<p>I'm an Asian female living in Pennsylvania. I attend a non-ranked public school which sends a handful to Ivies and some more to top tier schools each year with 300~ in my class. My parents' income is somewhere around $70k (but they're not contributing anything to my education, not even EFC, so I will need a lot of finaid). As far as I know, I have no hooks besides my distant connection to my cousin who's a director at Columbia. I'm getting recommendations from my counselor, French teacher, Business teacher/DECA advisor, Pre-Calc/Statistics teacher, and AP History teacher (who already wrote me an excellent rec for a summer program, although I never got to apply). I'm a pretty decent essay writer, but I guess that goes for everyone applying to the schools I like. I want to major in business economics and/or international studies, with possible concentrations in marketing and French. I really need some safeties and suggestions for what I should do this summer and early in my senior year to improve my chances, so I appreciate all the help I can get!</p>
<p>STATISTICS:
SAT: 2240 (M 700 / CR 760 / W 780)
GPA: 3.9~ (unweighted)
Rank: Top 10% (my school only reports in deciles, but I'm sure I'm top 5%)
APs: Euro (4), English Lang (probably a 5), US History (probably a 5), English Lit (sr year), Stats (sr year), Calc AB (sr year), French (sr year), Physics C (sr year), US Gov (sr year)
ECs: Invisible Children (9, 10, 11, 12), DECA (10, 11, 12), French Club (10, 11, 12), National Honor Society (10, 11, 12), Societ</p>
<p>Penn State is a good safety, look at other various state schools. Honestly, if you are paying for the tuition yourself, save your money and go to Penn State. You will thank yourself in the end, when you won’t have huge loans. Just saying.</p>
<p>Honestly, it may be better for you to go to a 2nd or 3rd tier school where you can get a full ride so you can save money, because you will likely get full rides at some awesome schools. Maybe not Ivys or right underneath them, but great schools nonetheless. Loans nowadays are ridiculous.</p>
<p>I should have mentioned I don’t want to go to school in the south, so Tulane, UMiami, and Emory are out. And from what I’ve heard from friends going to PSU, they’ve been giving very little financial aid as of late, so I may even be better off going to a private school (Penn & Columbia especially, since they have no-loan financial aid programs). Anyone want to summarize my chances for the schools I have on my list?</p>
<p>Will my lack of volunteering hours affect my chances greatly? My parents run a very strict household and I don’t even get to have a social life, much less go out and volunteer for the causes I’d like to support. Am I correct in thinking that there is a family responsibility section on the Common App where I can explain this?</p>
<p>How about trinity college in hartford, connecticut. Great finaid. And also, hampshire college, bard college, any of the SUNYs, really go have a good chance anywhere. Just look at schools with high finaid and you’ll be fine. Plus all of these schools are amazing!(:</p>
<p>You can only apply to Chicago or Penn, not both for EA/ED. OTOH, you can apply to both Chicago and Georgetown early.</p>
<p>Do you think you will be on the national merit list? Lot of schools give money for that.</p>
<p>You need SAT IIs for several schools on this list.</p>
<p>All Ivies are a crapshoot. So your chance is around 7-8% for them anyway even if you are on par with the good applicant pool.</p>
<p>If you are taking care of your younger sibling because your parents need to work in the evenings and that restricts hours available for you to work/volunteer, make sure you highlight that. adcoms need to be aware of such issues to evaluate your application properly.</p>
<p>University of Pennsylvania (Huntsman ED, and if deferred, SAS) high reach
University of Chicago (EA) reach
Pennsylvania State University - University Park match/safety
Cornell University Reach
Georgetown University low reach
Boston College high match
Columbia University (on the fence about applying to this school, is it even feasible?) Reach
Northwestern University mid reach</p>
<p>@kaetiiii Yeah, I think I really like Trinity, so I’ll be looking into it some more.</p>
<p>@texaspg I can’t apply to both early? I thought Penn’s thing was that you can’t do ED anywhere else and Chicago’s EA was completely unrestricted. Just took US History/Math II/French SATs today. Did well on History, Math was ok, and I may have to retake French in October since it was the last I took and I was just too tired to try hard enough. I’ll make sure to do write about my work/volunteering situation on my apps.</p>
<p>ravenclaw - you may be right according to Penn’s website since they don’t mention EA at all. I checked Columbia’s website and they do mention that you may be able to apply EA to other schools but if you get in, it is binding unless you are not satisfied with the money. </p>
<p>I did hear of someone getting in Columbia and MIT ED and EA and I assumed this person may have broken some rule but it sounds like that was nt case after reading the rule. Stanford adcom said both Columbia and Stanford admitted someone and when they found out, both admissions were cancelled in 2011 admission cycle. </p>
<p>So SCEA probably has prohibitions against ED or EA anywhere else but Penn and Columbia don’t for their own ED against open EAs at least. Georgetown did mention you can’t apply ED elsewhere.</p>
<p>@patriotsfan1 Villanova’s quite literally right down the road from me, and the less than stellar finaid they would offer me definitely wouldn’t be worth going there. I also don’t like Rutgers because of some people I know that go there, but I’ll look into Loyola Maryland.</p>
<p>@texaspg thanks, i’ll contact Penn and Chicago’s admissions offices just to make sure that applying to both early won’t cause problems for me. They’re the only two I’m interested in applying early to, so I shouldn’t have issues with the others on my list.</p>
<p>Alright, Loyola is a small school but you are definately above the average applicant so I bet you would get merit money and financial aid. Maybe UDeleware as well?</p>
<p>Just wanted to point out that finaid at ivies is need based, so even though there are no loans in the package, you would still need to take out enough to make up for your parents’ EFC. That said, finaid at these places tends to be very generous, but you might be better off looking for merit money.</p>
<p>Yeah, the EFC is my biggest financial challenged since most of these schools will give 95%+ of the COA in grants/work-study (except PSU). If I don’t get enough merit aid or scholarships from outside sources, I’ll need to cover the EFC with a job or two and some loans (which will be hard, since my parents don’t want to cosign for me).</p>
<p>Just to update my stats, I got elected executive director (president) of DECA, so that’s another leadership position. I also got elected fundraising director of Invisible Children once again (president hasn’t been announced yet). I’m worried that I only have two major leadership roles since my school encourages students to not have leadership in more than one activity (I was going to run for NHS officer, but the advisor frowned upon that) although the ones that I do have are in clubs I’m passionate about, will this hurt my chances? I was also a mentor for an AP Euro student (not so much tutored him but helped him with study, organizational, and writing skills) and I’m doing an independent study in business next year - are they worth mentioning?</p>
<p>@Ravenclaw: When I visited these top schools, esp. Penn, they stressed not needing formal business experience to be admitted. “Not many have personal small businesses, huge business internships, or invested in the stock market and have a strong portfolio” I’m not sure the independent study in business is worth mentioning.</p>