Chances of making it into these? (Stanford, Harvard, etc.)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hi everyone! I already posted in the College Selection section asking for more schools to add to my list, since I’m aware the majority of these are reaches, but I’d like to know what people think about my odds of getting into any of the ones I’m currently looking at. Here’s some info about me:

  • I go to a pretty average public high school in northern New Jersey, definitely not the likes of Livingston, Millburn, Chatham, etc. if any of you are familiar with those but it’s not too terrible
  • I got a 35 on my ACT first try in February (35 English, 33 Math, 36 Reading, 35 Science)
  • I took the SAT in December and got a 1340, and I don’t plan on retaking it now or submitting it since corona decided to ruin everything
  • I’m taking two SAT subject tests in October (Literature and Math 2)
  • We couldn’t take AP classes until junior year at my school, and I only took APUSH and AP Stats as a junior. I expect to be getting a 5 on both of those tests, but since they’re modified versions of the test due to them being online, I don’t know what schools are going to do with those. Otherwise, I’ve been in all honors classes since freshman year. Next year I’m taking AP Physics 1, AP Calc BC, and AP Comp Sci
  • At the end of this year I’ll have a 4.56 GPA weighted on a 5.0 scale; 3.96 unweighted on 4.0 scale; we don’t do exact class rank but I’m fairly certain that I’m top 5%
  • I’m a white gay boy (not out to my family though teehee)
  • I’m a member of math (running for secretary in the fall), science, and English honors societies (secretary), and they haven’t released the roster for social studies yet but I’d assume I’m in it
  • I’m a member of my school’s American Sign Language Club, and I plan on running for president of it in the fall; also a member of my school’s extracurricular orchestra club (I play the viola) and the freshman mentoring program
  • When we could actually go to school, I would tutor kids struggling in math and science during lunch or after school a couple times a month to fulfill my math and science honors societies’ obligations
  • My family is religious (I’m not though), so I’ve done a bunch of volunteer work through our church at a local soup kitchen
  • Since quarantine has started, I’ve begun writing a children’s book and I have helped tutor elementary schoolers over Zoom as part of this program some alumni from my high school organized
  • Both of my parents are unemployed right now because of coronavirus
  • Not exactly sure what I want to study yet, but probably business or computer science
  • My current list of schools is: Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, University of Chicago, Northwestern, Columbia, Georgetown, Duke, Ohio State, UMich, Vanderbilt, UNC Chapel Hill, UC Berkeley, UCLA, University of Alabama, University of Georgia, University of Virginia, and Emory (Stanford and Harvard are my #1 and #2, but everything else is about even)

Overall, my main concerns are that I did not take as many APs as I should’ve and that I don’t have strong enough extracurriculars, so if you guys could let me know what you think, that’d be great. Thank you in advance for your help! I really appreciate it.

2

Harvard and Stanford are going to be tough. They are tough even for valedictorians (4.0/36). The EA bump helps a little with Harvard. Not sure about Stanford. You have great grades and scores, but I don’t see anything that makes you stand out from the pack.

You might have a better ED chance at schools farther down your list. Do you have scattergrams to look at? What have students from your HS with similar scores/grades been able to get accepted at?

3

Yeah, I feel like I’m so average and I don’t know what to do about that, which kinda sucks. I do have scattergrams from Naviance that I can look at. Princeton takes roughly two kids from my school each year, and we’ve had a few Harvards and Columbias in the past few years. We had a UPenn, Brown, two UCLAs, a couple Georgetowns, and a UNC Chapel Hill this year, all of which are kids who have similar test scores and grades to mine. The salutatorian is one of the ones who’s going to Princeton from that class.

4

To me you have some reaches in terms of admissions, some reaches in terms of affordability (based on the budget in your other thread), and Alabama and Georgia. I do not know enough about Alabama and Georgia to know what they are likely to cost you – we did not look that far south.

What do you want in a university? Why is your list so long?

I am thinking that the first thing for you to do is to pick two safeties that you would be happy attending and that you know that you can afford. Given your excellent stats I do not see any harm in applying to Stanford and Harvard and seeing what happens. That is four schools. Then pick three or four or at most six more that are appealing to you from your list.

