Undecided Major, Top 1%-2% of 600+ class, 36 ACT, female, not taken Subject tests yet. interested in STEM but wants to explore humanities related majors as well. NE Geography but flexible on college’s location as long as it is not extremely rural setting. EC’s include a few Science awards at regional level, Girl Scouts gold award, leadership in a few school clubs, some research work at a local university with professor. Already has state flagship and a few safeties on college list. Expect strong teacher recommendations.
So looking for advice on Matches (how many), Reaches (how many) and advice on where to apply early if that makes sense for unhooked applicant.
If you are recommending a school, please state if you think it is a Match or a Reach and would really appreciate it if you could tell me something about the school that would be hard to gather from websites and other easily accessible publicly available sources because I can always look that stuff up. If not, that’s fine too. No worries.
I think you’d get into every school that wasn’t need blind and obviously any that rely on only quantitative scores… Don’t see anything in terms of your achievements that would necessarily get you into a need blind school (unless legacy/develop admit). But that is primarily because you don’t really elaborate enough. You get top grades and have the top ACT score-and have been involved in stuff-all great but not necessarily enough for the top need blind schools. Might be though-can’t tell. Have you accelerated in any classes, for example? What sort of HS do you attend? What state? etc.
I would suggest looking at your high school’s Naviance if they have one. What is a safety for one student may not be for another depending on where they go to high school. For instance, at our suburban Midwestern high school with 700 kids in class, one can clearly see what kids need in terms of GPA and ACT/SAT scores for a good handful of public schools. When it comes to elite universities, we can see where the line is when kids stop getting rejected and kids at that level only get waitlisted or accepted.
I agree that no one can tell you much on here (if at all) without more info, especially rigor. Does your school offer AP or IB? Has the student taken those classes and done well? Taken AP tests and done well?
For another starting point, look at the common data set for each college you’re considering and see where your child falls in the 25th-75th percentile of scores…but also know that, at elite schools, extracurriculars and essays matter as does maybe going ED.
I think you need to start with costs and build the list from there. What can you pay each year? (I am assuming you are the parent. If not, what will parents pay?) Have you run the NPC at any schools?
ETA: Just re-read the thread title and see that you are full pay. Are you/parents willing to actually pay full amount?
I think you should also look at good schools which provide merit aid, since you would be eligible for that in any case. I like proposing Macalaster, since I know a bit more about it, but I know that there are more out there (I think that Rochester, proposed by @taverngirl, is similar).
As others said, the way you presented your ECs they could be relatively modest, and they could be outstanding, or anything between. Your academics seem very good, and your ACT is perfect, so I think that a bit more information about your interests, proposed major, and a bit more detail about your ECs would help.
Based on academics and ACT alone your matches and reaches could span anything within the top 50 colleges in the USA. So people need that info to help you narrow it down.
Smith and Mt Holyoke would probably be Matches. Both are LAC Women’s colleges. You might eliminate MHC due to the location being a bus ride away from Amherst and Morthampton (both college towns). Since you are in the NE I’d recommend a visit to see and hear their advantages. Both also have the possibility of merit.
Boston University would be a match strong in all fields - urban location.
Tufts if you ED would be a match.
There are lots of matches if you ED. Can you narrow down your search criteria a little?
What college tours have been done, and with what reactions? Some of your other posts talk about finding ‘fit’, and this links to that question. As other posters have said, more info will get more useful replies. Size / Greek / Sports / Academic intensity / are some usual filters.
From there, for our collegekids it was about personality, and that they got from visiting (for our more introverted collegekid, it was sitting in on classes that turned out to be the deciding factor (both ways). Are college tours are on the spring break horizon?
And if you can pay full price, are you willing to? My D19 is lucky to have a grandparent trust fund to pay for college so we didn’t let price/value enter the equation.
Huh? Most colleges (not just a few super-selective colleges) are need-blind, according to their pages on collegedata.com (which replicate subsets of their common data sets).
“STEM” covers a wide range of subjects. Colleges strong in biology may not be strong in engineering and vice-versa, for example.
“Humanities” similarly covers a wide range of subjects (e.g. English literature, foreign languages and literatures, philosophy, history; often arts are seen as included here).
