<p>My son is a senior this year at what is considered to be one of the top private academic high schools in California. He has a 3.8/4.59 GPA (unweighted/weighted) and scored 2180 on the SAT and 34 on the ACT. He has the hardest curriculum of anyone at his school (300 in his class) and currently is taking 5 AP (Bio, Physics, Computer Science, English, Economics) courses with the 6th class a mandatory religious course. He was one of two students accelerated in Math and completed the school's highest Calculus course with an A and 5 on the AP Test as a Sophomore. He plays club soccer at the "Gold" level and is trying out for high school soccer this year again after beign injured in his junior year (he was a captain on JV in his sophomore year). He volunteers by coaching an underpriviledged inner city youth soccer team for the Police Activity League and had a team of 40 boys practicing twice weekly and playing games on the weekends over the summer. He also has a passion for anything to do with automobiles and did an immersion program this summer for a local automobile museum working in the restoration shop 5 days per week. He is 25% hispanic and 75% caucasian - and although I've read the threads I still can't determine whether he can claim "hispanic" or whether it will help his chances. His mother is 50% hispanic/50% Irish (just kidding but Irish should be a minority too) and I am caucasian. </p>
<p>He wants to go to Stanford and will be applying via early app. His other choices are the Ivie's and USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley and MIT. He might want to play soccer in college but has not been actively recruited.</p>
<p>Your feedback is appreciated, what do you think?</p>
<p>I think he has a good chance of getting in.
He should push his SAT a little higher if possible because I know students who got into Stanford and their SATs are around 2200.
But don’t get too caught up with it though because it’s not the only factor in college admissions. And I heard Stanford focuses more on well-rounded students than students who have high test scores and no extra curriculars.
Maintain the good GPA and the rigorous course load.
Continue playing soccer and doing the stuff he likes to do and he’ll be fine.
Good luck.</p>
<p>Very good shot at USC. I don’t know much about UC admissions, but I’d think UCLA and UCB are realistic.</p>
<p>He seems qualified for Stanford, the Ivys and MIT, but they get so many qualified applicants that it’s hard to say.</p>
<p>Stanford SCEA is a really tough pool. He might want to consider a strategic ED application to a lower reach school, such as UPenn, for example, if he could fall in love with the idea.</p>
<p>Good luck to both of you through the process.</p>
<p>Did your son become a Hispanic scholar through the PSAT? If not, the Hispanic part will help far less, many seem to fing their Hispanic roots when they research the college advantage. When I was a college counselor I received many calls from colleges wanting to confirm ethnicity.</p>
<p>I think you son has a great shot at the top UCs. Stanford as an unhooked kid from CA is very tough and his scores are low, especially coming from a top high school which will probably send them lots of applicants.</p>
<p>I’m not seeing HYP, the other ivies may be possibilities depending on his class rank (if the school doesn’t oficially rank they will approximate), whether they consider him Hispanic and what his app conveys.</p>
<p>There is actually still time to become a NHS if his PSAT score qualifies, whether or not he marked Hispanic when sitting the test. See the NHRP thread in the above link.</p>
<p>He scored 217 on the PSAT but did not mark as Hispanic. I haven’t looked at the thread yet and will do so now. If anyone knows the way to make the change, please do share.</p>
<p>^maybe not the best word choice. I meant that while both Stanford and Penn are reaches, Penn ED is a probably likelier than Stanford SCEA, or to put it another way, a lower reach than Stanford.</p>
<p>I followed the link given by Entomom and then went to collegeboard.com and to the NHRP website as well as did a search on the web and cannot yet find the stats to se if my son would qualify for the NHRP. If anyone has a link to this please share. </p>
<p>Separately, I’ve written am email to NHRP and included my son and his school counselor so all are in the know. I will call the NHRP on Tuesday to get more information but would like to know now if possible.</p>
<p>I wanted to thank everyone for their input and for this forum. Because of your replies I contacted the College Board/NHRP administrators and they stated my son will make the cutoff for NHRP recognition and be included in the mailings that are due to go out this week. I can’t thank you enough for prompting me to contact them.</p>
<p>Any idea what will happen after the schools get the notification? I’ve seen many threads the imply the schools contact the student but does that really happen or do we need to seek the merit based scholarships for his schools of interest? His aspirations are to the top schools but it seems many of them don’t recognize the NHRP.</p>