Just a little bit of background info but I am searching for any suggestions on schools to apply to. im lost and need lots of help narrowing down and being realistic. i prefer the east coast but am open minded. i have alot of big schools on my current list so a few medium and small school suggestions would be nice but i am still looking for a good college experience.
my current list includes:
Reach
Duke University*
University of Southern California
Northeastern University*
Boston University
UNC Chapel Hill
Match
University of Miami*
Georgia Tech
University of Maryland College Park*
Safety
Virginia Tech*
North Carolina State University
Syracuse University
Maryland Resident
First Gen College Student
Intended Major: Architecture or Civil Engineering
SAT:1280 (June 2018 controversial one plan on taking again)
GPA: cumulative weighted:3.921 unweighted:3.6352
Rank:47/325
Taken 6 aps plan on 2 more
SEND HELP PLEASE
I think if you can get to 1450+ on your SAT, you can open a few doors if you have good extra curricular activities.
If you are from low income family, need base grant will be important for you. UVA will be in play for you.
Visit as many as you can, that are realistic. Take one shot with ED at a reach school, and apply early action to a few school that are true match schools. All your match and safeties are very competitive.
Good luck to you
GA Tech is a reach. They rejected in state students with great grades and 36 ACTs last year.
Have you run net price calculators on on all these schools? They are on the school websites, so do that. You are out of state for at least some of these schools, so they will be very expensive.
I’m not positive, but I don’t think UNC Chapel Hill has architecture or civil engineering.
Since you seem to have narrowed the possible majors down to just architecture & civil engineering, perhaps you can filter out any colleges on your list that are not fully accredited in both of those fields.
Keep in mind that for majors like you are considering, the overall reputation and ranking of the college probably shouldn’t be as important to you as the breadth, quality, & accreditation of the majors you are considering. Even though everybody around you might be chasing the same group of elite colleges, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should be looking at those same colleges.
As a dose of reality:
First, as an OOS applicant, the statistics for your rank, GPA, and SAT do not make you competitive for UNC-CH or Georgia Tech, even with first-generation status; probably not for NC State, either. You also are not statistically competitive for Northeastern, Duke, BU, or Southern Cal.
Second, Virginia Tech should not be considered a “safety” school, and certainly not for OOS applicants. A friend who runs a college admissions counseling service spoke this past Spring with an admissions officer from Virginia Tech, who said that their office had gotten a directive from their provost to lower the admissions rate. So they did and put all the students whom they would normally have accepted (beyond an elite group of applicants) onto the waiting list — apparently, it was a huge list. In the end, Virginia Tech took a good number of students off the wait list; but if you’re on that list, you just never know.
With your stats, NC State is not a “safety” school, either – especially for OOS applicants. Nor is Syracuse a “safety” school. (A “safety” school connotes not only a slam-dunk on admission, but also one that you can afford.)
Also, @moooop is correct: UNC-CH does not offer architecture or civil engineering (or any engineering, except for a joint BME degree with NC State).
If you are a Maryland resident, look at the public universities in Maryland first, and see if they meet your academic desires; then check the finances, and whether you would qualify for need-based financial aid (you are unlikely to get merit aid based on the statistics you have provided).
I don’t know what the asterisks in your list mean.
I don’t have any advice about schools for you, but I wanted to mention that architecture and civil engineering are worlds apart. I’m a civil (structural) engineer and I would make a horrible architect. My major was architectural engineering, because I was interested in the design of buildings (I didn’t want to design roads or wastewater plants). As part of my curriculum, I had to take two semesters of architectural design. Even though I made almost all As in college, I got a C one semester and squeaked out a B the other. I just don’t have the creativity necessary to come up with architectural concepts.
I would recommend shadowing an engineer and an architect to see which field you think would suit you better.