<p>DS is a rising Senior and has about 8 or 9 colleges on his short list which are mostly selective. He is looking at Stanford, Univ of Penn, Rice, Vanderbilt, John Hopkins (maybe) Boston Univ, MIT (maybe) Emory, University of Ala (B'ham) as his safety. He may look at Emory because of their dual degree arrangement with Georgia Tech. Would Boston Univ, Rice and Vandy be in the same category? </p>
<p>His unweighted GPA is a 3.49 due to some difficulty in freshman year due to new living arrangements etc. He has consistently made A's since then in all of his classes and has taken almost all Honors or AP classes. He will be taking all AP classes this year so assuming he makes A's won't his unweighted GPA rise?</p>
<p>His SAT scores were CR - 680, Math 620 and Writing 540 for a 1840 total. His ACT score was 32 with high scores in Reading and Math. He ranks 20 in a class size of between 320 - 350 students (I can't remember which).</p>
<p>He has some EC's and will have outstanding teacher recommendations, he is attending a summer course at Univ of Ala right now and is taking Math and Chemistry so far he is making A's.</p>
<p>He will not return home until 7/3/08 and then will be busy working somewhere and writing essays. Since time is growing short I am getting very nervous that he does not have more in-between schools. He is interested in Engineering probably Biomedical and Math. The last thing I want is for April to arrive and him have a bunch of wait list or reject letters and have to settle for the safety. I want him to have choices.</p>
<p>Is he really stretching for the above schools? His guidance counselor seems to think that he is up for it academically. We know Stanford is almost guaranteed to reject him. </p>
<p>Someone please recommend some good alternatives and hopefully I can get him to consider them.</p>
<p>honestly, a 3.86 WEIGHTED is not really competitive, esp for Stanford, UPenn, etc. Boston U, Rice, and Vandy should NOT be safeties, not with his WEIGHTED gpa and SAT score. However, his class ranking is really good, which is honestly a bit surprising, esp with a 3.86W. Most of the schools you're looking into are around at LEAST 4.2W gpa, and that might be even stretching it a bit.
Also, 1840 is hardly enough for these schools; you need at least 2100 to be around the average applicant. Try to retake this during the summer. </p>
<p>I'm assuming you live in Alabama. I dont really know much about the colleges in Alabama, but I'm sure there are many good ones you can consider for reaches/safeties. </p>
<p>Sorry if I sounded too harsh. Good luck, though!</p>
<p>His SATs won't matter because of his 32 ACT. How bad was his freshman year? Standford might be a good idea, because they don't look at freshmen year.</p>
<p>why not apply to Georgia Tech straight up instead of a dual degree with emory? And BU seems like match stat wise. </p>
<p>Maybe look at northeastern although its a little different than most schools due to the co-op. You could also look at rpi, wpi, purdue, wash u, case western. </p>
<p>If you want to add another reach apply to cornell.</p>
<p>Anyway the rank of 20 out of over 300 is quite good, although a bit odd with only a 3.5(which is a good gpa, just not usually in the top 6-7% of the school)</p>
<p>Rice and Vandy are not in the same selectivity. I agree in looking at Northeastern, adding Georgia Tech, maybe Virginia Tech for more target schools. I would think Alabama is the only safety on his list at the moment.</p>
<p>fair enough, the tcs high school might just grade harder than most(most high schools nowadays do have grade inflation, probably due to competitive college admissions)</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions. I found a copy of his transcript from March of this year. It does say he is ranked 20 out of 347 students. I double checked after the comments about it being odd given his GPA. I know student's are usually ranked by their grades. I'm assuming this means he is doing better than the other 327 students in his class. Is his rank due to the AP classes? </p>
<p>His HS has had a few students get admitted to selective schools. I believe most students apply to state schools if they go at all. His school offers a decent amount of AP classes. it has a reputation of having a high drop out rate and is perceived by many in our community not to a great school. I disagree with most and I think it is the students not putting forth the effort to take advantage of what they offer. Compared to the small country HS where he was this HS is 100% better. </p>
<p>Stats only get you into the competition -- they give you a chance to be seen by admission's officers. His 32 ACT will get a look and so will his class rank (top 6%). Admin officers look at rank and test scores before GPA, since GPA varies so much.</p>
<p>He has the stats to get looked at -- but how he will stack up regarding rigor of curriculum, ECs, SAT IIs and AP scores, teacher recs, etc really depends.</p>
<p>Schools do like to see an upward trend -- and once you get into the "look at this student" pile, they will see the freshman year grades compared to the A's he earned after that and take that into consideration.</p>
<p>Where he may have trouble is in ECs and teacher recs -- ECs because many of the kids applying to the top schools have research, internships, college classes, intel/siemens, etc; teacher recs because if his school doesn't send too many to selective schools, they may not know how to write a rec letter like teachers from schools that send alot (some of those schools have sessions teaching the teachers how to write a good letter, give them examples and then the counseling office looks over the letters before they are sent in).</p>
<p>Red-Shirt -- your stats got you looked at, I just think the competition was fierce!</p>
<p>One of his teacher recommendations is coming from his English teacher who teaches the AP courses. She writes a terrific letter and wrote him one for the Summer Program at Stanford which he did not attend due to cost. The other recommendation I'm not so sure about. I believe it's his Math teacher and I know he will write a good letter recommending him. I'm not sure of his writing ability or flare with words. He will have two college classes he's taken to list on his application and all AP courses this coming year. He has taken the hardest courses his school offers. Hopefully, that will help.</p>
<p>We will say a lot of prayers and hang on for the ride.</p>
<p>He has not taked SAT subject tests yet and will take in Sept or Oct. He's not sure how he fared on AP English exam. The teacher had not covered quite a bit of the material due to having to teach students how to write. These things should have been taught to them by prior English teachers but evidently were not. The AP history exam went better. He is confident about it. Would it be worth him taking the SAT one more time? His score came up about 40-50 points in CR and Math between the 1st and 2nd time he took it.. This would be the 3rd try or should he just stick with the ACT and try to do really well on the SAT subject tests?</p>
<p>"Eng 9 Honors- 1st semester 81 2nd semester 75
Algebra 1 - 1st semester 90 2nd semester 85
PE - 1st semester 85 2nd semester 65
Physical Sci Advanced - 94 2nd semester 74
Other classes were electives with A's."
Hmm....
The 65 in PE might not hurt him when colleges take out electives and fillers to recalculate GPA, but the As in his electives won't really help him.
A 3.86 W isn't really all that good, and a 3.49 UW is not really competitive, no matter how much he has improved.
BU might accept him, and the University of Alabama is a match, not a safety. Also, the SAT score is low for the Universities he is applying to, so I predict that BU and UofAlabama will accept him and that the others won't.
Also, to Prism123, AP scores are not significant for college admissions, but a score of a 1 or a 2 on an app for an Ivy is a red flag.</p>