College List-student from Israel

<p>Hey people... I'm trying to finalize my college list. THIS IS REALLY TOUGH!</p>

<p>My stats:
SATII-Biology-720
Modern Hebrew-800
Math IIC-750
French-570 (will retake probably)</p>

<p>SATI-
M650 W660 CR500 (definitely think I will improve in October for a minimum of M750 W750 CR600)</p>

<p>I'm approximately ranked 1/90 and all my grades are 95+
I'm involved in many extracurricular activities (school newspaper, dance with handicapped people etc.).</p>

<p>These are the colleges I want:</p>

<p>Harvard
Princeton
MIT
Cornell
Stanford
Columbia
Brandeis
Duke
University of Maryland-College Park
Harvey Mudd
Upenn
Tufts
Amherst
U of Chicago
Northwestern University
U of Michigan
Cal tech
UC Berkley
Carnegie Mellon
NYU
Brown
Rice
UCSD
UCLA</p>

<p>Now, I'm not really sure if I'm considered international. I was born in Los Angeles and lived there till I was 10 (therefore, I have a US citizenship). I've been living in Israel for only 6 years so far. (Do you know if I'm required to do the TOEFL???)
I'm looking for medical and science schools since my intended major will be related to science and math.</p>

<p>I need a final list of 15 schools. Which of those do you think are the best? Should I add more safeties and matches? Add any other schools you think will match.
Thank you soooo much!!!</p>

<p>With your present SAT scores, you would be wise to include some less competitive schools on your list of 15 -- all of the schools you list are highly selective, and the public universities (including the UC's) strongly favor state residents.</p>

<p>you might want to consider signing up for the September ACT (if that's an option for students in Israel) so you can have a couple chances to get a happier score instead of just the one shot.</p>

<p>Your list is all over the place. Very few kids would be happy at a small rural school like Amherst and a big, bustling school like Berkeley. Columbia and Chicago have strong Core requirements, while Brown has an open curriculum. </p>

<p>Consider the type of school you want and your style of learning. Are you OK with lectures with 500 kids, or do you want smaller classes for your first few years? Urban, suburban, rural? Core or take what you want? Determine the kind of school you want and then look at which schools meet those criteria.</p>

<p>Oh, and if you have US citizenship, you're not considered international. The biggest hurdle you'll face is that you're not a resident of any state, so while you'd be in the domestic pool for admissions and financial aid, you'll be out of state at the UCs.</p>

<p>Would'nt it help that I'm a former California resident (for the universities in CA)? I was born there and lived there for 10 years!!</p>

<p>your list is VERY top heavy. you can't assume higher sat scores until you actually have them -- the type of increase you are assuming is in fact pretty atypical.</p>

<p>it also gives no indication as to what you are really looking for in a school in order for people to suggest schools that would be more of a match or safety.</p>

<p>No, it wouldn't. You (spcifically, your parents) must have been living in CA for at least one year immediately prior to your applying for college admissions for you to be considered a California resident. Since you haven't lived there for 6 years (and haven't paid taxes there), you are not considered a CA resident. The fact that you moved Israel is no different than if you had moved to Arizona, New Mexico or Massachusetts. The birthplace or 10 year residency no longer counts.</p>

<p>Sorry.</p>

<p>Let's get back to the original question. It would be nice to see a jump of 100 points on all your SAT scores, but at the moment we can't realistically think that. Of course, by the time you actually apply to any schools you'll have the latest scores (also taking the ACT test might be a good idea).</p>

<p>All of the schools on your list other than UCs are highly competitive and your current SAT scores would not make you competitive with the many applicants who have GPAs to match yours coupled with high test scores. Even if your scores jump 100 points, you'll still be competing with many students who can match those scores. So in order to compete for admissions you need (a) to really cut down that list, keeping a few of those schools in mind for reaches if your SATs shoot up and (b) start listing match and safety schools.</p>