Interesting what you say about most schools being need blind. They are… and they aren’t. For example, my young relative got into Middlebury. Kid was a truly top student, lovely bright high-achieving. And every activity kid was in, kid was a leader, and kind to others, helped teach others. No hooks. And kid didn’t need financial aid - so the college knew that about the family, once kid was there. A year behind came younger sibling. Also very smart, but not as high an achiever, had some learning issues. And sib’s desired major was not really a match for Middlebury - they had it, but the school was relatively weak in that area. So, guess where sibling got in, and went? Middlebury! You see, they knew that sib would be a full fare student, because the older one was. Had younger one needed financial aid, very doubtful kid would have gotten in.
Schools have ways of finding out whether kid is likely to need financial aid. Applicant from very low socioeconomic area, parents with low levels of education = high financial need. Applicant from wealthy town, parents highly educated in high-earning professions = no financial need. And nowadays, with google, they can google the parents and see what they do professionally.
But I digress. My point is that if a school knows that you don’t need financial aid, even though it’s need blind, and you have the academic qualifications to get in, you’re possibly more likely to be accepted than a middle class kid who is not an underrepresented minority, with the same qualifications as you, who they think is likely to need a lot of financial aid. After all, someone’s tuition has to cover someone else’s financial aid.
Even though you have all the basics covered, is there anything at which you are really, really, stand out from the crowd good? Anything? Colleges are looking for kids who have discovered their “passion”, be it in music, sports, science, arts, whatever. It’s total BS to expect that a 17 year old has found his life work; in fact, I would say that the 17 year old who has specialized so much in one area that they’ve already put in half of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours (such as a person well on their way to becoming a professional musician), is NOT the kind of person who is going to be able to take advantage of a well-rounded college education. They’re too busy working on their already-discovered passion. But if you want to get into the top schools, they want to see that you’re already focused on high achievement in a single area. So if there is something that you’re really good at, you want to hone it and compete in it and show achievement in it, so you can say, "Look at me, I’m a straight A student, I have perfect SATs, I am a leader in extracurriculars, I do charity work, and in my spare time, I’m a (pick one) concert pianist, olympic athlete, founded a national charity that’s been written up in the New York Times - something of that sort. Now, clearly, it’s a little late for that level of focused achievement, but you may still be able to portray your strongest interest as your “passion”, even if you aren’t going to the Olympics or performing as the guest soloist with your city’s symphony. And if you can still do something with it before you apply, like leading your chosen activity on a citywide level, or something in which you can achieve at a very high level this year, you should try to do it.
In your case, since you’re already doing research with a professor at a local college, that stand out thing that you could do would be to get a paper accepted for publication by a reputable journal.
It’s going to be really hard to help you unless you let people know whether your parents are willing to pay the full amount that would be expected (that opens up highly selective schools that only give money for need, not merit) as reaches or whether your reaches will need to be the selectives that do give merit (more of which would likely be closer to matches for you, or at least somewhere between match and reach).
Likewise, knowing which fields in STEM and humanities you have interest in could matter. If engineering, many of the smaller colleges don’t have engineering programs.
Do you have a size preference for colleges? Larger ones would have a wider range of majors. What field was the research you did? Did you like it? That’s definitely something to highlight when applying to research universities. URochester would definitely be interested in it.
Bryn Mawr or Haverford – both are part of a consortium and you have the benefit of a small college setting with the range of several colleges to branch out to. The consortium includes BMC, Haverford, Swarthmore and UPenn. Transportation among the schools is provided. BMC especially has STEM that is great for women, empowering of women, and yet you can attend classes with men – as Haverford is coed and they freely take classes at BMC. If you are premed as another person has speculated BMC has a postbac program with excellent credentials and so you’d be guaranteed excellent premed at the undergrad level too.
What I find especially nice about BMC and H is that they are top-achieving schools and yet the the community is purposefully not stressful. The Honor Code that both schools share and the community of personal responsibility that builds around that helps you achieve your goals with the minimum of stress.
BMC has merit in addition to need-based aid. I am not sure if you’d be a match but I think you would be. I don’t know if H has merit or only need-based aid.
Both schools are about 10-11 miles out of Philly – a quick train-ride away.