Chance Me for Top Public/Privates? :)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Can you chance me for the following schools and help me figure out which are my match schools? I’ll be applying to Duke, Vanderbilt, Tulane (EA), UNC (EA), BC (EA), Georgia Tech (EA), Southern Cal, Maryland, Texas and Penn State.

I’m a female, rising senior from Pennsylvania who attends a public high school in a graduating class of ~300

GPA and Course Load:
Unweighted: 3.89 (two B’s in chemistry)
Weighted: 6.29/6.4
Rank: Top 6%
For time’s sake, I’m only listing junior year courses and up

Junior:
AP Chemistry - B
Honors Physics - A
Honors Pre-Calc - A
AP English 11 (language) - A
Honors French IV - A
American History - A

Senior:
AP Biology
AP Calculus AB
AP English 12 (literature)
AP Government and Politics
Honors Economics
Honors French V
Health

ACT:
32 (33 if superscored) - T1: 33E 27M 33R 34S; T2: 35E 30M 33R 30S

ECs:

  • ~50 hours of community service
  • Swim team (captain, school record holder, top in league, top 50 in state, district qualifier)
  • Lacrosse team (top 30 in scoring in league, fourth on team in points, first in assists, fifth in goals, hopefully a captain this year :~) )
  • Travel Lacrosse (one of the top recruits from the area, decided I don’t want to play in college)
  • National Honor Society, French Honor Society, National French Award Winner, AP Scholar, French Club, Outdoors Club
  • Summer before sophomore and junior year: 20 hours/week, lifeguarding during the summer
  • Summer before senior year: I am a sales associate at a bathing suit shop at the beach, I am one of the top salesgirls and most reliable worker, according to my boss. My job has taught me about confidence and the human body. I work 35 hours/week, mainly 7 hour shifts, 5 days a week.
  • Morning Announcements and School TV

Recs:
My swim coach - AT LEAST a 9/10, my coach has seen me transform throughout high school and knows how dedicated I am and how much I hate to lose, he told me he has been writing my essay since my freshman year so that he would be able to really show my growth
My AP Chem teacher - I’ve known her my whole life, she knows that I will always go the extra mile with my work
10th Grade English and School TV Sponsor - one of the most respected teachers at the school and hardest class I’ve ever taken, he forced me to be a better writer and to learn about myself
Counselor - my counselor is my lacrosse coach, so she knows me, though this letter is mainly about the school grading system, etc.

My essay is going to be about my love of sports and how it has taught me about teamwork and caused me to be more intuitive, as well as another essay about quality over the quantity of work that I wrote about a book I read, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I feel as though both essays portray me well, and I may use my quantity vs. quality essay as my actual Common App, and use the essay about my love of sports as a supplementary essay, but I am waiting until school starts, as my English teacher has offered to proofread and edit my essay.

Thanks in advance!!!

2

What is your intended major?

3

@carachel2 Biochemistry with a minor in neuroscience! I knew I was forgetting something but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I plan on either becoming a physician’s assistant or a researcher in either cancer or concussions.

4

Reach: Duke (mid reach), Vanderbilt (low reach)
Match: Georgia Tech, USC, Boston College, North Carolina (high match because it’s so competitive for OOS applicants)
Safety: Maryland, Tulane, Penn State, Texas
Sounds like you have a really strong essay to accompany your application. The only area that might not be as strong as the rest of your app is leadership positions, but being on a sports team will definitely compensate in this regard. Best of luck!!!

Chance me back please? :slight_smile:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1912730-colgate-university-ed-legacy-chances.html#latest

5

Look strongly into Vandy! Wonderful place, and it sounds like you would fit in well! I have a sibling that went there

6

@yankeesfan33 no. If you’re a high school student that doesn’t know their own chances why would you post this. UT is not a safety if youre OOS OP.

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Reaches: Duke and Vanderbilt
Matches: Everything else

8

@danfer91 I figure UT is more of a match since I am OOS, yes? Some people had said that it’s a reach since I am OOS on a thread I posted many months ago.

9

@allison1225 Here’s the class profile from 2015:

https://cns.utexas.edu/students/future/freshmen#2015-freshmen-class-profile

For non-auto admits, UT uses a formula called the Academic Index to give you a predicted freshman year GPA. Since 75% of the incoming class has to be from the top 7% of Texas public high schools (automatic admissions), and ~90% have to be from in state, I would never tell a student that UT is a safety as an international or OOS student applying to a competitive major. Also, in the AI formula, the math section of the ACT is given a lot of weight, so you might be at a disadvantage since Math seems to be your weakest section.

Your rank and composite ACT are impressive, but I would say UT is probably a high match/low reach for you. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if they admitted you, since you’re clearly qualified, but for OOS and internationals the admissions process can be quite odd since they’re so limited in terms of how many people they can admit. They end up having to reject quite a few high stats OOS/international students. Especially since the majority of those students are applying to extremely competitive schools like CNS, McCombs, or Cockrell.

10

@danfer91 Thank you very much for linking that! I had looked all over the UT website for a page like that, so I’m glad you were able to link it for me. It always has confused me as to why my math ACT is the lowest, since I’ve always been the top student in all my math courses at school, though math is by far the weakest subject in my school. Hopefully UT will be able to overlook my lower math score since I’ve had straight A’s in math every year of high school. Thanks again!

11

@allison1225 Absolutely, in the future just be wary of your fellow high school students trying to give you probabilities of acceptance. My cousin was in-state, top 5%, had a 32 ACT and got rejected from McCombs. Some of the more competitive schools are very tough, and if a 17 year old only takes the time to look at the ACT range of the school and doesn’t actually look at the admissions policies, they would have a totally skewed perspective on what someones chances are. Again, I’m not saying that your application doesn’t look good, but when you have quotas and policies like UT it makes getting in OOS much more difficult than most people realize.