@aquapt Yes, I do plan on applying to a UT honors college, but I’m not sure which one.
First thing - there are are any number of T-50 colleges for which you are highly competitive, including UT Austin. Remember that T-50 means that there are 50 of them, despite the fact that you seem focused on 6 or 7.
However, as others have written, it is more important for you to attend a college where you can thrive than find the most prestigious college which will accept you.
What people are writing is that you do not seem to express what sort of college you want. You seem to focus mostly on prestige and a lot less of the character of the school.
So take a step back and consider what things will allow you to actually enjoy college. If you could plan your “perfect” college experience, what would it look like? Large/small, urban/rural, mountains/farmland, progressive/moderate/conservative? Preppy/outdoorsy/artsy? A good overseas program? More support versus more independence? A good mixture of multiple things? These are not mutually exclusive, by the way.
Those are the things which you should consider, not “is this college considered prestigious by the students in your school, their parents or even your counselors?”.
Something to consider:
You say that you are looking, ultimately, for a life in academia. If that is true, the best route to an academic life is often through a liberal arts college, and it doesn’t have to be the “most prestigious” one either. The percent of graduates from Grinnell College in Iowa who achieve a STEM PhD is higher than the percent of graduates from any Ivy League University as well as Stanford. The percent of students from Kalamazoo College in Michigan who end up with a STEM PHD is higher than the percent of students from Columbia, Dartmouth, UPenn, Berkeley, UCLA, or Notre Dame.
With your stats, you could get decent merit funding from a bunch of those LACs. Of course. they will all be smaller than your high school, but you will also be more likely to “find your people”. Many of these LACs also have a good placement to medical schools as well.
Other universities (which are NOT LACs) which have among the highest rate of students going on to do a PhD (in the top 50 of colleges with undergraduates going on to do STEM PhDs) are Case Western Reserve, Rochester, Brandeis, and WPI.
Yes, my concern about the prestige focus in this situation, OP, is that you’re describing a situation where you’re being deeply affected by parental messaging that you’re not going to amount to anything. Obviously that messaging is completely disconnected from reality, as you have already achieved a great deal and will undoubtedly keep right on achieving. The danger here, though, is that you will be tempted to choose a college more to prove them wrong right out of the gate (“I’m going to Harvard. NOW what do you have to say?”) than to satisfy your own needs and wants. The problem with this is that if the focus of your decisions is proving them wrong, they’re still controlling your choices. And if you end up somewhere with a lot of big egos and one-upmanship and “prestigiosity,” there’s a danger that navigating that will turn into an ongoing internal debate with your parents, keeping them prominently in your head even while you’re away from them. I’m not saying prestige is bad… I’d just encourage you to make a real effort to step outside that whole dynamic of debating your worth, and try to imagine where you would really thrive over the next four years. The entire goal is to get these folks out of your head and become who you want to be, FOR YOU. The #1 criterion for a college should be providing the best possible incubator for that process. Everything else will fall into place as long as that’s the starting point.
You have a really good chance if you apply ED.
If you don’t like the gamesmanship in your HS, for god’s sake, don’t pick a college where you’re going to get gamesmanship on steroids.
New poster and this thread is mighty like another, from a month or two ago, down to wanting to be a med professor.
The problem is, no matter what scrores you reach, the underlying attitude has to shift. The negativity on your part is going to be an issue with adcoms. You may think you can mask it, but it requires ultimate caution. Not only will you be dealing with adcoms who know thousands of kids annually, but also (if you make it that far for a bs/md,) medical profs who will stare down your insecurities.
This thinking shift will take time. Can you just give yourself that time, to build a better perspective?
Not true, at all.
The BS/MD Programs are all super competitive so, they are true lottery tickets to most everyone. I’ve known kids accepted to HPYSMC and rejected from dual Med school programs That are not as well known as the two you mention. Your SAT score is low for those programs and you should also have SAT2 and/or AP test scores, particularly in the STEM courses.
I am not a Texan, so I don’t know exactly how that auto admit to UT works, but my nephew was top 10% and did not make that cut. He just missed it by one student because the percent taken that year was between 6-7%. Do make sure your safety is indeed a safety.
Your self deprecating is extremely unattractive and if it shows through in your essays, short answers and interviews, or in your LORs , it will not help you gain admissions to the more selective schools. You know Danged well you aren’t going to end up at a community college with your grades, test scores and trust fund. Especially if UT is a safety for you. What’s with this posturing?
Yes, your chances of getting into more selective schools increase if you can raise your SATs.
Unfortunately, UT isn’t a safety. You have the grades and scores to get in, but getting into the major you want is far from guaranteed. If you’re out of state, UT is far more competitive. Make sure you put more safety schools on the list. I would highly consider Texas A&M, Texas Tech, or even UT-Dallas.
Keep the school affordable. The last thing you need is extra debt weighing you down. Medical school is horrendously expensive enough without undergraduate debt sucking the life out of a new career. If you’re concerned about emotional abuse from your parents, money is the biggest emotional weapon of them all. I would go for a scholarship if I were you. Prestige doesn’t matter in undergraduate, I promise.