<p>haven't taken sat subject tests yet, i'll get on that by this october</p>
<p>HS graduation year: 2011
UW GPA: 3.5
Weighted: 3.8
SAT Composite: 1940
Took 3 AP classes-- AP Biology, AP English, AP Calculus (i'll take these during my senior year, since my school didn't offer any before then) </p>
<p>EC's/awards:
Played JV tennis for 2 years, varsity tennis my senior year
Academic Spell Bowl team -- state finalists all 4 years, regional champions 3 years
Math team
National Finalist for 2 years in a row in a neuroscience competition
National Finalist for 2 years in a row in a public speaking competition
National Finalist for 2 years in a row in a essay writing competition
Marching Band State Runner up -- freshman year
Speech team for 2 years
National Society of High School Scholars
National Honors Society
FIRST Robotics team for 3 years -- won a regional championship in 2009 (had leadership position)
VEX Robotics team for 2 years -- won a regional championship in 2009
Rocket Club
Vice President of Chess Club</p>
<p>Volunteer Activities: (total = slightly over 100 hrs)
Assisted my tennis coach in coaching small children
Assisted my tennis coach in his adult tennis classes
Volunteered at a local hospital
Assisted the Salvation Army </p>
<p>I'm really interested in finance & economics with pre-med electives.
the colleges i was looking at are: </p>
<p>University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
University of Notre Dame
Penn State - University Park
Villanova University
University of Texas - Austin
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Northwestern University
any/all ivy leagues</p>
<p>looking good for Penn State, Wisconsin, and Villanova</p>
<p>UMich, Texas, and ND are reaches because of the SAT and GPA</p>
<p>Northwestern, IVIES theres no chance for the same reason. get your SAT up to at least 2200 or ACT to 33 to be competitive for Northwestern or Ivy. But the GPA is a big problem…</p>
<p>EC’s are good though, lots of awards and stuff</p>
<p>Ivies, Northwestern and ND are certainly reaches based on your stats. If you’re in-state Michigan I think it’s a (low) reach, OOS a reach. Texas has the 10%-rule (maybe just changed to the 7%-rule) that allocates spots to in-state students graduating in the top 10% of their high school class. This results in 90+% of the slots being taken by Texans leaving very few for OOS. Furthermore, the business school is one of the more, if not most, competitive programs there, so I’m going to have to say Texas is a reach unless you’re in-state and meet the requirements.</p>
<p>Wisconsin is pretty straight forward about your chances - check out the chart on the following link and you’ll see that applicants with your profile have a 55% chance of acceptance - Good, but not comfortable.</p>
<p>I think Penn State is pretty safe, especially if you’re in-state. Check out the admissions statistics toward the bottom of this link [The</a> Pennsylvania State University: Undergraduate Profile ? BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>thanks. would it increase my chances if i applied in the early decision or early action pool to some of those colleges?
and yes, i do have indiana university as a safety school but i didn’t include it since i’m pretty sure i’d get in</p>
<p>The following is just my opinion, other people on this board have very different ideas. </p>
<p>Most of the anecdotal information around these forums supports the idea that’s it’s actually somewhat tougher to get into EA than RD. If you look at EA and ED as business decisions from the viewpoint of the college this makes sense. EA is a non-binding agreement, yes you’re telling the school you’re really interested in them but you’re also not ethically/legally committed to attend if accepted. So why would a school accept an EA applicant unless they were strong enough to get accepted regardless of the timing of their application? </p>
<p>I think it’s fine to apply EA if you can do a good enough job on the application and you’re at least close to the 50th%-tile of the admissions statistics. If you get accepted - great; if you get deferred then you have a chance to impress the school with your first semester grades. If you get rejected well at least you’ll know that. The only big drawback I see to EA is that you don’t get to use first semester senior year to help your cause if you’re a borderline acceptance.</p>
<p>ED is another story. By accepting you ED, a school is getting a legally committed candidate; so I could see how an admissions committee might accept someone who had slightly lower stats in order to fill in part of the class. But the few statistics that are out there show that ED admits are pretty “average” academically when compared to the overall population for that class. So again, if your near the 50th%-tile (or slightly below) for a school I think it improves your chances, but if you’re way off the bottom end of the spectrum I don’t think ED is going to help you.</p>
<p>If you apply ED someplace just be sure it’s someplace you really want to go, just in case you get accepted.</p>
<p>I heard that villanova’s business program is really good, so if i apply to that program would admission be tougher? perhaps i could apply early decision and it may help that
would it be acceptable to consider villanova a “safe” school based on my stats? </p>
<p>also one more question. if i’m have one school that i really have my eyes set on, could i apply ED and then apply to all my other colleges EA? i heard from someone that you can only apply to one college before november first; whether it be EA or ED</p>
<p>Personally I wouldn’t consider Villanova a “safety” given your stats. My definition of a safety school (besides being one you can afford to go to) is someplace where you’re statistically at or near the 75th%-tile and the school accepts at least 50% of its applicants. Some people think it should be closer to 70% acceptance rate, but I think if you are at or past the 75th%-tile academically then you can be a little more aggressive. Of course the best solution would then be to have at least 2 safety schools on your list. The Businessweek rankings are a great source of information. ([Top</a> Undergraduate Business Programs 2010 - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)). After you look over the list go to the search box and pick a school and search for something like “Boston University Profile”. You’ll find a link that will get you all the admissions info you need.</p>
<p>Your GPA 3.5
Your SAT 1940 (Estimated 1300 for Math + CR only)</p>
<p>Villanova:
Undergraduate BSchool Admission Rate: 30%
Class Profile High School GPA 3.75+: 64%
High School GPA 3.5-3.74: 23%
Median SAT: 1340 </p>
<p>Analysis: Your SAT is very close to the median so by that measure you’d be considered an average student. However, your 3.5 GPA puts you in the bottom 15% of admits. Your awards, essays and recommendations are going to have to make Villanova feel confident that you will be able to succeed there. I think you have a fair chance at Villanova but certainly not a slam-dunk.</p>
<p>At BU you’re basically at the mid-point GPAwise and above the mid-point for SATs with a higher acceptance rate. BU is much closer to a safety than Villanova.</p>
<p>those links were really helpful. but i noticed on that first link you posted (“Top Undergraduate Business Programs”) that grads from a lower ranked b-schools such as fordham get the same type of pay after undergrad (presumably before the MBA) as the grads from notre dame, a top ranked b-school. is that how it truly is? because it seems really strange that a grad from fordham can get the same pay as a grad from cornell. </p>
<p>also, another question regarding the safety schools:
I checked fordham’s profile, and 30% of those admitted had GPA of 3.75 or higher. and 29% had from 3.5-3.74.
SAT score average is about a 1231 for fordham, and my CR + math is 1320.<br>
so i’m above the 50% with SAT scores, but not with GPA. would it be a slight reach or safety?</p>
<p>Job recruiters tend to visit schools in their own backyard. This makes sense because it faster and cheaper for them to get to these schools and it costs less to hire someone locally than to have to worry about paying for their moving expenses. NYC has one of the highest costs of living in the US, as a result, salaries are higher in New York City than in other parts of the country for similar jobs. So while Fordham may have equal or higher starting salaries as Cornell, your cost of living in New York will eat up a lot more of that cash. A Cornell grad working in Burlington, VT making $50K per year is going to be better off financially than a Fordham grad working in Manhattan making the same $50K.</p>