So my stats are 2330 SAT with a 4.0 gpa. Got rejected Stanford EA so now looking at RD.
5 in AP Micro, 3 more AP’s in Senior year.
Curricular is strong
My ECs are strong but not over the top.
Does this list seem like a good bunch of colleges?
I want to go into psychology!
Emory
Harvard
John Hopkins
Northwestern
U Chicago
U Penn
U Rochester
USC
Yale
I’m just not sure now… what should my list be? Should I have more safeties? Are safeties really safe?
I’m just really sketchy now…
I don’t see anything that looks like a safety on that list.
@mathmom what colleges would you recommend as a safety?
It depends on what you are looking for. My older son was interested in comp sci so his safeties were WPI and RPI. (We’re on the east coast. If we’d been in CA, it would have been a UC.) My younger son was interested in International Relations so his safety was American. You need a school where either there are automatic admissions based on grades and/or scores, or where your stats put you well into the top 25% of the applicant pool and more the a 50% acceptance rate. (That’s probably not a 100% safety, but for most will be likely enough.) I’d look for schools with top-notch psych programs that are less selective.
Where do you live? What’s your budget? What type of school do you prefer?
Lehigh, Bucknell, U of Richmond, Any of a number of Liberal Arts schools, Tufts, Wake Forest , U of Miami, William and Mary, Tulane (these aren’t safeties, but offer better chances given your stats)
Yes, you need matches and safeties. Almost your entire list, save one or two schools, is full of reaches. With your stats, your match schools would still be pretty competitive, but you just need a few more, plus some true safeties. From your current list, I’d consider Emory and USC your match schools, with U Rochester as more or less a safety (your SATs being way above their average), though what’s your financial situation? Is that your local state school? If not, what is? That’s most likely your safety.
You can study psychology anywhere, so I would add a few more match schools.
I am an international studying at a US highschool. Financial wise I have no problem paying for college
Which state or area of the country do you want to go to school in?
As a dissenting opinion, I’ll note that your SAT scores are above the 75th percentile for four of your choices, and for this reason and others I think your list will fly as is. The addition of a LAC or two from the statistical range around JHU/USC could add interest to your list, but only if your preferences align with that.
U of Rochester cares about demonstrated interest and expects you to visit if you are within a five hour drive. (Or at least that’s the message we got from the admissions officer who visited our school.)
Which USC? If it’s South Caroline the out of state acceptance rate is 39%, U of Rochester is 37% and the rest are all lower than that. That doesn’t exactly say safety to me.
The OP should of course demonstrate interest at UR.
I meant the University of Southern California. LACs around this statistical range would “add interest,” but were not recommended as safeties.
RPI, used as an example of a safety (3), reports higher standardized scoring than USC, Emory or Rochester, so the decision as to where to draw lines is not clear.
Why would he add LACs for “interest”? That makes no sense…
I’m in the same boat as you with the recent rejection from Stanford. I see a lot of similarities between our lists. I would definitely recommend adding a state school as a sure fire safety. But other than that, they say 80% of well qualified students get into at least one of their top schools! Good luck!
“The addition of a LAC or two . . . could add interest to your list, but only if your preferences align with that.” (8)
Interest, as in a quality or set of qualities not represented in the OP’s current choices.
Btw, why ask a question, “Why would he add LACs for ‘interest?’” then answer it for yourself, “That makes no sense.” (11) You might as well not ask the question if you have no interest in a sincere reply.
RPI has gotten more selective since my son applied. He was in the top 1% of his class and according to our school’s Naviance data no one with his stats had ever been rejected. He was accepted early via a priority application they sent him (not ED) and got offered a presidential scholarship there, so our assessment was correct. But for many students the smaller tech colleges will provide top notch academics, but will be much easier to get into than the big names.
My point is you can’t recommend safeties without knowing what you valued about the colleges on your original list. Most safeties will be some kind of compromise Often you can find a terrific department but housed is a school that is too male, or single sex, or too rural, or too urban, or too big or too small.
USC (CA) has a very low acceptance rate. I don’t know what “add interest” means either. My younger son left one LAC on his list in case come April he decided he didn’t want a medium sized research university after all. By April, it looked even smaller to him than it had the previous year when he first visited.
I agree with other posters who are saying that your list is filled with schools that are mostly reaches for anybody but I disagree with the idea of sticking a public school into the list.
I’ve never understood why a student who has no financial issues would have a long list of private target and reach schools but then would choose a large generic public university for their safety. If you like the attention and other perks that come with a private schools, and if you can well afford to pay for a private school, choose a less competitive private school as your safety. Try for a safety that mirrors what you are looking for in the other private schools you have applied to. I know some people suggest that it makes sense to pay big bucks for prestigious schools but if you end up in a less prestigious school it doesn’t make as much sense to pay big bucks for it. I don’t really buy that-if money isn’t a big consideration. An exception is if you are in state for one of the best flag ship schools where you get some of the perks normally reserved for students at private schools.
You will get into at least four (4) schools on that list.
Re #14: A LAC selection could add a missing element if the OP would like a purely undergraduate focused environment. That’s up to him or her. That said, my primary comments were on the OP’s original list, which appears to have been thoughtfully composed. One of Darude’s questions is, “Does this seem like a good bunch of colleges?” My personal answer to that is yes. If a statistically-based, “lock” type admissions safety were to be added, that’s not something I would have any reason to recommend against.
There are no obvious safeties on this list.
The main problem is that many of the private schools which are slightly less selective than the top end of selectivity (e.g. University of Rochester) look at “level of applicant’s interest” and do not like to be used as “safeties” by students applying to the top end of the selectivity scale.
If the student wants to apply to such schools, s/he may want to play the “interest” game at them. See http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1626043-ways-to-show-a-high-level-of-applicants-interest.html for ideas.
Also, if one attends an actual safety, a large school may be preferable to a small school. A student at the top end tail of the distribution may find a reasonably-sized cohort of similar students at a large school (enough that the large school offers honors courses and other suitable academic offerings for the top end tail of the distribution), but that cohort may be too small at a small school.
The OP has had no interest in LACs to date. Given that, would assume it is not to their benefit to just start adding the to their list.