Chance me. PA Resident, HS Senior, Finance or Economics, UChicago, Northwestern, NYU, Georgetown, UCB. [3.75 UW, 4.2 W, 1530 SAT]

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics

  • US citizen
  • PA Resident
  • Somewhat Competitive Public High School.
  • Asian(Indian) Male
  • No Special Factors

Intended Major(s)

  • Finance or Economics

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • UW GPA: 3.75 (2 B+s in 9th, 10th, and 11th but hoping to do better in 12th Q1)
  • W GPA (5.0 Scale): 4.2
  • Class Rank: Not disclosed by the school
  • SAT Scores: 1530 (First attempt)

Coursework

  • Taken 5 APs (Psychology, Comp Sci Principles, Statistics, US History, Language and Composition)
    Struggled on most AP tests, 5s in Stat and Lang, 3s in others
  • Taking 4 APs this year (Comp Sci A, Environmental Science, Economics[Micro and Macro combined], Calc AB)
  • Reached Calc AB and Spanish 5 by Senior year.

Awards

  • 1st place in the state of PA for FBLA Banking and Financial Systems Event, and National level competitor

Extracurriculars

  • Boy Scouts (Current Senior Patrol Leader [highest leadership position], Held numerous other leadership positions over the past couple years, Eagle Scout, 100+ hours of volunteering, Worked with an organization in Philadelphia to build beds for refugees for my Eagle Scout Project)

  • FBLA, *Future Business Leaders of America, (Co-President, State Champion for Banking and Financial Systems[competed solo against teams], Invited to and competed in National Conference)

  • HOSA/Med Club (Treasurer, 3rd place in the state for HOSA bowl event[team event], Invited to and Competed in Internation Conference)

  • Job Shadowing (Over the summer I went to a couple of companies like a hedge fund, sales teams, marketing teams, and a financial firm to Job Shadow. Only 5 days of Job Shadowing total, but met with tons of people and was exposed to many jobs)

  • Wharton Investment Competition (Team Leader, Didn’t place, however, learned a lot about investing and data analysis)

  • JV Tennis (11th)

  • Track (9th)

-Freshman Basketball Team (9th)

  • Interact/Earth Club (Around 30 hours of volunteering as a member of these clubs.)

  • Will have a part-time job by the start of school this year

Essays/LORs/Other

Essays - Still working on them, however, I believe they will be strong
LOR 1 - Strong (Lang teacher is known for writing good LORs)
LOR 2 - Somewhat Strong (Stat teacher, so it is most related to my field of interest)
LOR 3 - Somewhat Strong (From what I have heard our counselor writes good LORs)

Cost Constraints / Budget
N/A

Schools

Reach

  • UPenn (Econ)
  • UChicago (Econ)
  • Georgetown (Finance)
  • NYU Stern (Finance) or NYU (Econ)
  • Northwestern (Econ)
  • UC Berkeley (Finance)
  • Notre Dame Mendoza (Finance)
  • UMich Ross (Finance)
  • Boston College (Finance)
  • Emory (Finance)

Likely

  • Indiana Kelley

Safety

  • Penn State (Honors if possible)

Still deciding if I should ED to UChicago, Northwestern, NYU, or EA to Georgetown and Notre Dame. I could use some advice on this. Also would be great for some advice on possible match schools.

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The UCs are test blind so will not see your SAT score.

Please calculate your UC GPAs. (GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub)

Use courses taken from the summer after 9th grade through the summer after 11th grade. Do not give yourself a GPA boost for HS honors classes. For OOS students, only AP/IB HS courses receive a GPA bump. Also, make sure that you have completed all of your UC A-G requirements, including a year of Visual and Performing Arts.

For Berkeley, finance would be in Haas. This is the first year that Haas will be accepting freshmen. They have a freshman admissions info session on August 22 that you should register for in advance.

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Here is more information for UC Berkeley. Since HAAS will be a direct admit for Freshman this year, hopefully the linked info session will give an idea of how many Freshman they will be targeting for the program.

