Constructing the best list for my son

Parents Forum
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<p>Hello, I am a parent seeking advice to help my S. He is currently a rising senior, and I want to know which schools of his/our interest would be possible or likely. Here is some of his basic information:</p>

<p>Unweighted GPA: 3.5 (Strong upward trend - GPA has risen every semester since his first semester of 10th grade)
Weighted GPA: 3.9 - 4.0
SAT I: 760 M, 760 CR, 780 W (2300)
SAT II: Will take in October
Class rank: Top 10-15% (Class rank hasn't been officially released yet in his school)
Courseload: Taken 8 AP classes and 3 honors classes in 10th and 11th combined, will be taking 4 AP classes and 1 honors for his senior year.
AP scores: Lang (5), Lit (5), Macro (5), Micro (5), Bio (5), Chinese Language and Culture (4), Calc AB (4), Chem (4), Human Geography (3), Euro (3)
Essay: Should be very good, as he is a great writer (5 on both Lang and Lit as a 10th grader, 12 on SAT essay, school newspaper chief editor, etc.)
ECs: Nationally ranked in Academic Decathlon (Top 10 in the country in his category) - Will this make any difference at all?
Ethnicity: Asian</p>

<p>He would like to pursue a business major. Money is not an issue, nor is the location of the school. My son does not wish to apply to any of our state schools. We have discussed his possibilities for a while now among our family. My husband and I have encouraged him to apply to many of the upper-tier schools, even if they are reaches. We still need to trim down his list of schools, but here's what the list looks like so far:</p>

<ol>
<li>Northwestern (Applying ED)</li>
<li>U of Chicago (EA)</li>
<li>WashU</li>
<li>Vanderbilt</li>
<li>U of Virginia</li>
<li>UT at Austin (McCombs business school)</li>
<li>USC (My alma-mater, so he is legacy)</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon</li>
<li>Boston College</li>
<li>U of M (EA)</li>
<li>Indiana University</li>
<li>Illinois - Urbana Champaign</li>
<li>U of Washington</li>
</ol>

<p>And LACs:</p>

<ol>
<li>Carleton</li>
<li>Wesleyan</li>
<li>Colorado College (EA)</li>
</ol>

<p>I recognize that many of these may be reaches, but as a parent, I see no point in spending time/money on applying to countless "matches." The method I told my son to use was multiple reaches, a few matches he could really see himself at, and a couple of safeties. Duke was always his dream school so I encouraged him to apply ED, but he decided against that because he believed it was too big of a reach. Cornell PAM is also something I've brought up with him, but he rejects that idea for the same reason as Duke.</p>

<p>Which colleges from this list are possible for my son to get into? More specifically, how big of a reach are some of these schools? Should we set our sites a bit lower, or is this list on the right track for a highly ambitious individual such as himself? Any advice/comments are greatly appreciated. This board is very helpful. Thank you!</p>

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<p>

You have the idea of ED all wrong. If Duke is his dream school, apply there. (Applying ED also gives him his best chances.) </p>

<p>I agree with Northwestern, UChicago, UVa, and #s 6-12, although I’d also suggest he look into Notre Dame. Their B-school is terrific. And add Villanova as a safety. Their B-school is top notch too.</p>

<p>And about his profile, why is his Wgpa so low? Aside from scores and grades, I wanted to see more descriptions of what he’s looking for and what he does, as in ECs. Test scores and # of APs aren’t the only thing adcoms look for.</p>

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<p>I think he has a good shot at Northwestern ED, since it’s still over 30% acceptance rate. Probably a high match or low reach. #2-5 are mostly low reaches, with Chicago being a high reach, as it doesn’t take many students outside of top 10% anymore. #6-10 are matches or high matches, and #11-13 are low matches and safeties.</p>

<p>It’s a decent list, I guess. I would recommend trying Duke ED. Honestly, Duke’s selectivity is overrated; Duke ED is not that much more selective than Northwestern ED. Duke ED would be a low reach.</p>

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<p>Thank you both for your input!</p>

<p>@limabeans: You’re right, ED choice should definitely be the first choice. </p>

<p>Notre Dame and Villanova were on the list, but he cut them due to their religious affiliation. He doesn’t feel as if he’d be exiled for his atheist beliefs, but he still doesn’t think he’d feel comfortable at either one of those schools.</p>

<p>The weighted GPA I listed is a complete guess. I have no idea how to calculate that, so I just put my own approximation. He’s taken nothing but honors and AP classes throughout high school, with the exception of PE, so it might be higher. I listed the one EC that seemed most significant. He’s involved in multiple clubs and has volunteer hours/work experience, but those things aren’t nearly as unique.</p>

<p>@phuriku: Thank you. I will most likely encourage my S to apply to Duke over Northwestern for ED. We’re hoping that he is in the top 10%. I’ve heard that Chicago places a higher value on the essay than most other schools. How much truth is there behind that?</p>

