Chance my child (22) for Brown (ED), the University of Chicago (EA), and Harvard

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Hello. My child and I are new to this process. We are very lucky that our child is so self- motivated and open with us about this college process. They found this website recently and wanted to learn a bit more. We would love your help in any way!

Demographics
Domestic
Virginia ( Live in rural area, but attend school in a suburb )
Public school
White and Nonbinary. Please use their correct pronouns in any comments.

They want to be a author or journalist that writes about science.

Intended Major(s)
History of Science
or
Science, Technology, and Society

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 4.0. No Weighted GPA
  • Class Rank: Top 10 out of 234 (their school only ranks Top 10 but does not distinguish who is what rank)
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 36 ACT

Coursework
12 AP Classes at graduation. All 5’s ( including Calculus BC and AB ) except for AP Physics 1 ( 2 )
Highest language: Latin V . Cannot take AP Latin this year because it cannot fit in their schedule.
Highest math: Linear Algebra
5 years of Advanced Band as a Saxophone player ( Part of Advanced Band in middle school because HS and MS are combined )

Awards
National Merit Semifinalist
Math Olympiad ( American Mathematics 12B and Invitational Mathematics Examination )
School award for chemistry
School award for math

Extracurriculars

Journalism paid internship, specializes in science

Professional Science Author for a popular newspaper.

Research on sex and gender in psychology. Published a paper.

Freelance Journalism ( For a very big science publisher and more small ones )

4 Years of Varsity on School Bowling Team

Tutoring students in Chemistry and Biology ( For free )

Started the Chemistry Club

Pottery ( Artwork shown in our town’s art festival )

Jazz Band Saxophone. Soloist.

Latin National Honors Society (School does not have regular National Honors Society)

Free Summer Program for Virginia Students who enjoy math and science.

Essays/LORs/Other
They discussed how their recently diagnosed disability changed how they make pottery.
I am not going to read it out of respect, but their school’s guidance counselor told me that it was great.

Honors Chemistry Teacher. (Knows child well, motivated them to do AP Chemistry and write specifically about Chemistry.)

AP Language and Composition Teacher ( Did well on the test and helped write their essay. )

Cost Constraints / Budget
Thankfully, we have a large fund for their college.

Schools

  • Safety
    Virginia Commonwealth University ( they have a Legacy there ) ( for Scholarship consideration )

  • Likely
    William and Mary ( 1692 Scholar and / or Monroe Scholarship )

  • Match
    Smith College ( Can they still apply there if they do not identify as female? They think so but my husband and I are not sure. )

  • Reach
    Brown ( Early Decision )
    University of Chicago ( Early Action )
    Harvard University
    Dartmouth College

We know they do not have many schools, but they were very specific about what they liked. They love William and Mary, so if the Reach schools do not work out they are very happy with William and Mary and VCU.

Thank you so much for your help.

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Re Smith - check the website but my understanding is they accept non-binary students who were AFAB (as well as all identifying as female).

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Thank you so much. We will do some more research.

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Not exactly your question, but curious if there are thoughts on other colleges with an STS major? (Pomona, Vassar, UPenn, Cornell, Stanford & Pitzer come to mind)

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We’ve checked out a few of them! They really like east coast, so we took off pomona and pitzer. We toured Vassar so they took it off the list. UPenn and Cornell are on the table, and Stanford is a maybe even if its out west. Do you think they have a shot there?

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A few of their schools don’t have STS (VCU, WM, Dartmouth), so they’re just planning to study Chemistry in that case with a double major or minor in English.

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As you know, the chances of admission for any unhooked applicant at an Ivy are very low for everyone. In state options are good, though. Dartmouth is a real outlier among the reach schools-rural, more conservative than the others.

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What about CMU? Great school for writers. Not a bad tech school either.

Just curious why UVA isn’t on the list?

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After reading your post, I thought of Brown. Another school I like that wasn’t included is Clark U. in Worcester. Both of these would seem like good fits.

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Not totally familiar with the major but have a bit of discomfort with the list:

  1. VCU - I just think - it’s not going to happen unless you love Richmond and the school. A safety is a school you would be excited to go to. Is this so?

