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The top LACS like Amherst, Williams, Pomona, Bowdoin, etc. are not safeties for anyone. They routinely turn students away who are otherwise admitted to Ivies or Stanford. You are highly competitive for these schools, for sure, but it all comes down to what they are looking for to round out a class in any given year. Thatâs why applying to several schools and not having your heart set on any one is a good strategy. It wasnât always quite this competitive. Years ago, if you had the grades, coursework, and test scores you could be fairly confident of getting in. But now they have to turn away thousands of kids with those same profiles. You will get into an excellent, highly competitive school no doubt. But I would take your GCâs advice with a grain of salt - especially if he/she is not as recently familiar with the admissions practices of these schools.
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Congratulations on an outstanding record! Your chances are great at these schools: i predict 2-4 of those you have as reaches will come through, plus half of your matches. You may get yield protected some places, but I think you will have excellent results.
Iâd be very surprised if you didnât get into some of the other colleges on your list besides WVU. That said, however, I have been very surprised by some of the admissions results I have heard.
One school I suggested earlier was Davidson. It wouldnât be a safety, but I think a match. Its 17% admission rate is a fair bit higher than those of some of your other schools, and Davidson tends to calculate financial need generously.
Franklin and Marshall does not appear to be as financially generous, based upon net prices by income, but it does say it meets full need (as it calculates it) and its 35% acceptance rate would appear to give better odds. I would certainly run the Net Price Calculator to see if it would be affordable for your family.
I think you wil be fine with all of your safety schools and, maybe, Middlebury, UW-Madison from your target. The rest of your target schools are highly competive OOS Public, and I just donât have any experinces to predict any outcome. For reach schools, I think you have as good a chance as most applicants, but again, itâs really hard to predict the results.
However, the most important matter is that youâve worked so hard to achieve a great success, and you will end up at a great college.
Would applying to Case Western be appealing at all? They have EA the returns a decision in January. They are rather unpredictable in their decisions, but if you are wanting an early acceptance to a good school to take some of pressure off, that could be one I would suggest. Itâs not a hard application, either.
The only downside is that they may not be as interested in a student from WV because of their relatively close proximity. They may not need to work as hard to find strong students from WV as farther schools do.
But even if it isnât Case, is that the kind of scenario that would help you sleep at night? Itâs a rare day that so many on CC are in agreement, but the consensus seems to be you will have one or more acceptances from reach schools. We disagree with your GC in saying that any of them is individually easier than n a reach, though. If you get an early acceptance at a selective school, would that help you worry less about where the acceptances will come in RD?
You seem very realistic, and I donât get the impression you are trying to rack up acceptances to boast about them. No one is really saying you need to expand your list.
Any school where you would have a 50% chance of admission is a target school. Harvard is no target school. Schools with single digit admit rates are reaches for all.
In fairness to her guidance counselor, if a school has a 5% admission rate, that doesnât mean that everyone has a 5% chance. Some people have a near 0% chance. Her GC sees her as a very attractive candidate with hooks/spikes that will give her a better chance than the average applicant. This student is rightly concerned that even if it is better than average, itâs not as good as her GC believes, but we all seem to agree that she has a better than most chance. Harvard IS a reach school for all, but that doesnât mean she only has a 5% chance.
On the same note, she doesnât need a school to have an admit rate of 50% to consider it to be a target. Her scores, grades, achievements, and the geographic diversity she has allow her to consider a more selective school to be a target. Colleges from 25% and up would likely work as a target school for her.
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For highly selective schools, itâs not enough to look at the GPA/test scores etc. that students typically have, you also have to look at acceptance rate (sometimes called admission rate). Typically, if the college has a 25% acceptance rate or under, itâs a reach. Due to your specific profile, we could alter that to under 20% acceptance rate is a reach (odds are higher you wonât get in than you will), 20-30% acceptance is a match (40-60% odds youâll get in), and a above 30% acceptance a safety (more than 80% odds youâll get in to certainty youâll get in).
Your GC, if she feels youâre the best student the school has had in 25 years (or ever), MUST write this in her recommendation letter. It helps colleges contextualize your achievements.
So, while I feel your odds are good to get into one of the universities beside WVU, each year we see students with your profile, whose GC was sure theyâd get into Yale, or MIT, or another similar college, and who only applied to their (ok but non stellar) state U and who end up having to go there when they really didnât expect it and a more âmatchâ university could have provided them with a better environment.
I second the idea of Case Western Reserve - apply EA and show âinterestâ.
