Critique my college list and/or suggest schools for me.

College Search & Selection
1

Demographics:

State: New York

School Type: Top public

Race: White (Jewish)

Gender: Male

Income Bracket: $200k+ - disregard fin. Aid in suggesting schools.

Stats:

ACT: 34 C (35E/33M/35R/33S, 8/8/8/9 Essay)

SAT: 1450 (730 CR + W/720 M. 5/3/5 Essay). Won’t submit unless absolutely necessary.

SAT II: 730 Lit, 700 USH, 690 Math II (should I retake as a non-STEM major?)

GPA - ~88.5 UW, ~91 W with standard .5 Honors/1.0 AP/IB Weighting. Have an 89.5 weighted average on my transcript with .033/.066 weighting.

Rank: No idea. My school deflates grades and is hella competitive, so I’d say top 10% at your average American public HS.

Courseload: AP: World History (5), US History (5), Spanish Lang (3), IB English HL, 3 honors classes out of 17 classes total. One of the most rigorous in my school.

Senior Year Course Load: Full time at local CC honors program. Has high transfer rates to Tier 1 schools (M/TS Honors Program if you want to do more research).

Extracurriculars:

Academic Team (9-12, captain senior year, super-involved and will get excellent LOR’s from the advisor who is also my GC)

Debate (11-12, hopefully I’ll be captain senior year)

Volunteered at freshman orientation the last two years - only a day a year but I can write on how participating in it impacted freshmen or something along those lines.

Founded a club organizing field trips for the school, but it never got off the ground this year but next year I’ll have a lot more to write about.

I was also in JSA and Young Democrats Club, but there was wax-and-wane involvement and sometimes those clubs didn’t meet for months.

Doing environmental policy research this summer with a research professor at Columbia - will probably enter it in competitions

Starting a job as a busboy next week - will be doing about 10-20 hrs./week

Will have more EC’s at CC since it’s a lot bigger

Essays: Haven’t started them yet. Solid decision-making all around.

Teacher Recommendations: Pretty good - prolly like 8-9/10

Counselor Rec: Will be 11/10 - I’m really close w/ him. Knows me very well and can speak to my strengths. Advocates for me when reps from all sorts of top schools visit.

Other: I have ADHD and thus my grades suffered a little bit throughout all of HS because I didn’t get diagnosed until the spring of my junior year. I also have depression and am barely on the autism spectrum but those are iffy and I don’t want to reveal my mental health issues to my schools.

I’m also chasing merit aid very hard (half my list consists of safeties), so schools with full tuition scholarships would be nice.

I’m looking to major in Political Science/Public Policy… or Econ or Cog Sci or double with Psych or Philosophy. I want to change the world lol…

My parents would like me to stay on the East Coast, but it’s not an absolute requirement. If it isn’t, the school would have to be reasonably close to a major airport. I want a school with a party scene and anywhere from roughly 4,000 - 20,000 undergrads. Hopefully it would have good job placement/internship opportunities/a great alumni network.

My list so far is Georgetown, Colgate and Cornell Human Ecology (in-state) are the highest reaches that I’m almost definitely applying to. I like USC and Emory, and I’m a legacy at Wesleyan, which makes it a more like a high match IMO.

Tulane, GW and W & M are my most realistic matches (the latter has a full scholarship program and I’m probably hooked there because they have an entire program dedicated to neurodiversity on campus, and I have high-functioning autism and ADHD).

The rest of my list is mostly safeties - I’m chasing merit aid hard since I’d have to take out $130k+ at all my schools even if all the credits I have from CC + AP transfer (hahahaha), so I’m looking at FSU, Michigan State, U of SC, SUNY Binghamton (more like a low match), SUNY Albany (safety + legacy), and possibly American.

Is 15 schools too much? I need to compare aid and can’t ED, which I’m not really mad about anyway.

Thanks to all for reading if you got here.

2

Consider Pitt. Relatively good OOS merit aid with heavily test score based thresholds (a 34 ACT composite will make a strong candidate for some merit aid and in the conversation for consideration of Pitt’s top merit tiers). Also will be admitted to Honors Program (which has advantages although not as “school within a school” as some other honors programs, which also has pros and cons). Pitt has many strong departments, including in areas you are interested in. Urban campus in fun, up-and-coming city. Plenty of parties I am sure and undergrad student body meets your size preference. Rolling admissions so you will have one in hand as go through rest of the process.

Good luck and congrats on your achievements to date!

3

“…W & M are my most realistic matches (the latter has a full scholarship program…)”

You mean the 1693 scholarship? That’s ultra-competitive, don’t get your hopes up. I’d consider UVA as well for Poli Sci, even though it’s larger than your ideal size, because it’s a lot easier to graduate in 3 years compared to W&M if you want to save money, especially if you were lucky enough to be an Echols scholar (no money, but course flexibility makes it easier to utilize AP/DE credit).

