<p>I was thinking Catholic as one, since it's a Low Match. I liked it when my friend's sister told me about it, and I said, "I may enjoy myself here." The campus is beautiful, BEAUTIFUL, and I think that I could easily be admitted there. So is that school as a safety good enough?</p>
<p>Fact of life: many of the schools on your initial list are pie-in-the-sky reaches for most students. I was a "most students," and you are too. You sound like a wonderful person and a college will be happy to have you, but it might not be your top choice school.</p>
<p>Those of us old cranks on CC see students who get burned all too easily by expecting admission to a highly highly highly selective school, particularly students who are largely taking care of their college application process on their own. The bad news is that not everybody can go to a highly highly higly selective school. The good news is that everybody can go to a school and make it their own.</p>
<p>If you like Colgate, check out...</p>
<p>Muhlenberg
Quinnipiac
TCNJ (really, no New Jersey?)
Drew (really really?)
Union
SUNY New Paltz</p>
<p>I don't want to stay in Jersey. I hate being close to home. I want to be far away from home, but the parents don't want me to be far from home. So we decided, eight-hour driving distance. Fortunately, we both didn't like the Midwest (sorry, Midwestern guys!), so I'm only looking north and south of Jersey, and the farther, the better.</p>
<p>As for those schools, I know students who are going there, and I don't like the comments I heard from them. They said the college they are attending isn't good enough for them, so they decided to transfer.</p>
<p>People are going to dislike every school. No school is perfect. The trick is to find schools with imperfections you can live with!</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions, but those schools I have looked at, and I don't want to go to them. Sorry.</p>
<p>I hope that you aren't trying to be far from home just so you don't see your parents because if you live one hour away or eight hours away, chances are you won't see your parents either way.</p>
<p>You don't know my parents, HottYank. They're one of those parents who constantly check up on you and will visit you at the most inopportune times. But they're not the reason I want to be out-of-state. I just want to experience a new state, as well as a new life in the process.</p>
<p>TCNJ is a really nice public LAC; I wish I had something like that in DE. But I do understand the impulse to get out of Jersey.</p>
<p>If you consider Catholic a low match, and you like it, then apply. But it's still a low match, not a safety. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE research and find a true safety, not something that just might be considered a safety. So no, Catholic is not "good enough" as a safety, although it's always nice to have a range of match schools.</p>
<p>^ The novelty will wear off for them. And they won't be able to find you if you go to Rutgers since the population is so large ;)</p>
<p>And you still need safeties. I don't know why you're not looking into the other schools. I haven't heard anything bad about those schools =/. Quinnipiac is definitely on the rise. Everyone hates colleges. If you look hard enough, you'll find people who absolutely detested Colgate. That shouldn't have a huge impact on whether or not you go and look at it. I've had it change my mind, and it's not something that is "good."</p>
<p>You guys are adding more colleges to my already-long list. Shouldn't I start cutting down the number of colleges on this list?</p>
<p>You need to realistically look at your list. I think nocousin said you need to find twelve colleges. And you need to break them up into categories (based on your stats at this present moment!) -- reaches (4-5), matches (4-5), safeties (2-3).. You do not have that list right now. You need more matches/safeties. Nearly everything is a reach.. therefore, you need to look at more colleges. Maybe you should try some college matchers (?) or just look at some that people are advising.</p>
<p>And I'll reiterate how I am cutting down my colleges. I look at the matches and pick my favorite (or favorite 2). Then I look at the reaches and pick that if I did get accepted to my favorite match, which reaches I can see myself getting into and which ones I would rather go to. And then you have to say that if you did not get into any of your matches/selected reaches, which safeties would you be happy attending? Pick one or two. At the end of this process, you should be down to about 6 schools. Then you can throw in one or two more colleges that you like for whatever reason and you'll have around 8 colleges to apply to.</p>
<p>It's working for me, although I think I'm probably only going to apply to about 5 schools.</p>
<p>Sadly, I can't do that process, because every reach, I think, is better than the matches. I'm a small, liberal-arts guy, or an Honors Forum guy. It's all about the small classes, but the small classes mean small universities, meaning high selectivity.</p>
<p>Yes, but can you realistically get in? And I said you need to pick your favorite 2-3 that fit both qualifications. What it comes down to is what YOU want. You cannot apply to 12 reaches! You need to come to terms that you will not get into School A, B, C. Then, cross them off your list. Then looking at the others. Write pros and cons. Figure out your favorite couple and crossing the rest off the list. If you got into Reach A and Reach B, which one would you go to?</p>
<p>You need to go into this process with a more open mind! You CAN find schools that are matches and safeties that you will enjoy. And they are much more even with you academically. I really think you need to go to college board, Princeton Review, xap.com.. and find schools that are more even with your stats.</p>
<p>I don't mean to argue with you guys (I argued with the guys at my Chance thread and started defending myself), but you're saying that I should go to schools where I'm even with everyone else. Why are you telling me not to challenge myself in a more rigorous/highly-selective setting?</p>
<p>Because we want to make sure you get into a college that you like.</p>
<p>It's easy for all of us to think about schools we'd really like to go to, but the issue is finding schools that we like and that want us back. I know it's painful now, but if you balance your list in a way that includes a lot of match schools, a couple of big reaches, and a number of safeties, then March/April will be like Christmas morning. If you just apply to schools that put your stats closer to the bottom of the pack, you risk getting a lump of coal (and facing a lot of rejection letters-- ick).</p>
<p>Don't think of selectivity as the guiding factor in quality of experience here-- there are a host of schools you can do wonderfully at and be challenged, some are more selective than others.</p>
<p>At this point your list doesn't have to be perfectly formed, either. It will probably go through a bunch of revisions before it's finalized.</p>
<p>Highly-selective is NOT equal to more rigorous. Classic example: Reed vs. Amherst. Both are LACs; Reed is less selective but significantly more rigorous. But this applies to lots of other schools at different levels, too. For instance, College of Wooster in Ohio is nationally competitive in % of students going on to grad school.</p>
<p>Also, I second everything that unalove said above.</p>
<p>Well, we get our advisory grades in the middle of October, and generally, the grades we get in the advisory are what we get for the trimester, if not lower than what we actually get (many students use that to boost up their grade, talk to teachers about Extra Credit and improving the grade), so if I can get my grades a little before then, maybe the first week of October rather than the second, and then we could consider the reaches and see if we could get those to be matches? Maybe, possibly?</p>
<p>Why is it so difficult for you to accept your grades as is? Your GPA is not going to rise dramatically in one trimester. Maybe a tenth of a point.. but even that's pushing it.</p>
<p>ETA: Most of these sites do GPA unweighted. You said in your other thread that you don't know what your GPA is unweighted, I believe. Does your school have a program that compares you to others within your school? Maybe using the scattergrams will show you what kind of chances you have..?</p>
<p>I mentioned this before. It will increase up .15 if I work at it, from a 3.44 to a 3.59, with straight As. That's why.</p>
<p>I found out what my unweighted GPA was. Look above you for my unweighted GPA and possible future unweighted GPA. You need to read the whole thread, dude. It's a lot, I know: I'm going for a CC Record: most number of replies to a Chance thread. :D</p>
<p>Do your best to raise your GPA, but don't count on it. And in the meantime, consider the reaches as reaches, matches as matches. FIND A SAFETY (that you actually like). I can't emphasize this enough.</p>