Does my list look OK?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>First, here are some brief stats:</p>

<p>Here are some brief stats:
White female from PA
GPA 4.53W, ~3.9UW (Straight A's 10th and 11th grades - it's 8th and 9th bringing me down, rank-wise at least)
Ranked 11/512
ACT 34
APs: Euro 5, English Language 4, Statistics 5, USH 4 (AP Scholar award - one of only two in my class)
5 APs Senior Year - Spanish, Calc BC, Physics C, US Gov't, English Lit</p>

<p>ECs - (Here's where it falls apart a little)
Babysitting - 10 hours/week, 4 years
Tutoring - 6 hours/week, 4 years
Young Life (Youth Group) - 4 hours/week, 4 years
Organized Church Christmas drive last year, plan to do so this year
Total Community Service ~200 hours (various activities with Youth Group, Teen Court, etc.)
Freshman Field Hockey team, Freshman Lacrosse team, etc. - No real school involvement but should be explained in counselor rec (redistricted away from all my friends right before 9th grade)</p>

<p>Essays should be good, rec letters OK (I'm shy and don't know my teachers too well, even though I do well in school)</p>

<p>Now for my list:</p>

<p>"Reaches":
Duke - not definite
Wash U (StL)
UNC Chapel Hill (OOS) EA</p>

<p>"Matches":
Boston College EA
U of Miami EA
William and Mary (OOS)
Wake Forest
USC (SoCal)
George Washington</p>

<p>"Safety":
Penn State (hoping to get into Honors program, but it's REALLY competitive) - rolling admissions so I only need this safety (unless I'm rejected! then I can add another)</p>

<p>So the categories are how I personally see them, but feel free to correct me if they don't seem to be appropriate. Basically I just want some feedback/reassurance that I have a balanced list - I see lots of people who get comments that their list isn't right, and I don't want to end up like that! Thanks for anyone who would like to comment. =)</p>

2

<p>The list by difficulty of getting in, rather than how you like them...</p>

<p>Reaches:
Duke
Wash U
UNC-Chapel Hill </p>

<p>Matches:
USC
William and Mary
Boston College
Wake Forest</p>

<p>Safety:
George Washington
U of Miami
Penn State</p>

3

<p>You'll get into a lot of those colleges. I'd dump George Washington and Washington U--all the others seem like they'd be a lot more fun than those two. Might want to take a look at Virginia, Notre Dame, and Georgetown.</p>

4

<p>dude
8th doesnt matter
its not highschool</p>

5

<p>8th still affects your rank if you take highschool classes then</p>

6

<p>I think its probably case by case as I took two high school classes in 8th grade and it didn't count towards by high school rank.</p>

7

<p>Very common for top students to take high school classes in 8th grade. When my son was applying, last year, he was told that the high school classes he took in 8th grade counted interms of number of years of a subject (for example, first of 5 years of foreign language was in 8th grade) but the grades in these pre high school classes were not included in the GPA calculation.</p>

8

<p>What subject do you want to study?</p>

9

<p>Might want to look at Colgate and Holy Cross.</p>

10

<p>Yeah, 8th grade messes up my rank pretty badly compared to my other years. Thanks for all the feedback! I love Georgetown, but 3 subject tests? I don't know if I can do that. I love WashU, and it's a reach - maybe someone has it confused with UW or something?</p>

11

<p>Keep Washington U in. Your stats are a match, and it gets lots of good reviews.</p>

12

<p>Yeah, our school system counts high school courses taken in middle school for GPAs, so one of my kids has a high school transcript that dates to 6th grade, the other to 7th. (Geometry counts for Honors weighting, but not Algebra I, even if Alg was taken in 5th or 6th grade. Go figure.) </p>

<p>I expect a lot of colleges are going to recalculate anyway so they get a consistent "view" of their applicants, so I am not too worried. In both cases, they continued math and foreign language into HS (which are the subjects they took in middle school), so it will be clear that they had to take the foundation courses at some time or other...</p>