Got a 36 on ACT- Need Help on Next Step

College Search & Selection
1

So I was able to take the ACT test in October and ended up scoring a 36 somehow. I had narrowed my college search down to Boise State (which I visited last week and really loved) and the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Because of my high test score, I will qualify for a good scholarship from UTK worth $18,000 a year which is comparable to the WUE cost I would receive from Boise due to my California residence. However, this test score has led me to wonder if I should start expanding my search to any other schools that are perhaps a bit more academically challenging.
Besides the test scores, here’s some more info about me:

I have a 4.0 unweighted, 4.5 weighted GPA.

Counting this year, I have taken 11 AP classes and have scored three 5’s and one 4.

I volunteered for about a year and a half at a marine institute near my house for a total of 8 hours a month.

I worked at Kumon Learning Center for a year and a half, a local Mexican chain for a summer, and now Chick-fil-A for 4 months.

I went on a Spanish immersion trip to Ecuador with my school where we did things with the local community and lived with a family.

I was on my school’s newspaper for a year.

Over the summers, I help my mom run Spanish immersion camps for 4 weeks at my house which.

Financial aid is a big factor- my family makes around $110,000 a year but cost of living in southern CA is astronomically high. I would love to get out of California and experience a new climate.

I know that my extracurriculars are not strong, but I just wanted to test the waters and see if maybe I was missing something. I appreciate any feedback!

2

YES!!! A resounding YES!!! I just wish that you had known about this in time to apply early action to a dream school, but no matter. It sounds as if you are an underrepresented minority (Hispanic?) and that you might be first in your family to college. You should be applying to some Ivies, other top tier schools with full financial aid. You’d get a really good aid package from most top schools.

What do you like? What do you want to study? How far away are you willing to go?

3

@parentologist OP still can apply ED to Duke or Cornell, if interested. Try running the FA calculators, as you should be eligible for SIGNIFICANT amounts of aid, assuming reasonable assets.

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Hi! Thanks for responding! I guess you could consider me a minority but you would never know it from looking at me. Half of my family is Hispanic but has been in the country for 3-4 generations and the other half is Irish and German. Would that still count as minority status? It just seems kind of weird to me. My mom is a teacher and obviously went to college but my dad did not.

My absolute dream would be to attend college on the East Coast, especially in the Northeast. Tennessee was also appealing because I do really like the south. In short, anywhere except California and the Midwest!

I am interested in going into pre-law. I am definitely more of an English and history guy but I do alright in science and math.

I’m willing to go as far as possible; I love to experience new places and definitely don’t have a fear of being on my own.

5

Being URM is URM for federal purposes (which is what schools report,) and being multiracial might boost your chances even more since they tend to be a very small % at most top universities. You wouldn’t be considered first-generation, but being URM AND having strong stats is definitely a boost.

Also, you’ll be eligible to apply to the US Presidential Scholars program (you get to meet the President if selected which is super cool) and applications, from my friends who got 36s, were sent in January I think. Here’s more info:

https://www2.ed.gov/programs/psp/index.html

You’d have a good shot at the T20s, especially if you can tailor your application essays to your intended major + extracurriculars done in HS (maybe marine biology? Duke’s has a marine bio institute IIRC.)

6

Duke and Cornell ED deadlines are tonite. It’s unlikely OP can put together a competitive app and essays in that time frame.

Look at U Alabama—with a 4.0 and 36 ACT you would receive full tuition for 4 years, housing for one year along with a few other smaller scholarships for books and such. (You would pay board for 4 years, and housing for 3).

https://scholarships.ua.edu/freshman/out-of-state/

What do you want to major in and what else are you looking for in a school, e.g., size, location, setting, etc.?

7

Definitely!! Apply to as many top schools - top 30 - as you like!!! you still have time.

You should get into a super selective amazing school with those grades as well as you ECs

East Coast - apply to Ivies too, so many great schools to choose from
TN - Vanderbilt

Congrats!!

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also, they don’t care how many generations. put down spanish

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@Mwfan1921 Lost track of the date, oops! :sweat_smile: ED2 is still an option though.

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Wow, wow, wow! Thank you all for your contributions!

That’s great information to know about my minority status- I had always felt kind of awkward putting that down but will definitely do it.

In terms of school type, I was thinking of a bigger school with a good football team which is why Tennessee and Boise seemed like good fits to me. But obviously, I wouldn’t dare pass up any Ivy League caliber opportunities simply because of a lack of a football team. Location wise would preferably be anywhere outside of California that’s not the Midwest, but I’m really open to anything that comes up.

I so appreciate all of the help. I have always felt pretty discouraged by the college admission process because of how crazy competitive it is, but I am feeling much more confident now.

11

Am I missing something? Where would suggestions of Duke and Cornell come from? OP says they are more interested in English and History. I think maybe NE LAC’s would be a good fit.

12

You can use the site below to look into costs at a variety of potentially appropriate colleges. For your academic interests, Williams, Hamilton, Colgate, Bates, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, Yale and Brown represent a few to consider.

https://myintuition.org/

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Try the net price calculator on the web site of each college under consideration to see what financial aid may look like.

