Chances For: Pepperdine, Santa Clara, Occidental, & USC

Hey All,

I’m a rising senior from the WNY area that is looking to attend a few colleges in California. My field of interest doesn’t have many jobs within my area, and I am hoping that a move out west will help me launch a career. I’m only applying to private schools in California due to the high out-of-state tuition rate in the UC/Cal State systems. If you guys could chance me for my colleges of choice, that’d be fantastic.

My Stats:

GPA UW: 3.3
GPA W: 3.6
CSU GPA: 3.7

SAT: 1930
CR: 640
W: 630
M: 660

*My GPA during Freshman year was decent. Sophomore year was ok. This year I worked hard to get a 3.8/4.3. This means that I have a solid upward trend, if that counts.

Courseload:

Freshman:
-Global 9 Honors
-English 9 Honors
-Biology Honors
-Geometry
-German
-Orchestra
-Media Art (Graphic Design)

Sophomore:
-English 10 Honors
-Global 10 Honors
-Chemistry Honors ** Did rather poorly. (78)
-Trigonometry ** Did awful. Voluntarily retook course. (66)
-German
-Orchestra

Junior:
-AP US History (91/100.3)
-AP English 11 (89/99)
-Trigonometry (89)
-Physics (94)
-IB German (94/104) (Student of the year in this class, even though I’m technically not in IB.)
-Networking (95)

Senior (Upcoming):
-AP Gov
-AP Econ
-Pre Calc Honors (Finally doing great in math again)
-AP Physics
-AP Lit
-IB German
-Orchestra
-Computer Science Course (Teacher Assistant)

EC’s:
-Track & Field Athlete for 4 years. (1 JV / 3 Varsity) (Indoor & Outdoor Seasons)
-Cross Country Athlete for 3 Years. (Team Captain)
-German Club
-German Exchange Program during next year.

*Self taught programmer and Web Developer… I’ve coded several popular online games, which had 680,000+ monthly pageviews during peak popularity. Made ~$7,000 in the process. I know the principals of Object Oriented Programming, database access, good practices, ect.

-Coteaching a Computer Science course next year.
-President of the Computer Science Club.

Awards:
-Beacon Award (Physics, Junior Year)
-IB German Student of the Year (Junior Year)

Volunteer Work:
-Coded the website and content management system for a local political candidate from scratch. Volunteer for the campaign on a weekly basis.

Other:
Major of Choice: Computer Science
Income: Low… EFC is 0.
Ethnicity: White

Forgot to mention

-Guitar player for 8 years.
-Violinist for 6 years.

I think your GPA will probably keep you out of those schools but, you should apply anyway.

If you are set on a CA private, add, LMU, USD and St Marys.

Good luck

Pepperdine: High Match/Low Reach due to GPA
USC: Reach. GPA and SAT score need to be higher
Occidental: Low Reach
Santa Clara: Low Reach/High Match

Thanks! I’ll look into LMU and USD! If you guys have other opinions or college suggestions, please let me know.

Are low reaches feasible to get into?

Yeah low reaches are. Like 1/3 chance about.