Chance me for Penn ED

I am a white male in Texas going to a semi-competitive public high school.

Family income: ~150k

Major: Business at Wharton

Stats:

ACT: 35

SAT II’s: Math II: (790), U.S. History(800), World History(780)

-GPA: UW-4.0, W-4.7

-Class Rank: 1/550

-AP: 6 + 5 senior year- Human Geo, World History, U.S. History, Stats, Chemistry, Lang/ 2 4’s and 4 5’s

Taking: Physics 1, Calc BC, English 4, Gov, Econ senior year

Awards:

-National Merit Scholar Finalist

-AP Scholar with Distinction

-Won debate regionals three years in policy debate

-qualified for state three times in policy debate

-Won top speaker at debate regionals in policy debate

-Won gold in National Spanish Examination

Extracurriculars:

-Varsity baseball player(4 years and 2 years on varsity)*

-Club Baseball over the summer each year

-Speech and Debate President(4 years and 2 years president)*

-Academic Decathalon(2 years)

-NHS President(2 years and 1 year president)*

-Mock Trial Captain(3 years and 1 year captain)*

-Authored and published a book about my research in economics*

-Bank of America student leaders summer program: very competitive with 5-10% acceptance rate*

-National Economics challenge: founded it at my school*

-Economics for leaders program: also pretty competitive with 20% acceptance rate*

-Interned/Shadowed a judge at local court house*

Community Service/Volunteering:

-~350 hours volunteering at the Mission in my city processing donations and helping people get the things they need*

*- asterisk means that it will be included in extracurricular section

LOR- All three are pretty good and will say 7/10 collectively

Essays: They are pretty good but not the best ever so 7-7.5/10

Applying to Penn ED

Just want to know if I look competitive and some things I did well and some things to work on.

Thanks

You are definitely very competitive, but it is a reach for anybody. So apply ED if it is your first choice, but the chances of rejection, even for you, are much higher than the chances of acceptance.

If you feel that your essay is a 7-7.5, that’s what you should be working on right now. Also, you are an A student, with a good set of extracurriculars, and are ranked #1 in your school - why will your LoR’s only be 7/10?

Do not forget to apply to UT Austin, which should be a safety for you, since you should be an automatic admit based on your ranking.

What other colleges are on your list?

Yes, UT Austin is one of my safeties.

My college list includes a mix of reaches, matches, and safeties

Reaches:
University of Chicago
Harvard University
Yale University
Princeton University
Brown University
Stanford University
Columbia University
Vanderbilt University
USC
Tufts University
Georgetown
Northwestern

High Match/ low reach:
NYU
Carnegie Mellon
UMichigan

Match:
Boston University
Boston College

Safety:
George Washington
UT Austin

Please feel free to and I would like people to suggest other reaches, matches and safeties specifically with merit-based scholarships.

NYU is a real reach, since the acceptance rate is around 15%, and the wide range of GPAs of accepted students means that high GPAs do not provide the advantage that they would in other places.

Also remember that Business majors are often accepted at lower rates than at other programs at schools at which business programs have many more applicants, especially if the college has a separate school of college for business.

So CMU’s Tepper has an acceptance rate of 19%, so it is a reach, not a low reach.

Michigan has an acceptance rate of 19% for OOS students (as opposed to a 40% or so for in-state), so it is also a reach, not a low reach.

Boston University has an acceptance rate of 19%, so, unless around half of the applicants from your school with similar stats as you have are being accepted, BU is also a reach

BC has an acceptance rate of 27%, so again, unless half of the students applying from your school with similar stats are being accepted, it would be placed as a low reach, at very most a high match.

I would put GWU as a low match. While you are well up at the top of their top 25%, with an acceptance rate of 40%, I would hesitate to put it as a safety.

Usually, if an applicant’s school does not have access to Naviance, as a rule of thumb, I consider a colleges as a safety if the acceptance rate to the college/program is 50% or higher, and the applicant is in the top 25% by way of stats (and for colleges with holistic admissions, has a god EC profile). Alternatively, there can be an auto-admission.

For you, I would consider Gies at UIUC as possibly a safety, as would be any college which is actively courting NMFs (such as Arizona).

However, you will only officially know that your are an NMSF in September (though if your SI is high enough, say 223 or higher in TX, you can be pretty certain), and while with that GPA and a confirming ACT score, you will almost certainly be a Finalist, you will not have the official confirmation until Feb or so.

I would knock about half or more of your reaches out - writing that many essays will be tough. As of now, you have 17 reaches, in addition to UPenn. I would recommend that you make sure to keep USC and BU, since, NMFs get good merit support at these colleges. Northeastern would be a low reach, AND it also has merit awards for NMFs.

If I were you, for business, I would keep UPenn as ED, Harvard, Georgetown, USC, UMich, CMU, NYU, BU, and GWU. You should definitely drop all the rest of your reaches. Other reaches/high reaches which are better for Business majors are Cornell, GTech, MIT, UVA, and UCLA. However, you should really not have more than 6 reaches.

Good matches for you (aside from GWU) would be Kelly at U Indiana and U Wisconsin.

Safeties for you, both academically and financially, would be Arizona State, U Arizona, U Alabama (as an NMF you would have a full ride scholarship + a stipend). Fordham is likely an academic safety, and they also have good scholarships for NMFs, however, they also require that these NMFs have an A average (which you have), AND be in the top 2%-3% of their applicants (which you will not know until they make decisions). TAMU is a safety, both academic and financial, since they also give full tuition for NMFs, and University of Cincinnati is the same. You may qualify for merit awards at UMN, which is also a safety for you,

However, UT Austin has one of the best business programs, and although your auto admit may not guarantee admission to their business program, I think that you are very likely to be accepted, and if you do as well in college as in HS, you could likely transfer pretty quickly.

Something important to remember is that a family income of $150K puts you in awkward position, since it’s often in the infamous “donut hole”, meaning that your EFC can be higher than your family can afford. For example - can your parents afford another $35,000-$40,000 a year, since that is roughly what a family with $150K income would be expected to pay at UPenn (about 1/2 the full cost)?

For UPenn, last year ED applications went down about 9% and the acceptance rate went up to 19.7%.

I believe that in this current pandemic environment you will have even less students applying ED because they have not had a chance to do in-person visits and families’ finances/jobs could be in jeopardy. It would not surprise me if the ED acceptance rate increases to 25% or more this year.

To this end, I think applying ED will give you your best shot at attending UPenn. You are definitely competitive and a strong applicant.

Make sure you “package” yourself well by telling a compelling story of how you will make UPenn a better place by them accepting you. Your LORs should corroborate this. Spend a lot of time on your essays. The adcoms have 5 - 15 minutes to review your file and will spend most of their time on reading essays and LORs. If you can make yourself memorable and likeable that’s a plus and might just separate you from the other highly qualified applicants.

Good luck and let us know your results in December!

Thank you for all the suggestions on colleges with merit aid for NMF. I also appreciate the candid responses about what schools were reaches and matches for me; I was being was too optimistic. Thanks for all the other tips also.

So, do you believe the programs like Bank of America students leaders program and economics for leaders program like I listed will be something that sets me apart. They are selective and prestigious, so do admission officers like to see them.

I know admissions are always a toss-up and great applicants get rejected every year.

Thank you to everyone who responded.

Also, I forgot to mention that at Penn and UT I will be applying as a business major, but at most of the other schools I will be applying as a Econ major with a business minor.