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<p>Oops, I forgot Villanova was another Catholic college, but so is Boston College. Notre Dame is most serious about their religious affiliation.</p>

<p>Yes, UChicago’s essay is highly weighted over all other factors to get in there (aside from grades). WashU also really prefers to see kids visit, if at all possible. (That’s true with all schools, but WashU in particular.)</p>

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<p>If he’s in the top 10%, I think that’ll greatly enhance his chances. (Why? Because top 10% is a criterion for US News ranking of selectivity, and so you have to be really special to be admitted if you’re not top 10%. This is especially true at Duke and Chicago, who are both trying to maintain their status as USNWR top-10 schools.)</p>

<p>At Chicago, essays are indeed emphasized, mainly because of the type of kids that Chicago’s looking for: creative, ambitious, risk-taking students that would fit well with the schools’ atmosphere. However, two important points: 1) it’s more important to write a unique and creative essay than a typical excellent, lucid essay that would be considered exceptional at other elite schools; and 2) a fantastic essay will only make up for so much on one’s academic record. Chicago admits are often students who have pristine academic records AND amazing essays, so being top 10% is very important, even if the essays are great.</p>

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<p>“He would like to pursue a business major.”</p>

<p>Chicago has no business major. Take it off the list. Nor do any of those LACs. Take them off the list. </p>

<p>Which school is the safety that he would like? (I see a bunch where he is pretty sure to get in - but that’s only one-third of the equation.</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Chicago has economics. It also has Chicago Careers in Business (CCIB), where undergrads can take business classes at Booth, the #1 business school in the world according to BusinessWeek and The Economist.</p>

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<p>Is this your list or your S’s list? What criteria for choosing he has? Did he organize his criteria according to his own priorities. Why so many schools? 3.5 uw and class rank are on a lower side for schools in post #1 IMO.</p>

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<p>Carleton has an economics major.</p>

<p>I’m betting his weighted GPA is higher than you think. That’s the number that stood out to me as out of whack.</p>

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<p>I disagree with the above ED advice. With a 3.5, odds of acceptance at Duke are quite low. Northwestern is a more reasonable reach, and applying ED is more likely to make an actual difference in terms of acceptance.</p>

<p>So, if your S really likes Northwestern, I would encourage him to apply ED there.</p>

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<p>Has he considered Emory? Goizueta is an excellent business school.</p>

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</p>

<p>Hmmmm…no. If Duke is his favorite school then apply there Early Decision - it really is that simple. Apply Early Action to UChicago because its easy and painless with no contractual side effects. As for Northwestern being easier to get into than Duke, that is simply not true. In terms of student statistics, they are virtually identical when compared side by side. I believe that our acceptance rate this year was around 17-18% which is a little higher than Duke mind you, but we also have a considerably larger student body with a more diverse school grouping. A lot of our students attend the School of Communications, School of Journalism, School of Education and Social Policy, School of Music (auditions required)…and that’s not even mentioning Engineering/CAS. That acceptance rate is not so straightforward as you might think (and dropping precipitously). And our ED applications went up 25% this year alone. Those number are not straightening out anytime soon. </p>

<p>Moral of the story: apply to Duke ED if he envisions himself there above all other schools. I chose NU over Duke because it was the innate and obvious choice for me - the reverse might be said for your son. Both of those schools (and I’ll throw in UChicago for good measure) are high reaches. He has a very good SAT, but the GPA is lacking alongside a short list of ECs (although one very notable one indeed). Your son will not be “improving his chances” by applying to NU over Duke ED. He might very well get into Duke and not Northwestern or Northwestern but not Duke. These things are unpredictable, and the schools admissions are virtually so identical in criteria I can’t comprehend where a lot of other people seem to be coming from. If his favorite school is Duke then this all strikes me as being a quite linear case. </p>

<p>I was curious though that his three favorite schools (Northwestern, Duke, and UChicago) don’t have business majors. I’m pretty sure that all three have a minor or certificate in some form or another with top flight MBA programs, but only WashU has an undergraduate business major. It just seemed odd to me. Does your son not really intend to pursue this as his major depending on the school?</p>

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<p>Maybe “business major” is just shorthand for something that might lead to a business career–econ, perhaps.</p>

<p>I agree with the others–if he’s applying to reaches like Chicago, why not add Duke if he prefers it? As for the number of applications, 16 (or 17 with Duke) is a lot, but don’t feel like you need to trim it down too much. I think your strategy of applying to more reaches is sensible for this student, who has good but not stellar stats.</p>

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<p>Majoring in economics in a liberal arts program is not the same thing as a business major at all. You can major in economics at the University of Chicago and emerge with fewer marketable skills than a French literature major. (Of course, you can major in either and have a ton of marketable skills, too. The student, not the major, is responsible for getting marketable skills.)</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of business majors at elite colleges. If I were King of any of these universities, it wouldn’t offer a business major, either. But I would never tell a kid who really wanted to study what a business major teaches that he should go the the University of Chicago (or Colorado College, or Carleton) and major in economics instead. </p>