4

The 1693 scholarship is indeed very competitive, and is perhaps similar to UVA Jefferson. W&M Monroe is similar to Echols. Perhaps the one the OP is thinking of is the William & Mary Scholars, which is for students that “is presented to students who are achieving at a high level having overcome significant adversity and/or students who would add to the diversity of our campus.”

5

Pitt is an interesting suggestion. I heard that was a school for mostly pre-meds, but I will look into their poli-sci programs. I was indeed referring into the 1693 Scholarship, and I understand that it is extremely competitive. However, I believe that it wouldn’t hurt to try, and W & M Scholars does work too. I visited UVA awhile ago; I thought the campus was extremely large and depressing. I don’t know if I could see myself spending several years there, but I could certainly go again and see if it is a better fit than I thought; my family is certainly head-over-heels for it, which is not common.

6

U of Alabama actively seeks OOS students; they strive for a 50/50 balance between in-state and OOS. Bama also has some very attractive merit scholarships for OOS students with high GPA and stats.

7

Look at University of Richmond. Lots of merit awards. The Richmond Scholars Program awards 25 full-rides (tuition + room & board) to top candidates. Highly competitive, of course. Beautiful school. Ticks a lot of your boxes.

8

Looked at Bama - not sure if I meet their GPA requirement. My mom says I would still have to take out significant debt to attend there, which is why I took it off my list. I heard U of Richmond was a very racist school, which is why I also took that off my list.

9

@JMS111: I might be wrong, but I think that any student at Pitt can join honors & take honors classes. Am I mistaken ?

10

Hi Publisher - My recollection is that initial admittance as a frosh is by test score (and maybe a GPA cutodf too). Those who are.not initially admitted but maintain a GPA above a threshold while at Pitt can also take honors classes. But I imagine frosh below the thresholds can seek admittance and/or gain instructor permission, and the same is probably true for those already enrolled who want to take an honors section.

I knew the details better late last year, so am not 100% certain. There are a ton of great Pitt parents/resources in these forums (and the Pitt admissions office has a wonderful and helpful presence on CC too), and the Pitt website of course too. I am sorry I can’t be more definitive. And overall, other than maybe Pitt honors housing for frosh who want it and are accepted into it, the bells.and whistles of Pitt honors are less and more broadly available than is true for many honirs programs at other colleges.

Hope that helps, but not sure it does!

11

UNC is a great school, hard to get in OOS though

12

@apost12 , I don’t understand why you think Bama would require too much in loans. The scholarship, assuming it remains same as this year, would cover most of the tuition.

Ole Miss also has a guaranteed scholarship to cover full tuition.

I don’t see where American or some of the other safeties you mentioned can compare. I’d trade out some of those for guaranteed scholarships. USC big money scholarships are extremely competitive. You really can’t count it as a safety because of that.

Any chance you will be National Merit?

13

My parents can only fork $12k, which leaves 5k in loans a year… doable but not what I want out of a safety, Parents won’t even pay for Ole Miss; I’m Jewish and they don’t exactly like the state of Mississippi. USC is not a safety but their school is amazing, so I’ll probably apply. FSU + MSU said I’d probably qualify for in-state tuition and some money on top of that, and Albany has some money available. And no NMSF unfortunately - only got a 207 (1340). It was pretty much the most important test in HS…

14

UNC is awesome, but I don’t think I have a realistic shot there. It’s like an Ivy OOS and my aid would be hit-or-miss there.

15

Your list is solid, a good combination of reaches, matches, safeties, these days 15 is not a lot of colleges, if you happen to get in early to some of the public universities, that could reduce the number of applications. Also since Georgetown is one of your top choices, you can apply EA there as well and see what happens. Good luck!

16

Georgetown is a real reach. My two got into Gtown and your best chances are not in the EA pool, but RD. Bite your lip and wait for RD if you want a shot at Gtown. I’d recommend Pace or NYU.

17

Michigan State honors will be a half scholarship with some perks like research. But even instate cost is more then what your parents plus loans will cost. They might need to sit down and review schools more realistically with you. Also because of the mental health issues you need a school that will support that and any accommodations that you might have in school now with a 504 or iep. Michigan State is great at that.

18

To clarify: Are you saying that your parents have an income of $200K+ so that need-based aid is not possible, but can only contribute 12K, and that at most of your schools you’d have to “take out $130K” (in loans, I’m guessing)?

If so, it would seem to me your three options would be SUNY, or schools that give you more than half tuition in merit, or taking out anywhere from $80K to $200K in loans. (The first number is for an out-of-state school with half tuition, and the second is for a private school like Georgetown that doesn’t have merit.) But maybe I’m not understanding things correctly.

19

OP will not get merit aid at UNC with his stats.

I think that 15 applications is too many; aim for 9 (1-2 safeties, 2-3 reaches, 4-5 matches), you can accomplish what you want to with that number.

What does your guidance counselor think?

Also, if you haven’t done so already, look to get some ideas here: http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ and here: http://competitivefulltuition.yolasite.com/

20

15 apps is reasonable in my opinion.

Georgetown may be difficult due to your three SAT subject test scores.