<p>To help you with those, we need some more information from you:</p>

<p>What are you looking to major in?
Any particular parts of the US that you do or don't want to be in?
Would you feel comfortable in a larger, medium-sized or smaller school? School in a major city, near a major city or nowhere near a major city?
What are the financial considerations? Can you or your parents afford the near $ 50,000 it will take to send you to an Ivy league school, assuming you are admitted (and add 7% for each year after the first)? Or is the budget more limited, i.e. you need a school with lower costs or one that offers more scholarships?</p>

<p>Let us know.</p>

<p>Ok, look people.
I know that on my first shot on the SAT I got really stressed and kind of freaked out. I really hope I'll do better on the October date.. I can even take it again in November if it will be necessary.
Don't you think my good scores in school will compensate for my low CR score? I took the most demanding course load in my school and I'm getting really good grades (I think it's like getting a 4.0 UW GPA in the US). Eventually, I'm not studying and speaking English daily like you are so it is definitely much harder for me. (By the way, I also skipped 8th grade if it makes any difference).</p>

<p>Anyways here are my perferences:
*I don't really care about the size of the school.. I just don't like it TOO small
*doesn't matter if it is urban or suburban
*I want a decent Jewish community in the college
*Unfortunatly, I will need financial aid. I heard that big schools give a lot of scholarships.
*doesn't matter where in the US</p>

<p>So do you think I should generally aim lower? I think I have a very interesting background and an overall good academic level. The point is that I am coming alone to study in the US and once I'm putting in all this effort I want to go to a relatively good school (doesn't have to be the best but a well-know one).
I think I will major in something related to science or medical. I need universities that are strong in sciences and math.</p>

<p>I'll help you out a bit here-- cross Chicago off your list. I say this because the people who tend to say, "I don't care where I go, I just want to go to a good school" don't realize that Chicago caters to a very specific type of person and is much different from most other schools in personality, social life, and such. It's possible that you would love it, but judging by the other schools on your list, it doesn't fit in.</p>

<p>When you say "decent" Jewish community... you'll be able to find Jewish students almost everywhere, but different kinds of communities. Do you want a religiously active Jewish community, or do you just want a school with a high percentage of Jewish students? I can almost say for sure without looking at data that non-LAC schools in the northeast (NYU, Penn, Cornell, Tufts, Brown, Columbia) will have higher percentages of Jewish populations than schools like Duke and Rice and even most of the California schools.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Don't you think my good scores in school will compensate for my low CR score?

[/quote]
</p>

<p>don't plead your case to us. have you looked at the admissions stats for the colleges you are looking at? do you know about common data sets? it is statistical info compiled by colleges in a uniform format so its easy to compare -- some college make theirs readily available at their websites, others dont. it includes stats about student retention as well as student admission. here is a thread with links to many of them <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=76444%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=76444&lt;/a> </p>

<p>your sats put at the low end for most of the schools you have listed whereas your gpa may you put you about average for most of them. they get thousands of applications from students with gpa's comparable to yours AND high sats. why do you think your gpa compensates for your sat's? admissions is more than just sat and gpa -- the other factors you mention may help you -- but they don't mean you can ignore the fact that sat is an important factor. (somewhere within the common data set there is also a grid where the colleges can state which admission factors are very important, important, considered, etc -- look at that too to see how important a college considers the sat's)</p>

<p>it is much better to be realistic now and select some more appropriate schools to apply to than to kick yourself in april when you get the decision letters. sure, there is a "chance" you could get into one of these schools with your current stats, but do you really want to hang your college future on that chance?</p>

<p>you say you want to go to a relatively good school -- there are a lot of good schools that don't necessarily have the same name recognition as the ones you've listed. as for the ones you've listed -- well an awful lot of other people also want to go to them and the acceptance rates make them very very competitive to get into.</p>

<p>each april these boards are filled with postings by students with stats far higher than yours (gpa's and sats) who moan in disbelief at the schools they didn't get into -- it can be very devastating. students, such as you, who have done really well in school and expect the same success in the admissions process, and are crushed when they learn the hard way in this current era of very competitive college admissions that this isn't the case. do a search on this forum for "andison" to find the story of one very well qualified student who ended up taking a gap year because he didn't get in any where there first time around (it was in the parents forum).</p>

