<p>Hi, relatively new member here. I am male junior currently living in Michigan. I was wondering if you could give me your opinions and advice on getting into some schools.</p>
<p>Want to apply to:
- MIT
- Berkeley
- Caltech
- University of Michigan
- Michigan State
- Carnegie Mellon
- Stanford</p>
<p>Unweighted GPA: 3.8
Number of AP Classes at graduation: 6
Highest Math Taken: AP Calc AB
Highest Science Taken: AP Chemistry
Class Rank: 114 out of 633 (Very competitive school, if they look at that)</p>
<p>Ap Class Grades so far:
AP Government: A
AP Macroeconomics: A
All the rest will be taken my senior year.</p>
<p>ACT Score:
Haven't taken the actual test yet, but have scored 30-32 on practice tests.</p>
<p>ECs/Awards:
- Robotics Team for 2 Years, will be 3 at graduation.
- NHS Member
- Started a programming business freshman year, have maintained ever since.
- Have won the "high gpa" award that our school has every semester.
- Have volunteered at local Humane Society.</p>
<p>Also, I will be a first generation college student from a low income family, it it helps.</p>
<p>I tried the collegedata site, but I don't really trust their statistics.</p>
<p>That's about it. What do you think? Any input or advice would be greatly appreciated. :)</p>
<p>To answer you question i need to know how many ap classes your school offers, and if you know how many of the graduation class are going to ivy league, and your weighted gpa ONE other thing is your SAT or ACT? have you taken it yet! You gonna need a real good excuse of that class rank, for 2/3 of the schools you are applying to.</p>
<p>^ as i read the post above me 2 up and yours i realized the SAT/ACT questions plus i agree ruskie , how do you have a 3.8 top 20%... doesn't make any sense- only thing i see is easy classes throughout high school...</p>
<p>To be honest, even if you have top 10%, it's going to be an uphill battle for Stanford, MIT, and Caltech. Try to get more ECs, you don't have very many right now. Also, something that might make you happy, practice ACT tests (i.e. the PLAN) are often significantly lower than the real ones so you could get somewhere around 34-35.</p>
<p>I would say the rest are match or low-mid reach.</p>
<p>The fact that you are first generation will help, especially if you are a minority student. What is your race? Sorry to ask, but it makes a real difference in half of your schools (race is not a factor in California). </p>
<p>That "programming business" sounds like a great EC showing maturity and initiative, especially for MIT.</p>
<p>When you say your school is competitive, how competitive do you mean? I suppose it is possible that the student body is very strong (magnet school or rich area) and may genuinely earn so many A's by working hard in tough classes. Colleges really do consider the difficulty of your high school. Since your school is large and competitive, they must be familiar with it from past applicants.</p>
<p>To clear some things up,
- Unweighted GPA - My school doesn't even offer us a weighted GPA, but they will next year. Don't ask me why, I think it is unacceptable for a school of 4000 to not do this already.
- White
- 10 or so AP Classes offered at my school.</p>
<p>I am not sure how I am only top 20%, it doesn't make any sense to me either. I have taken hard classes every year except for freshman year (mostly). When you say easy classes sblogblah, do you mean for me or everyone else (which allows them to get a 4)?</p>
<p>And lockn, my school isn't even on that chart you gave me. Apparently though, like ruskie said, its just inflation. :(</p>
<p>You could always shoot a little lower your first year, and then do really well / get involved in stuff and transfer for sophomore or junior year. If you have your heart set on one of those places, anyway...</p>
<p>Ya there's almost no way in hell you're getting into MIT, Berkeley, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, or Stanford. Your GPA is way too low, especially considering your class rank, your scores aren't there, I see nothing in your ECs... Maybe you can get into Michigan, I have no idea how competitive they are in-state. Michigan State I assume is easy to get into so I assume you'll get in there. But you're shooting wayyyy too high with this list of schools.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone for your input. :) I don't know how I can help the class rank, if I get a 3.9 I will still be position 80 or so somehow. Is there anything I can do about the grade inflation? Will the schools take that into consideration?</p>
<p>@ Beef, I figure I might as well try, its worth the application fee to just try, who knows, I could get lucky I suppose :).</p>
<p>Yeah, I will probably end up doing that. Luckily, next year they will start weighing AP Classes, but for the few I took my junior year, it seems they won't count :(</p>