For 2022, 404 Freshman admits out of 4431 applicants (9.12%) for the old major “Intended Business Admin”. For the UCB Sophomore admits, there were 242 admitted and enrolled 236.

UCB should be considered a Reach school but attainable as long as you and your family are comfortable paying $72K/year to attend.

For Economics which is considered a High demand major, the admit rate was 5.3%.

Best of luck.

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So I believe, Kelley takes the GPA off your transcript - so if that’s the case, you’ll be a safety, not a likely.

  • and have you earned a 30 ACT or 1370 SAT or higher?
  • and do you have a cumulative GPA of 3.8 or higher?

If they don’t use the weighted, then it’s a match I suppose.

You might ask your counselors about the others but if I had to guess, I’d say maybe BC, maybe Emory but unlikely. PSU yes - I can’t say about Schreyer.

As to where you should ED/REA - that is where you prefer and that your family - not just can afford but is willing to afford. You said no cost constraints but if you told your mom/dad that IU would be sub $50K (I’m assuming $10K merit) and NYU is $90K or Michigan is $72K - and that’s before inflation - which would they have you choose? So many families can afford but don’t want to - or at least when they here what things could cost. So just ensure you have that conversation before binding yourself. But there are schools - like Penn - that ED is a HUGE boost.

Assuming you want finance (not econ) and I’m not sure if the goal is Wall Street - but an Ohio State, UMD, Va Tech type school with UMD being a low reach - but they might make some nice additions - and for Wall Street - Rutgers is on the feeder lists and others say Fordham (even though they’re not on the feeder lists).

The reason I say assuming you want finance - they are not the same - far different in fact so if it were me, I’d major in what I want ahead of the school - if that makes sense.

If I’m right and IU uses the weighted grade for Kelley, then that’s all you need.

But I do think - just looking at the #s and profile that this is a list with the potential to be shut out - although one can never know and I can see Carroll and Goizueta possibly coming through.

Best of luck.

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IU does not use weighted only unweighted for Kelley. So they would have to petition to Kelley after applying to IU.

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My bad then. Not sure why I thought that. Thx for correcting. So IU. A safety then but not Kelley - correct ?

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Probably yes a safety for IU.

Kelley was over inundated last year that they ended up denying and waitlisting 1000’s of students who applied after November 1st.

Kids who normally would have made it in were denied. And the rest who were waitlisted (and applied in late October, November and December) had to wait until April 26th for a decision.

So for Kelley, time matters. Get the app in and petition ASAP (by mid October the latest). The sooner they get the petition, the more likely one would get in with these stats.

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OP. You have potentially all reach schools listed. For an Out of state student all these schools are becoming harder to get into plus then applying to their business schools which makes it even that much harder. This would be even if your stats were better. Have more safties. Matches are becoming reaches the last few years. If applying to Michigan then apply to Michigan State. They have a great business school with similar placement. At the end of the day that is what your after. Plus you would most likely get honors and a half merit scholarship. This is how I would be thinking with your choices. Also as stated affordability. Many get accepted then can’t go to certain schools due to costs. Evaluate and be honest upfront.

Good luck.

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No! IU uses the highest GPA on the transcript. So if OP’s weighed GPA is on the transcript, IU is a safety and OP does NOT need to petition.

From the website:

  • Earned a cumulative GPA of 3.8 on a 4.0 scale in high school. We will use the highest GPA that is sent to IU Admissions from your official high school transcript. In most cases this is the weighted GPA.
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Thanks for validating - that’s what I thought.

It’s interesting to me how “easy” they make it yet they still keep a top rating. Yesterday I learned that Alabama 3.5 requirement for scholarship was weighted from another poster. i assumed unweighted.

Some of these schools don’t necessarily have the highest selection criteria.

