College List Help for an Average Student

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Just finishing up my junior year and started my college list. I really want feedback on the list and suggestions on colleges that you may think fit my interest. I'm looking to get into business or econ...something along those lines. As you will see in my stats, I'm not your average CC user (5.0 GPA, tons of awards, etc.), so this should be interesting :)</p>

<p>Objective:
[<em>] SAT I (breakdown): 1890 (550 CR / 690 M / 650 W) (Retaking in October, hoping to improve CR by a decent amount and *hopefully</em> get an 800 on the math).
[<em>] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.56
[</em>] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): School doesn't rank. Probably around top 20/30% (no guarantees)
[<em>] Senior Year Course Load: AP Econ (micro/macro), AP Lit, AP Enviro, Calc, Bio II (school doesn't have honors classes, only regular or ap, but bio ii is about the same as an honors class at other schools), and Art (haha).
[</em>] Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): none</p>

<p>Subjective:
[<em>] Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): UNICEF (External Liaison), Recycling Committee, Peer Tutoring, Boston Latin Community Development Corporation
[</em>] Job/Work Experience: Camp Counselor, Data Entry Intern, Working at supermarket
[<em>] Volunteer/Community service: All of the extracurriculars listed above are community service related. Most events (in school / outside of school) are done through one of the three clubs. Have 150+ hours.
[</em>] Summer Activities: Mainly just work</p>

<p>Other
[ *] State (if domestic applicant): MA
[ *] School Type: Competitive Public
[ *] Ethnicity: White/ Chinese
[ *] Gender: Male
[ *] Income Bracket: <100,000
[ *] Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): First Generation</p>

<p>My List:</p>

<p>Reach:
Boston College (Not sure...BC offers interviews to EVERY student at my school, so that could help a lot)</p>

<p>Northeastern University</p>

<p>Babson College (Is this a reach?)</p>

<p>Match:
Boston University (already visited, signed up for their mailing list. tons of people from my school get in. I think like 57 people are attending BU this year.)</p>

<p>Bentley University</p>

<p>Safety:
UMass Amherst</p>

<p>University of New Hampshire</p>

<p>Suffolk University</p>

<p>If you disagree with where I place any of these schools, feel free to tell me! I like to be realistic, but I feel like I'm so bad at distinguishing certain colleges for match and reach.
Still working on GPA (a little late for that) and SAT score (hoping to raise 100+ points. CR has A LOT of room for improvement). Thanks a ton :)</p>

2

<p>Look kid, you aren’t an average student. Do you realize you SAT score is around the 85th percentile? That means you did better than 85 percent of this kids in the country, so not having a 2200 doesn’t make you average by any means. Your average is kinda low for BC, but you still have a chance. I wouldn’t put any of these schools out of reach for you. Babson is extremely selective, but on paper, you come off as a real person, not just a robot who has a 4.8 GPA with a 2380 on the SAT. Also, you are first gen, so that will work in your favor. I wish you the best of luck</p>

3

<p>university of pittsburgh
<a href=“http://www.pitt.edu/”>http://www.pitt.edu/&lt;/a&gt;
don’t you want to start a new chapter in your life instead of staying close to home .</p>

4

<p>I would…but my parents think otherwise at the moment. I’ll try to talk to them more about it. Thanks for the suggestion :)</p>

5

<p>Your list makes perfect sense given the geographic restrictions you have. Fortunately you have a lot of great choices in the Boston area. If RI is in your parent’s range and you want a safety that is similar to Bentley/Babson you may want to look at Bryant in RI (if it is close enough) and maybe Providence College would be a match and could serve as a back up to BC. </p>

<p>Don’t get too discouraged if your parents make you stay close by. I didn’t give my son such a tight radius but as things turned out he ended up at a school very close to home and he had an absolutely amazing college experience. Even with your choices, you will be able to get great education and have a terrific college life.</p>

6

<p>Yeah I’m super happy that Boston and the surrounding areas have amazing colleges :slight_smile: And the thing is, I would love to attend one of the colleges on my list atm, so it’s not like I’m dying to get away from Boston/MA (although it would be a cool experience to go OOS). Thanks for the suggestions!</p>