I don’t want to say it’s beneath you because it’s a wonderful school and all are great but…well, I’ll leave it at that.

I’m confident you’ll get into W&M. I’m not confident you’ll get the 1692 - because while someone will get it, that’s a crapshoot.

Smith - I see no issues.

This gets to your reaches - they are great but they are reaches for all - even the perfect student. So - if you don’t get the scholarship at W&M and you are full pay - even at in-state rates - is your child good with that?

I guess I’d like to see other matches - and while I’m not familiar with the major and I hope that any child can succeed at any school - I’ll admit I’m not knowledgeable in the gender description areas but hopefully a person can be a person without repercussion anywhere.

Tufts has a program - still a reach. USC - West Coast - bummer as you get a 1/2 scholarship for NMF.

UMD would be great for writing and has great honors programs (honors, scholars). WPI might be another - both these would at least in pedigree be above VCU.

Not sure if anyone mentioned Wesleyan - would be another good one. I know you mentioned Vassar.

If they’re going to become a writer, short of getting merit aid which won’t happen at the Ivy’s, Tufts, Wesleyan (I added those), why not stay in state with W&M, JMU, VCU, etc.

I’m assuming as a writer the salary is not going to be huge and honestly in journalism the pedigree is less important - and the pedigree is a different set of schools anyway.

I wish your child luck. As you said they are very motivated and that’s awesome.

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Thank you so much! We haven’t looked into CMU, but I’ll mention it to them… As for UVA, there are some personal reasons for not attending (don’t want to give too much information because it may identify them)

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Thanks for the reccomendations.
They’re not fully set on journalism (they’ve also been looking into going pre-med), but really do like all of their safeties and targets to the point where they really love every school on the list. Their father attended VCU and we are a proud Ram Fam (our kid especially likes their honors college)!
They really do love Brown and it has everything on their list. We’re just trying to get a better feel for if they have a realistic shot with Early Decision!
Thanks again

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Based on your child’s interest in Brown, Wesleyan might make a good addition to their list.

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With Brown, you better run the NPC. Sure, you have a large pool of money set aside, but do you want to spend $320K when maybe you can spend $80K (because you can at schools like Florida State) or $150K at W&M or maybe $200K at a LAC with merit.

Just because you have it doesn’t mean you need to spend it.

That’s a person question - just putting it out there because Brown only has need aid and sounds like you won’t qualify. VCU is $30K b4 merit aid and you’re likely to at least get the Deans scholarship of $8K a year.

So is $88K - we’ll say $90K over four years at VCU more attractive than $320K at Brown? That’s what you have to decide…not now…but if you get into Brown and it’s not likely quite honestly…but if you do, that’s the difficulty in all this and where the parents have to set the expectation up front - because $230K back in your pocket…or saved for grad school…that’s a lot of change :slight_smile:

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When we were in the Dartmouth admissions office, some parents were talking about Clark. It is one of the Colleges that Change Lives (assume you have seen that website). We were impressed and also found some of the concentrations/majors interesting:
Concentration in Health, Science, and Society - Clark University

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When you say the student published a paper, what do you mean? In a peer reviewed science journal? Or something else? As you no doubt realize, the academics are fine, but that is true for many applicants, most of whom are denied admission. That seemed the most promising of the EC list, but without more, it is hard to evaluate. How often are the student’s newspaper articles published, and is it a national or regional newspaper?

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They publish weekly for an international media site (newspaper was the wrong word, my apologies)! A few of the articles have over 40k reads, and one has 50k+. Their research was published in a journal.
I’ve been trying to keep it vague for privacy concerns.

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I understand the privacy concerns, just trying to get a sense of the depth of the EC, as that is likely to matter a great deal. Was the research done with a professor in an academic setting? Sounds like maybe not, or the professor would have done a recommendation letter.

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Unfortunately, it was online due to COVID, but it was conducted under an academic from good medical school at one of their top universities. They worked on it from June 2020 through January of 2021.

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Well, if the academic cited the student as co author or something, that would be worth quite a bit. But an uncited researcher, not much