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Your list looks EXTREMELY reach heavy to me, and I suspect that some of those are not just reaches, but high reaches. The main common link I see amongst them is that they all have “prestigious” names. Prestige is perfectly fine to seek out, but that shouldn’t be the only factor influencing your college list. What other factors might impact your preferences?

  • Size of the school
  • Size of classes
  • Location of school (urban/suburban/rural)
  • Climate
  • State/region (preferred places or places to avoid)
  • Importance of intercollegiate sports enthusiasm
  • Importance of Greek life
  • Particular interests you want to pursue

Also, when you say Budget/Cost Constraints is N/A, does that mean that your family can spend $0/year or that your family is willing and able to pay $90k/year?

Lastly, what’s your goal for after college? That can also influence college suggestions.

I agree that Penn State is a safety, but not necessarily Schreyer. IU should be a safety if you apply early enough.

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Although I don’t know more about what exactly it is you want out of college, I’m going to guess that you’re more interested in a career in finance and would only select econ if it was at a Top X college that doesn’t offer finance. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

One thing I didn’t ask about before but that you will probably want to give some thought to is, but do you do best when you’re surrounded by people who are constantly doing amazing things and you have to hustle to strive to keep up? Or do you do better in an environment where you’re one of the top dogs and are given special opportunities because of that? Depending on your answer (and there is no right or wrong answer), that may influence which type of school you want to attend.

Remember that every school is going to have its top 5%, top 20%, 50%, bottom 50%, etc. At many of the schools on your reach list, most of the kids will be used to being in the top 5-10% of their school. One week after school starts, half of them will be in the bottom 50%. If that were to happen to you (not saying it would, but it could), how would you feel?

With that said, these are some schools with finance majors that you may want to consider. They are some combination of being in/near places that are on your current list, in/near places with strong ties to finance & investment careers, have strong networks/alumni links to finance/investment careers, and/or have a certain cachet to them, overall and/or for business. These would all be mid-size to large schools, in alignment with your previous list.

I built this list on the assumption that your family is willing and able to be full pay at any university. A number of the schools where you are likely or extremely likely to be admitted would also be likely to give you some generous merit aid. So even if it’s not financially needed, as someone with an interest in investing, you can figure out what the financial impact of any monetary savings (between a full-pay school at $80 or $90k/year compared to a different school that might be less than half of that) and how that can equate to very large sums of money when invested over the long haul (whether that benefits you, your parents, or both of you).

Without further ado, the list:

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • Creighton (NE): About 4300 undergrads
  • DePaul (IL): About 14k undergrads
  • Loyola Chicago (IL): About 12k undergrads
  • Saint Joseph’s (PA ): About 5100 undergrads
  • Seton Hall (NJ): About 6k undergrads
  • U. of Delaware: About 19k undergrads
  • U. of Nebraska-Lincoln: About 19k undergrads
  • U. of North Carolina-Charlotte: About 23k undergrads
  • U. of Pittsburgh (PA ): About 24k undergrads. As you have so many city schools on your list, you might want to consider this one.

Likely (60-79%)

  • Bentley (MA): About 4100 undergrads
  • Binghamton (NY): About 14k undergrads
  • Fairfield (CT): About 4800 undergrads
  • Fordham (NY): About 10k undergrads
  • Providence (RI): About 4k undergrads
  • Southern Methodist (TX): About 7100 undergrads
  • Texas Christian: About 11k undergrads

Toss-Up (40-59%)

  • CUNY Baruch (NY): About 16k undergrads, test-blind
  • Lehigh (PA ): About 5600 undergrads
  • U. of Wisconsin-Madison: About 36k undergrads
  • Villanova (PA ): About 7k undergrads

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • Wake Forest (NC): About 5400 undergrads

Low Probability (less than 20%)

-All the schools on your list outside of IU and Penn State

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You have a lot going for you, but agree with others that you have nearly all high reaches on your list. Of your reaches, Penn, Chicago, Georgetown, NYU Stern, Northwestern, Berkeley, Notre Dame and Michigan are pretty unlikely, even if you ED. I think it’s possible that BC or Emory could be just a regular reach (as opposed to a high reach), but only if you’re willing to apply ED - applying to either in the regular rounds will make them both pretty high reaches as well. If you would be totally fine with Indiana or Penn State, then this list is possibly OK, except you will be really struggling to do justice to those 10 applications for your reach schools. I would recommend drastically paring down your reaches, and adding in a lot of targets. You already have two pretty good liklies/safeties.