5

To be honest, my list is this long because I need as many options as possible to get away from my parents, mostly my mom. All they’ve done is damage my self esteem beyond repair and worsen my anxiety and depression for the past seventeen years of my life, and I can’t be anywhere near a toxic environment such as that anymore. I figured if I applied to a lot of schools that I liked, I’d get into at least ONE that would be far enough away that I’m out of their reach. They also said I could apply to as many as I wanted to, so I mean if they’re cool with it then that’s on them.

6

Get yourself to a mental health professional if you feel that your self esteem is beyond repair. They can help you.

Look closely at your HS’s naviance. Exclude the outliers. These are typically kids with strong hooks (Athletes, URM, donors, legacy etc). So if you say that people with your same scores/grades have gotten into Penn/Brown/UCLA/Gtown then that appears to be your best shot.

7

Oh I already have a therapist to help me deal with the self esteem stuff. And some of the kids going to the schools I mentioned before are URMs, and others of them are athletes, but I don’t think any of them are legacies.

8

Don’t fill your list with lots of high stats schools thinking you’ll get into one. Better to focus on schools where you are in the mean or even better than their average accepted student. This will give you more options ( especially for FA). I don’t think Harvard and some of the others should be on your list. Perhaps you can create a list based on your stats and add one long shot and a couple of schools below your stats to have some choices. Also, schools do look at what the options are at your schools so won’t hold it as much aginst you if you didn’t take as many APs etc. Your class standing is very good.
I’d focus on finding the right program in a field you want to study and then fill out on that basis. If you don’t know the field, I’d pick universities that have lots of options and are low cost. You don’t want to take on too much debt.

9

Good to see that you are taking care of yourself.

Take careful note of your competition in your HS. If there are lots of hooked kids applying to one of your top choices, then steer clear. In the ED round you want to have the admissions full attention. In general for the top colleges, they don’t like to take too many kids from one high school. Good luck wherever you end up!

10

If your parents are unemployed, then pretty much all of these schools are out the window. You can’t afford them. You might be able to get an exception on financial aid for some of the private schools, but that’s something you can’t count on. A lot of people are unemployed, and these schools have limited resources. Your best bet would be to go straight for a scholarship, or your in-state university. Try University of Alabama, or Univ of AZ. You also might be able to get decent scholarship aid at TCU or Baylor, because you will qualify for a university scholarship on top of the financial aid.

With the situation you’re in, you might have to be prepared to start at community college, and transfer to an in-state university you can afford.

11

First of all, you aren’t average. The average student has a 3.0 GPA and an ACT of 20-21. You are in the top 5%-10%. However, that puts you in competition with about 150,000-300,000 other students, at least half of who are applying to all of these popular colleges, and of whom only about 15%-25% will be accepted.

On the other hand, not only looking at the colleges which the the very most popular, pits you in a better place. Moreover, the college list which you provide tend to be places with highly stressful atmospheres, which are likely not the best place for you. CS programs are even more intense, and more competitive at colleges which have differences in acceptance rates between programs.

Also, CS is extremely math heavy, and I do not see much by the way of math-related activity.

Now, forget about UNC Chapel Hill, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UGeorgia, Umichigan, OSU, and UVA. You are not a resident of any of these states, and, if your parents are unemployed, you cannot afford their OOS tuition. Moreover, acceptance rates for OOS applicants at UMichigan, UNC, and UVA are extremely low.

Acceptance rates at the rest, except UAlabama are all so low that it is more likely than not that you will be rejected from all of them.

Based on that list alone, I would say that you will be attending UAlabama. It is a great school, and your GPA will qualify you for good financial aid, however, its Campus Pride Index is 2.5/5.0.

I will second U Arizona, and you could look at Arizona State as well. Look at U Iowa or Iowa State, etc. Many of these have automatic financial aid for high stats students, including OOS students.

There are also many private and public colleges with really good merit scholarships, for which you can apply, including Emory, Tulane and others. Even some of the public universities that are generally expensive for OOS students have some really good merit aid (like OSU or NC State).

Have you looked at any Liberal Arts Colleges? There are a number of really good once which are full need met or mostly so, and the good ones are almost all are very LGBTQ-friendly.

@coolguy40 Baylor is a bad choice for a gay student: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/07/gay-rights-activists-ask-ncaa-intervene-baylors-lgbtq-policies

PS. If your income is now zero, look at Questbridge. It is a great scholarship for high achieving low income students. www.questbridge.org