(âinterestâ is important at ALL selective colleges and if you havenât âshown interestâ, you can still do, writing a letter to your regional rep at every private college on your list; you basically include what you wrote in your introduction there and ask questions that donât have answers on the website, such as: can they connect you to a current math major? How many students from WV do they have? Are there support programs for first gen students?
Also, email the Math club and the Math dept, keep the replies and mention the student or professors in your âwhy usâ essay.
When they send you emails, click on at least one link in each email since this is tracked, too.
At D3 colleges such as Amherst or WashU, contact the coach in either Lacrosse or soccer or both. They donât offer athletic scholarships but it doesnât mean they donât care about a good athlete. Youâd get financial aid (full need) and being a recruited athlete is a huge hook.
I would also add St Olaf, really good for math, meets need, easier to get into than others on your list (safety), and Grinnell (match). Run the NPC on these 2. They should be easy to add to CommonApp.
âŚAnd while you donât really need another reach, what about Northwestern, for its âmath challengesâ track that caters to AIME students, called MENU?
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Have you run the NPC for Carnegie Mellon? Itâs an odd school financially because they claim to meet full need, but have a reputation for being stingy. It depends on the individual situation, so it could be worth running the numbers to see if it might be an option. Itâs very convenient to WV but still in a great urban setting in Pittsburgh. Math is very strong, but still a much easier admit than CS. Iâd consider it a match rather than a reach, for math⌠but none of that matters if it wouldnât be affordable.
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You misunderstand me. I have noted above that she has a better than average chance of getting a good result at Harvard and other schools with very low admit rates.
Designating likely, target and reach schools is a function of the studentâs chances. A schoolâs overall admit rate plays a role, but so does the studentâs profile, as you note. Anyone who looks at a Naviance or Scoir scattergram understands how this chancing logic works, at least from a quantitative perspective, and itâs the role of a GC to bring additional perspective.
I did not suggest a direct relationship of a schoolâs admit rate to its tier on a studentâs college list. Some applicants have much better (or worse) chances than the overall admit rate. Itâs why we spend time âchancingâ students on this site.
My only point is this: telling a student she has a 50% chance of admission is equivalent to rating that school a match. And if Harvard is a match, the OP has no reaches.
She is very well qualified, which means her reaches are more within reach. Her ârange finderâ can be set very high.
She may be the best shot her high school has had in recent memory of getting a student into Harvard. But Harvard is still a reach school.
Adding my 2 cents to say yhat the colleges with the largest endowment per student will have the most generous financial aid. Swarthmore, Bowdoin, and Grinnell are all among the highest.
I canât speak to the math part, but consider that attending a smaller school will give you the most supports (less likely to fall through the cracks, career advising is likely better).
But make sure that the math department has enough offerings so that you do not run out of advanced courses, given that you will have multivariable calculus before high school graduation.
Also, math has a broad range of upper level topics. Some smaller departments may have relatively little to offer in some subareas.
Also, be sure you understand what the math departmentâs policies are in regards to not having to repeat material you already know.
For instance, Georgia Tech only allows one to take a test to demonstrate knowledge for 11 hours of coursework. Kids from rural areas that are into math competitions often self-study and can pretty easily test out of combinatorics/proofs/number theory etc.
Harvard/MIT/CalTech will meet you where you are at but this is not true for all universities.
You do not need more safety schools. Your coursework and AP scores are outstanding⌠and being WVa, you will be in demand.
Honestly I would cut some schools rather than add more - unless you have a fee waiver and unlimited time!
In my opinion, the OPâs list might benefit from refinement, which could introduce a school or two while still reducing the overall number of schools through selective elimination.
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Thanks, I think Iâm going to keep my list as is
I think your list looks great and you are a very impressive candidate! Have you run the net price calculators for these schools to confirm that they are in line with the financial aid you will need? I would just caution you to make sure that even if a school meets full need that they are still defining your need to be full cost of attendance since you said your parents were unlikely to be able to contribute anything. If the net price calculators arenât lining up with what you would need, I would add in a school or two that provides large amounts of merit as a financial safety option just to give yourself a solid out of state choice that you know would be affordable.
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Hi,
Thought I would give an updateâŚ
Got deferred from Harvard EA which is what I was expecting but still disappointing
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Hi,
Thought I would give another updateâŚ
I was accepted ea at University of Michigan, UNC , UVA and UVW(with full ride). Still waiting back for Ivies and MIT/CalTech.
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