College List Help/Suggestsions

College Search & Selection
1

My list of colleges
-Dartmouth
-Brown
-Cornell
-Harvard
-Stanford
-UPenn
-Notre Dame
-Boston College
-U of Virginia

  • SUNY Binghamton
    -Macaulay Honors college
    -Georgetown

High School Junior at a catholic school in New York

Hooks: I am a URM (Hispanic), a first generation college student, and I’m also adopted

SAT I (breakdown): 2400 (no need for subscores lol) :slight_smile:

ACT (breakdown): not taking

SAT II:, us 750 , math 2 740 Lit 730 bio 750

Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.7

Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): school doesnt rank

Course Rigor: Frosh- Stage Band Honors, Integrated Geometry Advanced (took Algebra 1 in middle school).
Sophmore- Biology Honors and Global History Honors,
Junior Year: APUSH

AP: US - 4

IB (place score in parenthesis): not available at my school

Senior Year Course Load: AP Lit AP Government Honors Calculus Honors Physics

Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): Nothing aside from National Honor society and foreign language honor society

Subjective:

Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): 150-200 volunteer hours, golf team, bodybuilding, peer tutoring 4 yrs of band, National Honor Society, Foreign Language Honor Society

Job/Work Experience: 3 different jobs in three different businesses

Summer Activities: Worked 20 hrs per week summer of freshmen year
worked 30-35 hours per week summer of soph year
Summer of Junior year got 100 hours of service volunteering at a nursing home

Essays: Extremely strong have been working on them for many months

2

Did your adoptive parents go to college? Because if so, and if you were adopted as a baby or toddler, the consensus is generally that you are not considered first generation. When you are asked about"parents" on the common app, you will generally put down your adoptive parents and the colleges they attended, if any.

3

they didn’t go college i was adopted at birth

4

You do what so many people do - you group all Ivies together when they are so different in so many ways. If you are interested in Dartmouth and Brown then Cornell, Harvard, and Stanford are very different in size and requirements. It would be unusual for all five to be a good fit for one person. What are your potential majors? What size school? City, rural, urban location? There’s also the student population to think about - Dartmouth or Harvard would have a very different student population than say SUNY Binghamton or even Cornell. Your stats only scratch the surface of potential schools, what do you want from a school?

5

I agree with post #3: your college list is sort of across the board. It’s fine not to immediately know what you want in a college, but you do have to figure it out. Have you visited the colleges on your list? What colleges have you visited that you loved? Which have you not liked so much? Where in the country would you like to be? Rural or urban? Big school or small? And most importantly, how much can your family afford?

6

I think your list is good. Good luck.

7

I do have an idea, i do not have a preference when it comes to rural vs. urban. I have visited Cornell and Georgetown and loved both settings. I also plan to visit more as the time comes to make a decision based on where I would be accepted. I would like to major in business or political science, and ILR program at Cornell has interested me as well

8

Regardless of scores, you need to find 3-5 colleges with acceptance rates above 30%. Right now your list is all reaches except for 2 safeties and I have a feeling, considering how reach-y your list is, you wouldn’t be too happy attending them.

What are you interested in (ie., foreign languages, math, cs, philosophy, economics, anthropology, creative writing, IR… or just large fields: STEM, humanities…)

Are you applying through Questbridge or are your adoptive parents middle class to upper middle class (85-100K+?)

9

The Ivy and equivalents are a crapshoot for everyone. I would agree that you should add in a school or two with a higher acceptance rate – perhaps one that has unrestricted Early Action and might give you a merit scholarship such as Fordham or Tulane.

10

@bigdreamer14 I think this candidate has a shot to get in every Ivy, at least 3 of the 5.

ND and BC will never turn down a Hispanic applicant like this from a NY Catholic school.

Stanford and UVA will be close.

Hispanic males next to African American males are the most underrepresented demographic, let alone one with perfect SAT scores and excellent grades.

My only suggestion would be to apply for the Johnson Scholarship at Washington & Lee.

Bravo!!

11

Your chances are good at many of these schools. A 3.7 UW GPA is quite low and your ECs are kind of weak. Course rigor is so so. Ideal situation would be perfect score and 4.0 UW GPA. I would caution you to not think a perfect SAT score guarantees anything

12

If you took APUSH junior year, how did you get your score back - it’s not supposed to be available until July.

13

And one more thing. Your post sounds almost identical to this one http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1783334-need-help-with-the-list.html except that the student in the linked post only got a 2200 on the SAT, the SAT subject test results were different and the poster got a 5 on APUSH. And then there’s this post, where the almost identical poster hadn’t taken any SAT subject tests http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/stanford-university/1765513-big-reach-i-kno-answers-appreciated.html- seems unlikely that these are three different students.

14

Are you sure that’s high enough? Some of these schools are pretty competitive.

15

Btw, have you looked at any of the liberal arts colleges? They are preferable to the bigger schools for many; you should at least check a few out. Great schools like Amherst, Swarthmore, Haverford and Wesleyan are an easy drive from home.