US citizen
Virginia
Academic Magnet School(1st ranked high school in the US. 95% of people go top50)
Male/Hispanic
State Ranked Athlete(I think I would be able to walk on to all D3, low D1 programs. Bowdoin has told me I would be on the team if accepted to the university. I went to a Johns Hopkins camp and was better than a lot of the players already on the team.)
Majors in Choice Order:
Neuroscience/Cognitive Science
Biology
Econ
Stats
3.71uw
4.21w out of 5
No Rank and
1530 SAT(790 Math/ 740 English)
Coursework
AP Spanish Lang(5)
AP CS(4)
AP Stats(4)
AP Bio(4)
AP Mac/Micro
AP Calc AB
APUSH
Stats 2 and 3(post AP)
Neurobio(post AP)
AI(post AP)
AP Psych
AP Calc BC
AP English Lang
AP Gov
AP Physics C-MEM
Awards
AP Scholar with Distinction
National Merit Hispanic Award
Extracurriculars
Oceanography Club Treasurer
PC Rebuilders Team Leader/Manager
Research on Brain Atlases at Howard University(Maybe a paper but would be one of the last authors)
Research on fluid dynamics at George Washington University(No paper)
Soccer Referee
Varsity Soccer 9-11th(3 hours of soccer a day with varsity and club soccer)
Python Volunteer Tutoring
Volunteer writing for soccer scouting page.
Essays/LORs/Other
Essays: 8/10
Econ Lor: 6/10. The teacher doesn’t really know me but I am only getting the letter in case the college needs a humanities teacher to write a letter.
Neurobio Lor: 9/10. Teach is letting us write out own letters.
AI Lor: 10/10. He knows me the best. Only gave 15 students letters out of around 70 who asked him.
Schools
Johns Hopkins ED(Athletics but I was told it has little support for MIT, JHU, and Caltech)
Caltech EA(Athletics)
Emory EA
Michigan EA
Bowdoin EA(Athletics)
Pitt(Scholarship)
UT-Autsin(Scholarship)
VTech
William and Mary(Athletics?)
CU-Boulder(Scholarship)
Alabama(I would go there for free)
Bowdoin doesn’t have EA, only ED and RD. The coach said you can walk on, but won’t support you for one of their athletic slots with full coach support?
Is the JHU coach offering you any level of support as a recruited athlete with admissions?
What do you mean by “scholarship” after some of the schools?
What is your budget/what can your family afford for college? If you need financial aid, run the net price calculators on each school’s website…have you done that?
I don’t understand the LoR situation. Are the neurobio and AI writers teachers in your HS? That’s what you need. If they are external teachers/profs you are working with they will not satisfy the teacher LoR requirement at many schools. But, you can submit them as extras at many schools. Also, I strongly advise you to not write the neurobio letter…you have no idea how to write one, nor is that ethical.
It’s hard to chance you because you’re at a school where 95% go to top 50. Your GC will be best to guide you. Normally a 3.7 wouldn’t be a good sign for your top schools but your school is obviously different.
Pitt and Va Tech will be a yes - Pitt has the Cathedral of Learning for minorities - otherwise a scholarship would be tough.
Why would you go to Bama for free- I see the $28K which isn’t free. What am I missing? Are you a National Merit Finalist?
The Bowdoin thing is correct. He said he can give me a little push but nothing major as I am one of the 3rd or 4th choice midfielders to recruit.
JHU is offering no support.
For the scholarship things, I will be trying to get a substantial merit scholarship
My family will probably be able to help with 10k a year in money but I would want to limit that number so that they don’t have to use the money. I have done the college calculator.
*All teachers are in my high school. I might submit a recommendation from my mentor at Howard but not sure yet. Thanks for the advice for the neuro teacher. I might just ask her to write me one from scratch instead of me writing one for her.
Not exactly sure how your Top 50 would be defined, but this seems like a stretch? I am sure you attend an excellent high school, but let’s not get carried away.
I was there when all the seniors wore their college shirts. The worse ones I saw were George Mason and Arizona State. Everyone else had a name brand of college. The avg GPA for the school is a 4.4 and SAT is 1540. The people there are crazy smart.
Again, I am sure that the school has great college placement, but I am also sure that it’s not 95% to the top 50 schools. That does not pass the reasonableness test. But not a huge deal in the scheme of your overall post, so will drop for now.
You should be able to get school profile and college outcome for the 2022 class to see if 95% go to T50. Going to an academic rigorous school can warp your ideas about what is a good school when you compare with other classmates. Look for fit, finance, future, and fun that works for you.
I don’t understand the athletics part. Are you applying to schools believing that you are recruited athlete when it appears that you have no formal support? I would create another baseline of schools without an athletic hook, just in case that does not work out. Good luck.
If you have coach support at William and Mary and that is in-state for you, I would consider not doing ED to Johns Hopkins so you keep your options open.
Have you run the net price calculator for JHU yet?
I can’t speak to the OP’s school but we were at a family graduation last month where the school matriculations were read as the graduates were handed their diplomas. Other than the recruited athletes going to D1 schools, the rest of the class was all going to top schools.
We were very surprised ourselves but it was a top private school so I don’t discount what the OP is saying based on where they say they go to HS.
Okay - maybe. I would be quite happy to review a “school profile” and be proven wrong. But take a look at any such profile for the most competitive high schools in this country and you will see that 95% is unlikely.
In fact, one can probably guess which high school in Virginia the OP attends and it took five minutes to locate that school profile online and, even with imperfect information, deduce that 95% is not possible based on the college matriculation data provided there.
Look, as I said before, I am sure the school has excellent college placement, but when you think about what “95% to Top 50 schools” actually entails, that is crazy. Respectfully, we can all agree that OP attends a great school without willy-nilly creating made up statistics based on t-shirt counts and graduation ceremonies.
Don’t plan on playing at Michigan but heh, attempt walking on.
But, they like kids from top schools. Your GPA is fine for that. But they don’t give much out of state merit but financial aid they do but most likely won’t be close to what you need. Have safeties.
Not sure why it’s important, but I think we can all guess the school and the placement is likely close to what he claims. Maybe it’s top 60 or whatever. Does it really matter that much? This school is NOTHING like a standard high school. I think that’s his point, not the exact number.
There are indeed some top high schools in the nation where the numbers are nothing like the normal bell curve. This also goes for extremely well known privates esp the small ones which have chosen kids based on skills in the 8th grade. These kids are often outstanding athletes, artists, athletes, etc. So their matriculation isn’t going to be anything like the local high school ( even in a town with a high SES).
You have hit upon it exactly. The in-state effect is why the percentage cited is likely much lower. For every UVA and William & Mary, there would be a Virginia Commonwealth or George Mason or Virginia Tech. And the matriculation data provided in the school’s most recent profile reflects this exact reality.