College List

College Search & Selection
1

As a junior in high school with college admissions on the horizon, I am now looking forward to finalizing my list of colleges which I will apply to in the fall. I have what I like to think are good extra-curricular activities and grades. I am from New Jersey and want to major in Finance and either a double major or a minor in computer science. I am only looking at colleges on the East Coast as I do not want to move too far away from home.

My grades:
Freshmen year - All A’s, all Honors courses
Sophomore Year - All A’s, all Honors and 1 AP - AP Comp Sci(Received a 4)
Junior Year - Have 5 AP’s and the rest are Honors Courses. Not all A’s right now, but I think I can turn them into A’s by the end of the year
Senior Year Courses - 4 AP’s, 1 Dual-Enrollment course, and a semester course at Princeton University

Weighted GPA - 4.4
Unweighted - 3.9 or 4.0 not completely sure
Rank - 5 out of 400
SAT - 2220 best composite, 2290 superscore

ECs

Accepted into the NJ Governor’s School of Engineering and Technology
Accepted into the NJ American Legion Boy’s State program
FBLA - VP, will be President next year (Have competed at the state level)
Model UN - Press Secretary, will be President next year (Have won awards at conferences)
FRC Robotics - Head Programmer
Varsity Debater
Math League (Have received a top score at a competition)
Started a debate club at my local middle school
Member of Spanish NHS
In my school’s male acapella group

Interned with an accountant
Volunteered at a hospital
Camp Counselor
Have volunteered at my religious institution, going there every week for the past few years(staying there for extended periods of time over the summer)
Tutor to college students who are going back to school after a long time and could not previously attend due to financial/social reasons
In all around 3,000 volunteer hours

The colleges I want to apply to are:
Princeton
Harvard
UPenn
Columbia
Northeastern
University of Virginia
Villanova
Rutgers(Honors)
University of Maryland - College Park
Boston College

Some colleges I am thinking about are:
Carnegie Mellon
Brown
NYU

My whole backstory is that I come from a low-income family with a single mother.

Sorry for the long-winded post, but college is the most important thing to me right now and I want to be as thorough as possible. Is my list of colleges adequate, considering my stats? Is my separation of reaches, safety schools, and right-fits fine? Is there any college that I should pay more or less attention to?
Any advice would be much appreciated and would help me on my path. Thank you.

2

I was unaware that Harvard or Princeton offered a major in Finance as both schools do not have undergraduate business programs. I may be wrong. I believe Princeton offers a certificate in Finance.

I like your idea to research Carnegie Mellon-Tepper and NYU-Stern. Both excellent Business programs

Also you can research the following excellent Business programs on the East Coast that quickly come to mind:
Cornell - Dyson with a Finance concentration option
MIT
Georgetown
Lehigh

3

@NJIUdad Thanks for the tip. Harvard has an economics concentration and Princeton has financial engineering which I am interested in. The colleges which you have listed are great, I don’t know why I left them out. I will surely take a closer look at them.

4

For economics specifically, various departments have been compared on the basis of faculty publishing: “US Economics Departments”; “Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges” (IDEAS). Reading through these analyses may help you either with sorting or in generating new ideas. Consider any departments ranked fairly closely to one another to be equal. Consider as well that the analyses are noted by their authors as “experimental.”

For a certificate from HBS, you would have options other than attending Harvard: “Harvard Business School Expands Online Initiative to Liberal Arts Colleges,” WGBH.

5

@merc81 Oh wow! I had never even heard of these. It’s like a perfect list of the colleges I need :smiley: . Thank you so much!

6

@shimbroza, you’ve certainly put together a great list of schools for your interests.

Yes, the Princeton ORFE major is based on using mathematical models to work with Finance decisions, as well as, other types of decisions. You can supplement this major with the certificate in Finance. Back in the day when I went for my MBA at Carnegie Mellon Tepper, they were heavy with use of OR modeling to solve business problems. I recall interviewing for an OR position with a major Pittsburgh company. I didn’t get the job. Probably a good thing.

Harvard’s Economics major does have some courses that have Finance in the course descriptions. I believe Harvard may have stats classes focused on Finance.

I would recommend if you want a broad education in Finance, many of the great schools with undergraduate business programs will be to your advantage. Either way, in time and depending on where your career lead you, an MBA degree will become most valuable.

Based on your High School record you are on the right path to success. Good luck on your journey.

7

@NJIUdad Thank you so much for the kind words. Sometimes for a student, hearing “You’re on the right track” is all you need to calm some agitated nerves. I have been trying to keep my list confined to schools with undergraduate business programs, but with schools like Harvard and Princeton, its hard to find a reason NOT to apply there. I have been trying to look into schools good in business and computer science, with that, I think I should perhaps move Carnegie Mellon into my finalized list as it is perfect in both categories.

8

Have you been trying net price calculators at these schools ?

9

@XCjunior2016 Yeah, I have. Due to financial situations, I have been getting very good aid results at these schools, especially the ivies. I have also been looking into outside scholarships, such as Questbridge, Gates, etc.