Gender: Male
Race: Asian-Indian
Class: 2021
Rank: school doesn’t give them
GPA (100 point scale): 97ish
State: GA, highly competitive private school
ACT: 35 (36M, 35R, 34W, 33S, 7 writing)
SAT: 1500 (messed up, probably will retake)
SAT II: 800 Math 2, 800 Physics, 800 Chem
PSAT (freshman year): 1490
PreACT (sophmore year): 35
APs: 2 sophmore year (Chem [5], Spanish Lang [5] and 6 junior year (CompSci A, English Lit, Bio, Calc BC, Euro, Spanish Lit)
[ = my school is weird, this is the max amount of AP courses offered)
Clubs:
- math team (captain)
- competitive pokemon club (captain lol)
- science bowl
- squash (varsity)
- mu alpha theta (national finisher on contests [16th i think])
Extracurriculars:
- math (qualified for AIME twice, honor roll four times, and was selected to my state’s team to travel to the HMMT November competition)
- clarinet (I quit this year, but I made a youth wind symphony last year)
- squash (I play on my school’s varsity team, which consistently places top 3 in our division at nationals)
- science bowl (part of the school team that travelled to the MIT Science Bowl Competition and placed first)
- internship + data science project with a education software business (can’t go into details)
Hobbies:
- video games (I moderate a 9000 member forum in my free time)
- making weird stuff with Java
Colleges (starred are my favorites)
Safeties:
- UGA
- Georgia Tech
- maybe Duke (idk how competitive it is)
Target:
- Columbia
- Dartmouth
- UPenn*
- UC Berkeley
Reach:
- Carnegie Mellon CompSci*
- Harvard
- MIT
- CalTech
Obviously, I left out some achievements and stuff because I don’t want to bore you, but if I’m missing anything else, please let me know!
Thanks for your time!
You have more homework to do on your list. Every school, with maybe the exception of UGA and GT because you are in state, are reaches.
Talk to your parents about budget and then spend time researching true safeties and match schools.
Georgia Tech is a great university. Your guidance counselor should know whether it is really a safety for you. The same is true of UGA since you are in-state. You are fortunate to have such strong in-state schools.
If these two schools are really safeties, and if you would be fine attending either of them, then I am okay with the fact that everything else on your list are reaches. You don’t need match schools if you have safeties that strong.
I agree with @momofsenior1 that you should talk to your parents about your budget. If you have any restrictions at all, then you should run the NPC and see whether the various private and out of state schools are likely to be affordable. Given how strong your in-state options are, I can’t imagine it being worth paying OOS costs at UC Berkeley or being full pay at a private school unless your parents are relatively wealthy and you would be able to graduate with no debt.
I don’t think money will be a problem (my parents are relatively wealthy). Can you guys possibly suggest me some safety schools? I didn’t know that there was anything between Georgia Tech’s tier and the UPenn tier. If you guys could suggest me one, then I could research similar ones. Thanks!
“Relatively wealthy” doesn’t mean they can afford $280k. Have the talk.
If you don’t know about schools between GT and Penn, you aren’t ready for a final list. Get a good college guide, dig in, and speak with your GC. Learn what the targets want from you and self assess whether you show that. And you’ll complete a full app, not just a resume.
You’ve got squash, music you quit, and the rest are all stem related. Learn about the rounding your uber reaches want.
“I didn’t know that there was anything between Georgia Tech’s tier and the UPenn tier.”
IMHO there isn’t. I have spent my career in high tech. Frankly the difference between Georgia Tech and MIT really does not matter, and there isn’t any school in the world that is considered stronger than MIT. If we got a resume from a GT grad and a resume from a U.Penn grad, we might not care about the difference between schools or we might prefer the GT grad. GT is a really top school, at least in the areas that I am familiar with.
If you want to go into investment banking, then the situation might be different. I do not know much about investment banking or high end management consulting.
““Relatively wealthy” doesn’t mean they can afford $280k. Have the talk.”
If someone has $1,000,000 in total savings and two kids, it is not clear that they want to spend significantly more than half of their savings on two bachelor’s degrees. Frequently it can take a couple their entire lives to save up that much. Also, it is not uncommon for kids to get master’s degrees these days, which adds more to the expense. Two kids, four years of bachelor’s plus two years of masters, at $80,000 per year and the $1,000,000 is pretty much gone. I think that this is why I am seeing more and more of the very top graduates coming from in-state public schools.
Duke shouldn’t be in your safety list, it has a 10% acceptance rate. Look into UGeorgia or even Emory with your stats for a safety.
Could someone take a look at my thread? It would mean a lot.