<p>we're telling you these things to try to help you. i see they moved this thread to the chances thread -- i don't know why, but that may affect the likelihood of you getting more college suggestions. if you don't get much response here, try reposting in either the college search forum again or the parents forum, just giving your stats and background and what you are looking for.</p>

<p>something else to consider -- more and more colleges are becoming sat optional - some of them are really fine schools -- i think connecticut college and middlebury fall in that category, but you'd have to check -- i think there's been threads here about it -- try doing a search for "sat optional." </p>

<p>here's another college to consider -- university of delaware -- public college, so less expensive than private, majority of students not from delaware so being out of state not a big issue, good size jewish community. at least from what i see, it seems to be becoming a popular public college choice for many kids -- not quite as competitive to get into as u of maryland. i don't know anything about their science or math programs though.</p>

<p>good luck</p>

<p>A quick note on scholarships. Big schools may give a lot of scholarships but not a lot to out-of-state students, which you are.
Look on the Parents Forum board for the thread on colleges with good merit scholarships. Then check into some of those schools to see how your numbers match up against other applicants.</p>

<p>It's not realistic to think that the school's location won't matter to you. If you are used to, and like, large urban environments, you might feel strange, uncomfortable, and/or bored in a college that is not in or close to a major city.</p>

<p>For Jewish communities/atmosphere, check the Hillel website. Schools in the Northeast, including all the Ivies except perhaps Dartmouth, will tend to have larger Jewish populations, with the largest other than YU being Brandeis.</p>

<p>Some specific suggestions: </p>

<ol>
<li><p>Even if your scores leap 100 points or more, limit yourself to no more than 3 or 4 of schools from the Ivies/MIT/Stanford. If your SAT scores don't improve that much, no more than one or two, and even those will be very longshots. Unfortunately you still won't stand out much from the crowd unless one of your parents went to that school. There are lots of students with top GPAs AND SAT scores, any many many more with one of them high and the other very good but not at the top. </p></li>
<li><p>MIT, Harvey Mudd and Caltech are science-intensive. If you want to leave open the option of taking a liberal arts major while still taking the required premed courses (see the medical school board for more about that question), those are not the schools for you. </p></li>
<li><p>Put Brandeis and Rice high on your list and think about adding Johns Hopkins and Washington U./St. Louis. One of our prolific members is high on Smith College for science; another one often suggests Williams rather than Amherst. Again, check out possibilities for financial aid.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Those are just for starters. As Bizymom says, you need to think more realistically about how you stack up to other applicants.</p>

<p>As of right now, you will be rejected by all.</p>

<p>Here's something else you can do to see how you stack up against others. Go to the Stats Profiles section of College Confidential -- you can see it in the upper left corner of your screen, under Discussion Menu.</p>

<p>Click on the students who have SAT scores similar to yours, and see where they applied and where they were accepted, waitlisted and rejected. (Once you click on their profiles, you'll see their GPA's, EC's, etc.) With the exception of some URMs, almost no students seem to get into colleges without coming close to the school's published average SAT scores.</p>

<p>I found it really fascinating to see where students hoped they might go, and to see how realistic they were. It was also quite sad to see SO many tippy-top students turned away from schools that, on paper, they seemed to have a good chance of getting into. </p>

<p>Fortunately, most kids seem to choose a reasonable number of matches and safeties in addition to their dream schools, so most have some decent options when all the letters come in. But there are plenty of students who applied to mostly Ivies who are going to their last-choice state schools or community colleges because they didn't have a realistic enough picture of their actual chances.</p>

<p>From your list of schools, I'd say Brandeis, NYU, UMd, Rice and Tufts are reasonable reaches. You could add Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell and Penn as your super reaches. For help with matches, you need to be clearer about what's important to you beside name recognition.</p>

<p>Andison's story was a major wake-up call and a huge influence when it came time to help S choose his college list. It should be required reading!</p>

<p>It would also be great if you could talk to an experienced guidance counselor who can tell you what's happened in the past with students whose profiles are similar to yours.</p>