, Los Altos, Cupertino, Homestead, Irvington, Los Gatos to name a few) in the Bay Area would be top tier in most of the United States and would have the same number of high achieving students.
Irvington in Fremont has improved drastically in the last few years since a large portion of Asian kids originally part of the Mission San Jose attendance area were rediscricted to Irvington and their NMSF/commended student numbers are way more than some of the top schools in the East Bay like Campolindo (considered a top tier school).
Your scores put you in a solid 95th+ percentile, but the weighted GPA is still low and you are disadvantaged by your demographics. So most of the schools are still a reach.
I would check Naviance to see how you stack up against accepted admits.
I might put Santa Clara or one of the other Catholic schools in California (St. Mary’s, USF, USD, Loyola Marymount) as targets. All of them have decent to above average business programs and will be less reachy than BU, NYU, or Northeastern.
@Hamurtle thankyou for your input, i was just wondering if purdue and UW and UIUC could be target schools for me because of their acceptance rate and purdue and UIUC business is less highly ranked
@yuweiwei UIUC leans heavily to instate students, last year about 77%. So for OOS it’s much more competitive. And your gpa is below the bottom of the middle 50, 3.38-3.90, and more specifically for the business school was 3.52-3.89; and you might expect OOS to generally be in the higher part of that range.
UW freshman profile has middle 50 GPA 3.71-3.95.
For both, your SAT is in range but not sure it offsets gpa, at best I’d say low reaches.
By the way - if your NYU application was into Stern, it’s a proper reach. Admit rates for Stern are in single digits now. Your odds would be a bit better for CAS but still reachy.
Berkeley, UCLA, and NYU (If Stern) will be high reaches…rest should be ok. You will only be competing with students in your high school, aka they will use past students data who applied as a comparison and your peers so don’t worry about your gpa compared to other schools if it is a higher ranked school.