<p>Also, there’s a significant difference in culture to consider. Neither Chicago nor Northwestern have business majors per se, but the student body as a whole at Northwestern is probably more conventional-employment / pre-professional oriented than that at Chicago, by a wide margin. For the reasons phuriku (a brand new UChicago graduate) give, Chicago can be a great place for a future businessman, but he has to be the right sort of future businessman, one who really wants to wrestle with Plato and Marx.</p>

<p>I am not completely certain, but I think I agree with the people who say the difference between Duke and Northwestern ED isn’t enough to change what you would do naturally. Northwestern takes a pretty small percentage of its class ED. Last year, the two colleges got almost the same number of ED applications, and there was about a 10% difference in the number of ED acceptances – Northwestern took 715 kids, Duke 645. It’s silly to think that kind of difference is so meaningful that you should apply to Northwestern even though you prefer Duke.</p>

<p>I disagree with the proposition that you shouldn’t apply to more than a couple matches. If they are matches, at this level, that is nothing like an automatic acceptance. It’s more like a coin flip (vs. the lottery-ticket aspect of a reach). If you flip a coin three times, and need to get at least one Heads, your odds of losing are about the same as your odds of losing playing Russian Roulette with one bullet. That’s not so comforting. And it doesn’t take into account the fact that it’s not really a coin flip; the outcomes in fact are likely to be coordinated, and you may not fully understand all the factors that will affect how your application is received (i.e., essay quality, recommendations).</p>

<p>That said, I think the list here has more than enough matches and safeties for the student described.</p>

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<p>I believe that even at D’s UG, one cannot be accepted straight to business school with 3.5 uw. They would be accepted to UG and have to show high college GPA after freshman year to be accepted to Business School. Maybe GPA=3.5 uw was a mistake? Maybe it is actually higher? 3.5 is at odds with the list, otherwise it is a decently strong.</p>

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<p>I think that the OP’s son has a good chance of being accepted at Duke ED. At our school, students like this have been accepted there ED.</p>

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<p>I don’t understand what the misunderstanding in the basic math of this young man’s GPA is. If you take AP/honors classes but get "B"s in them your GPA will be what the father indicated. A weighted “B” is a 4.0. So if you get "A"s in non weighted classes and "B"s in weighted ones you have a 3.9-4.0.</p>

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<p>Thank you all very much for your advice! The Parents’ Forum truly is the most helpful on this site (or perhaps just the most active).</p>

<p>@phuriku: Yes, of course essays can’t make up for a lower GPA. But if they do look at essays that closely, I’d like to make sure my son spends a good amount of time on their essay to maximize the little chance he has of getting in.</p>

<p>@mini: They may not have certified UG business programs, but I’m confident that my son would get a quality education at any of those schools which would prepare him well for the GMAT and graduate business.</p>

<p>His favorite school out of the less selective ones on the list is UIUC.</p>

<p>@MiamiDAP: Our process was that he came up with an initial list which included many schools, and my husband and I helped him cut down the list from there. This is mostly his own list. We acknowledge the fact that he’s on the lower side for most of these schools, but we’ve encouraged him to apply to many schools where he might not have a great chance of getting in. The most important thing for us is that he applies to schools that he’d be elated to get into rather than schools that would be more likely to accept him.</p>

<p>@Tinfoyl: That is some very interesting information. It is difficult to find accurate statistics on Northwestern/Duke, especially regarding their ED numbers.</p>

<p>Those schools may not have business majors, but they all have elite MBA programs and provide great educations. He’s planning on getting his MBA no matter where he goes for UG school.</p>

<p>@JHS: The difference in culture is something that we’ve taken into consideration, and he asserts that the atmosphere at Chicago would not be too overwhelming. </p>

<p>Majoring in economics at a LAC may be very different, but they should still prepare him well for graduate school according to these stats: [Which</a> College Scores Best on the GMAT? - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>

<p>I recognize that those stats may be determined more by the students who go there rather than the education itself, but it provides us a bit more confidence in the curriculum.</p>

<p>One of the reasons why he never planned on putting as many matches/safeties is because he feels as if he’d be very content at UIUC. We’re fairly confident that he can get accepted there. If not, he wouldn’t be too disappointed in IU Bloomington. He’d attempt to transfer into Kelley after a year, and the business school there is fantastic.</p>

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<p>“Chicago has economics. It also has Chicago Careers in Business (CCIB), where undergrads can take business classes at Booth, the #1 business school in the world according to BusinessWeek and The Economist.”</p>

<p>Economics and Business are very, very, very different majors. My d. was a business major. It required precisely two courses in economics. You might as well have said they have English. (because business schools require two courses in English).</p>