Chances for Hopkins, u chicago, Pomona...?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hello!
I am wondering about my chances at a bunch of different schools and also which would be match/reach/safety schools, so just answer if you know a lot about any of them! The schools I am wondering about are:

Johns Hopkins
Pomona
Claremont McKenna
University of Chicago
Occidental
Stanford
Northwestern
Whitman
Cornell
Columbia
Georgetown
Haverford
Brandeis
Amherst
Williams

So yeah, sorry, I know that’s a lot but you don’t have to answer on all of them! Also if you have any ideas on my chances of merit aid at the schools that offer it then that would be helpful!

Here’s a bit about me:
GPA: 4.6 weighted, 4.0 unweighted
Classes: four years English, math; Spanish, five science classes (all year-long); 3.5 years history (the most my school offers); 2 college level, 7 AP, 7 honors at a well-regarded private high school (this was the max number possible of advanced classes to take)
Rank: not yet announced, but I should be in at least the top 2 or 3 of 205
Test scores: 34 ACT, 2300 SAT
Planned major: double major in bio and international relations, pre-med
Extracurriculars:
-Science club leader for three years, member for four
-Medical club founder
-School ambassador committee leader
-Internship in a research lab at a local hospital for four years, published in a major journal (second author)
-Volunteering at a local children’s hospital 4+ hrs/week for two years
-Science mentorship program for elementary school girls, member for three years, director for two
-XC team member for four years
-Summber before junior year I did a service trip focused on health education to Nicaragua, it was an independent thing through an organization there
-Science bowl team member for two years
-outdoor school counselor (teaching middle school kids about environmental science) for two weeks (you can only do a week a year because it’s during school)

Yeah, so that’s me! If you have ideas about other schools that could be good for me (maybe as safety schools? None on my list really are…) that would be great as well. Thanks so much for your help!!!

2

I’d say Whitman, Brandeis, and Occidental are pretty close to safeties for you if they are also affordable, but if they require that you show interest, be sure to really do so. Whitman and Occidental probably have merit, my guess is that it is comparable to other similar LACs, you might expect about $15K. Not sure about Brandeis and merit.

None of the rest have merit, or if they do it is hyper competitive and you can’t expect any.

I’d say Haverford is a low match, the three discussed above are low match/safeties, and the rest are reaches. My advice is to add a few more matches – Carleton comes to mind.

If you don’t have a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges, get one and read up on your list. Also, you can Google " Common Data Set" to find a very informative standard set of data on each college. Although a few are cagey – UChicago, for example, does not make one available.

3

Thanks so much! Very helpful :slight_smile: I will definitely look into the common data sets!