It’s very hard to tell from this list what it is you’re seeking other than prestigious schools. You have a mix of medium-sized and very large schools, a mix of big city and more small college town schools, some schools with large beautiful campuses and others that are urban with not much of a campus feel. Some schools here have Greek life and a big sports culture, others not. Some are Catholic and others secular. Plus you have schools that are geographically spread out all over the place. I would spend some time visiting campuses and really thinking through what characteristics you’re seeking beyond prestige/ranking. Most students, once they spend some time at a few campuses and start investigating, realize that they 1) have some strong preferences, whether it’s as to size, type of campus, proximity to a city, Greek life, etc, and 2) realize that there are quite a few schools that have those preferred qualities that aren’t big reach schools.

Some schools you may want to consider that have some features in common with some of the ones of you list, but which might be lower reaches or targets: Fordham, University of Denver, Loyola Marymount, American University, George Washington, Case Western. Bear in mind that some of these schools (American and Case Western in particular) highly prioritize demonstrated interested, so you’ll need to show them a lot of love in the application cycle to avoid getting waitlisted.

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Seconding Fordham, American, Pitt, Case, Indiana Kelley in addition to Penn State (Smeal+Schreyer).
Complete these applications ASAP.
Perhaps add Babson.
For Penn State, apply EA and apply your SRAR - last year some SRARs took 2 weeks to load and the students missed the deadline, hence were pushed to the Dec1 deadline which is much more competitive since sought-after majors are partly filled EA.
Once all these apps are in, work on your ED choice.
You have very different reaches - what would your ideal learning environment be?
(BTW, Williams, Trinity CT, Colgate, Hamilton… may not have a strict Finance major but “place” very well. Even Dickinson and Lafayette do.)

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Frankly with 3.75 UW GPA Williams, Colgate, Hamilton and Lafayette would be reaches as well IMHO

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Not Lafayette, especially since the school is likely a “known quantity” in PA so the college adcoms would know it’s not a 3.75 from NorthPenn/M jr-sr HS. Same for Dickinson.

Absolutely wrt the others - but OP needs to think more broadly than whatever led him to a list that includes secular&Catholic, with&without Greek, large medium&small, urban&rural… Once he’s identified deal breakers, he can include a variety of options in his reach category.

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My two cents, for the target/match/likely category (whatever you want to call it):
U Rochester (BA financial economics), TCU (finance), Fordham (finance)

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I visited a couple of schools and for now, I don’t have preferences. I would prefer a school that is not in the middle of nowhere though, so urban or suburban but if the school is rural I won’t mind too much.

When I say N/A, I asked my father about cost constraints and he said for now there are none and he is willing to pay however much, but once seeing the tuition cost that may change.

My goal after college is to go the Investment Banking route and hopefully switch to more venture capital or private equity after that.

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That’s counterproductive. There is no point in applying to schools and getting accepted, only to find out you can’t attend because it’s unaffordable.

Please have your father give you a specific budget. Also, have him run the net price calculators on the websites of some of these schools to get an idea about how much you might have to pay. Once you’ve done both these things, let us know what your father is willing/able to pay.

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Also apply to Pitt. The earlier the better. It’s direct admit and smaller compared to Penn State. Finance at Smeal is a tougher admit.

Your list is pretty much reaches. Also pin down your budget. An acceptance to an unaffordable school is a waste.

Economics is not the same as Finance. If you’re sure you want finance then apply for Finance.

Fordham Gabelli and Villanova would be schools to consider. Good luck.

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