My D is planning to pursue a business major. Had the profile below. Would love to UCLA, UMich, USC and UVA.
UVA has started an ED option and we are trying to decide whether or not to ED there. For that, we are trying to get a sense of her likelihood of getting onto the other 3 colleges that she likes better.
intern with a VC fund: First high schooler to intern there.
Intern at a AI start-up
Opinions Editor at School paper
Founder of a non-profit mentorship platform
Summer program at School of NY Times on emerging technology
3 years of club/school volleyball ( grades 7-9). First time all-league, club MVP etc.
Volunteered at non-profit helping low income students for 3 years.
Good writer - Expect decent essays.
Love to get feedback on:
Her chances on these 4 colleges. For U Michigan, ok with LSA if Ross does not work out.
We are debating on whether or not to ED to UVA. She loves the overall vibe and feel is a great fit for her ( but likes UMich/USC a bit better. Thinks has virtually no chance at UCLA)
If she loves UVA, I would apply there as this is the first year since 2007 that they have offered ED and since it’s new and binding many might not have heard about it and/or need to have finicancial aid options and can’t apply anywhere binding.
As a safety, she can also apply to IU Kelley school of business and will be a direct admit with her scores.
Looks like she likes large universities and mostly public flagships. I would throw an application in at University of Washington as they have a great business school (Foster).
Lastly, UCLA only has a business economics pre-major which might not be her optimum choice anyways and her UC capped gpa might be a little low.
An uwGPA of 3.97 and ACT score of 33 makes your D competitive for UMich EA, but for the Class of 2022, there were 4,163 LSA spots and 447 Ross seats. So, OOS LSA is a reach and OOS Ross is “reachier.”
OOS acceptance rate is around 19%. For the Class of 2022, roughly 40,000 of the total 65,000 apps were submitted EA. And roughly 8,000 of those 40,000 EA apps were accepted, which means the other 32,000 were deferred to RD or rejected.
Thanks @socaldad2002: Yes, planning to apply to UW (Foster). Couldn’t find many private midsized programs that fit the bill. ( strong program + great school spirit ). Wondering if we are missing any schools. Currently looking at adding BC and Villanova to the list. She did not like BU or NYU campuses.
@sushiritto: Thanks for you thoughts. Ross is definitely a super reach.
@sgopal2 : It is very contextual - we live in a hyper competitive area ( Silicon Valley) where things are pushed to a different level :-).
Had she been in .a different county, school district, things would be different.
The UW GPA and to a lesser extent ACT scores just by themselves are not an issue. My understanding is that UCLA cares a lot about 10-12 weighted GPA ( one of the 2 UCs that looks at W GPA in addition to UC GPA and UW GPA). My D is very measured and took only APs/Honor classes she cared for, whereas several of the students in her school loaded on every available AP/Honor class. It is not unusual to see students with 4-6 APs/Honor classes in Sophomore/Junior year, with 35-36 ACT scores and boatload of ECs. As a result, feel she is not competitive for UCLA.
@Norcal2020 We live in a competitive area of Silicon Valley as well. The “word on the street” is/was that a lot of high stat students from affluent families in our area are being rejected from UCLA and Cal in favor of Pell Grant/First Gen students. So, even students with high stats and lots of AP classes may not have the same “umph” as in the prior years. That’s what I’ve heard across district lines here.
To me, USC is different animal. Like other top schools, they can load up their class with 4.0/1,600 (a slight exaggeration) students all day long, but choose not to. So, USC is a wild card to me.
We had excellent UC and CSU choices, but my older kid chose UMich. My Class of 2021 kid is still in the process of finalizing a list, but UC’s and CSU’s are near or at the top.
UW Foster school is excellent and many internship opportunities are available. S just graduate from there recently and had 4 internships include ones with Amazon and Deloitte. He is at Deloitte now. UCLA has the business econ and if admitted in the pre-major, your daughter would have maintain a 3.3+ GPA to apply as a junior to the business econ major. USC also has an excellent undergraduate business school and provides many opportunities to students for their students to succeed (I know because S2 is a political science major and USC is providing him many opportunities to succeed in getting into law school). You daughter should apply to all 3 schools and see what happens (I think her stats and EC’s are good). Other top undergraduate business schools (just to name a few) are: University of Texas-Austin, Cornell, Washington University in St. Louis, etc. I left off school like Univ. of Pennsylvania, MIT, etc. as they are probably the most difficult to get into.
UCB Haas only admits students as a junior. This means that a freshman would have to wait until their sophomore year to fulfill requirements and apply as a junior and it is very competitive to get into.
Last cycle, UVA OOS was ACT 33-35 and a 19% admit rate. That pool includes all the legacy admits (UVA only tips for OOS legacy applicants). So the non-legacy OOS stats presumably are a smidge tougher.
How does that compare to your UCLA in-state chances? Or to the USC or non-Ross OOS stats?
My hunch is that UVA added ED in order to get a higher yield out of its OOS admits. Because the admit stats for the non-legacy OOS applicants have been so high, those kids also get admitted to lots of other good schools and there’s no price advantage to UVA. So the enrollment yield there has been low.
Hard to say since this is the initial year. ED would certainly help, but not sure it would help enough for a 33 ACT. And fyi, kids at UVA have to separately apply to the biz school after two years – no direct admits to McIntyre.
I like the IU/Kelley idea. That’s a pretty popular OOS biz school choice. BC makes sense too.
And as you probably know, there’s tons of California kids just like yours at Leeds at CU/Boulder. Decent entrepreneurship program there along with a lot of connections to the engineering school and local CO start-up and VC community.
One thing that I forgot to do is tag two of the most experienced and knowledgeable USC parents on this site. @WWWard and @CADREAMIN would be the best folks to ask about USC and their programs specifically.
One last questions: UMich and a few privates seem to indicate that they look more at UWGPA ( vs WGPA) - not sure if true. Wondering anyone has insights which schools seem to favor higher UWGPA.
IMO more schools look at unweighted, regardless if they recalculate uwGPA (fewer and fewer HSs are providing it).
Along with looking at course grades, schools will also look at rigor and level of courses …e.g., college prep, honors, high honors, AP, IB, all within the context of the HS.
No one way…not sure I would say any school favors wGPA (although some schools use it to determine merit aid)…that’s just a function of rigor and level.
“If Villa Nova is on the list, what about Notre Dame? strong business program and no shortage of school spirit.”
Good idea, except that ND really digs the high test scores.
33-35 middle range last cycle. Since about 20-25% of ND students are legacies, you’d think a 33 from a non-legacy non-URM applicant is going to be reachy.
And if applying to the ND business school (very strong and very popular), that 30 math ACT score isn’t going to help.
Any time to squeeze in another ACT sitting?
For a super-score school, you could just focus on trying to bump the math score and not sweat the other sections (where this kid has fine scores already).
FYI, today 10/4/19 is the last day to sign up for the 10/26/19 ACT test.
Which test might be the last chance to get a different score for this admissions cycle. Not sure if scores from the 12/14/19 sitting would be use-able or not.