Regarding a new climate, California is a large state, so there are other colleges in California where you will experience different climates from where you live.

14

Big school with football, not sure a LAC is the way to go?

15

Note that the OP stated he “wouldn’t dare pass up any Ivy League caliber opportunities simply because of a lack of a football team.” Though LACs are not big, they offer an undergraduate focus that might surpass the OP’s academic expectations. Many offer spectator sports, such as football, basketball and ice hockey.

16

Yes, you qualify as hispanic.

I won’t discourage you from adding an Ivy or two. Take a look at them and see which ones appeal. There are urban vs. rural, intense vs more laid back, for example.

For relatively big sports in the east look at Boston College, Villanova

Not big football, but may be of interest: Tufts, Boston U

Do smaller liberal arts colleges appeal to you?

Do run the net price calculators on all these schools. Definitely look at Alabama too, as posted above. Not northeast, but can’t get much bigger re: football

17

Please don’t choose a school based upon their sports team! The school’s football team will not advance your career. You shouldn’t be planning on going to college to cheer for a winning football team. You should be going to the right college to BECOME the winner, yourself!

Yes, you can put down Hispanic, if one of your parents is of Hispanic descent. Whether it’s right or wrong, the fact is that you will receive preference in admission. Applicants of European descent whose great-grandparents fled the Holocaust via South and Central America, staying there just long enough for a grandparent to be born there, and then the family moved to the US, can put down that they are Hispanic, because a forbear was born in South/Central America, even if the family left when the forbear was a week old. Believe it or not, it is considered acceptable, even for a family of European professors who were in Mexico only for a month, but long enough to have had a child there, for the descendants of that child to put down Hispanic!

Any of the Ivy schools will have excellent writing programs. If you’re interested in going into law, having gone to a top college will help you get into a good law school. If you’re interested in law as it relates to national politics, Georgetown, because it’s the best school in DC, and it’s near the center of national political power. If you want to make the connections to wind up in a top law firm, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and also the other Ivies, and Stanford. Entertainment law? UCLA? The best small liberal arts colleges would also be a possible choice for you, but it sounds as if you would prefer a larger school.

You’ve missed the early action/early decision deadlines, but I don’t think it will matter for you. Straight A student, perfect ACT, Hispanic, mom went to college and is a teacher but Dad didn’t, you worked to help support the family - it’s enough of a story. Come up with great essays that tell your story, also tell why you want to be a lawyer, what type of lawyer you want to be and why (and saying that you want to be just like Roy Cohn or Rudy Giuliani, or be a wealthy corporate tax lawyer for hedge fund titans is not gonna cut it, but saying that you want to be a lawyer for just about any social justice/fix our nation/fix our society reason/protect some vulnerable population will) , also why you love expressing yourself in writing, why you love history - I think you get the idea - and you will get in to some of these top schools.

I’m kind of surprised that you didn’t get any advising from your school counselor, even before the ACT came back, that you were aiming too low. You’ve got a lot of catch-up to do on the college application front, and you have to keep up your grades for this semester, too, since the colleges will see this semester’s grades, but with some research and some advice (and there will be plenty offered to you on this website), you will get in to some excellent schools, with a good financial aid package.

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U.S. News offers a list of colleges with great writing programs in its print edition:

Writing in the Disciplines

  1. Brown
  2. Duke
  3. Princeton
  4. Cornell
  5. Harvard
  6. Yale
  7. Stanford
  8. Carleton
  9. Hamilton
  10. Columbia
  11. Elon
  12. Middlebury
  13. MIT
  14. Williams
  15. Agnes Scott
  16. UIowa
  17. Amherst
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Note, however, that USN’s print edition and website differ somewhat in their content in this case: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/writing-programs.

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Check if you’re eligible for application fee waivers (if you received a fee waiver for the ACT, you’ll likely be eligible for an application fee waiver as well,) if you are, my advice would be to apply to every private T20 meeting full need and making a decision once you receive decisions, since it’s not binding like ED and you wouldn’t be spending any money to apply (check if you’re eligible for an FA application fee waiver as well.) If not, you should probably be more choosy about where to apply, since application fees at T20s can be ~$70 before FA applications.

Here’s some info about application fee waivers from Brown, where I go: https://admission.brown.edu/ask/completing-application

“As part of our commitment to make a Brown University education accessible to students from all income backgrounds, Brown is making automatic application fee waivers available to more students. Brown will automatically waive the application fee for any student who is enrolled in or eligible for the Federal Free or Reduced Price Lunch program (FRPL), as well as students who are enrolled in federal, state or local programs that aid students from low-income families (e.g. TRIO Programs). Additionally, Brown will automatically waive the application fee for any student who belongs to a Community Based Organization or College Access Organization that promotes educational opportunity for low-income students. Applicants to Brown who meet any of these requirements should select the “Brown Specific Fee Waiver” in the “Brown Questions” section of the Common Application. Brown will continue to honor fee waiver request forms from the College Board, NACAC, and school counselors.”