I’m a Bangladeshi-American female (I guess technically Asian-American) living in a small town in Southeast Kansas. I’m an upcoming Senior at a public school, and I would like to know what schools would be good to be apply to in the coming months.
Extracurriculars:
Newspaper Editor - 2 years
Scholar’s Bowl Captain - 4 years
Senior Class President
Key Club Treasurer - 2 years
JV Tennis - 2 years
National Honors Society - 2 years
HOSA - 2 years
Debate - 1 year
School:
4.0 GPA up to this point
3 classes (Physics, Research Writing, and Calculus) taken at the local university
30 ACT (34E, 33M, 29R, 25S) I really hope to get my ACT score up to a 33 and if I superscore with my previous test I get a 32 (29C on my previous)
AP Chem, APUSH, AP Calc, AP Lang and Comp
Attended All Girls All Math @ University of Nebraska–Lincoln as a Freshman
If you could answer some more questions, that would be helpful.
What do you want to major in?
How much can your family afford? Need merit scholarship?
Size, distance from home, etc
I want to attend (hopefully) a top 20ish school. My parents would probably need some type of financial aid but they would be willing to pay for my college.
You didn’t really answer the questions. Many of the “top 20ish” schools (not sure what the definition of this is) are wildly different from one another. There are huge public universities that are world renowned like UC-Berkely, UCLA, UNC, UMich, UVA, UT; smaller private schools like the Ivies, Duke, Georgetown, Northwestern, Rice; small LAC’s like Pomona, Swarthmore, Williams, and Amherst; more tech-based schools like MIT, Carnegie Mellon, or Cooper Union. Even within these groups the cultures at the different schools are extremely different and they vary a great deal geographically. And you need to get together with your parents and figure out how much they can afford to pay precisely. There’s a huge difference between paying tuition for an instate school and paying for a school like Harvard.
It will definitely be extremely challenging to get into a top 20 school with only a 30 ACT. Still if you can get it to a 33 or above, your chances will improve significantly. I agree with danfer91, lots of top 20 schools have different vibes and other important things that you need to consider that would be a fit for you. As of now and just based on your stats, you could be a viable candidate for Boston University, Lehigh University, and of course your state school.
Agree with the above poster.
Do you think Georgetown, Cornell and Johns Hopkins would be hard reaches?
What do you want to major in?
& I echo what danfer91 said about talking to your parents about financial support. They may say they can pay but not realize how much it could be.
I was thinking pre-med but I assume my parents would be willing to pay around $20,000-$25,000 a year.
To clear up, Pre-Med is not a major but a requisite completed in order to get into Medical School. You can major in history and still be a Pre-Med student(assuming you take classes to fulfill that requirement).
You need to be able to pick a major at certain schools in order for expert chancers to chance you, because majors make a huge difference when it comes to admissions for a lot of colleges.
What your parents are willing to pay and what colleges would expect them to pay may not match up. Run the net price calculator on each school website to get an idea of what they may be expected to pay.
Your test scores are low for the schools you are asking about. 25-75% ACT ranges: Georgetown 30-33, Cornell 30-34, JHU 31-34. So you are at or below the 25% mark at all three right now. Remember that the bottom 25% accepted are often hooked – athletes, URMs, or legacies.