<p>A little about me: I'm a girl going into her junior year. I'm pretty white, but I may be able to apply as a pacific islander if I look into the requirements. I have a fairly high GPA (top20% of my class - that's as far as my school will rank), between 4.5 and 4.8 on a 5.0 scale (this latest update hasn't come out yet). I speak both Spanish and German with a reasonable degree of fluency, well enough to pass for a native speaker, and I am picking up Russian and French. I won a prestigious scholarship to study abroad for the summer, and I have won awards for German. My letters of recommendation should be "glowing" (at least that's what my teachers told me), and I do lots of extracurriculars.</p>
<p>What I really want, though, is a school where people are smart but not pretentious. I went to Stanford for an overnight visit (I have friends who go) and I loved that I was unaware that one person had won national competitions for math and another was trying out for the olympic fencing team, because we had been discussing the pros and cons of Starbucks vs. Dunkies (Dunkies won). A school with service opportunites would also be nice, because that is extremely important for me.</p>
<p>So the list at the moment:</p>
<p>Stanford
Duke
Rice
Brown
Boston College
UMass Amherst Honors Program (State School)
Tulane
Cal</p>
<p>Do you have your SAT or ACT scores yet? I am guessing you are taking them this fall or spring since you are going to be a junior. It is a bit tough to comment on schools until you have those scores. Also, is that 4.5-4.8 weighted or unweighted? In other words, when you say a 5 point scale, does and A=5 even if the class is not honors or AP? If so, does your school juice the grade if it is an AP class? If not, and the A=5 is only for when it is honors and/or AP, what would your GPA be on a straight A=4 scale? If you don’t know and want to list your grades and the credit value of each, I have a spreadsheet and can just plug and play for you.</p>
<p>Another question would be that other than non-pretentious, what would your ideal school be in terms of size, location (urban vs. rural, warm vs. cold), sports scene, Greek scene, anything else that is important to you.</p>
<p>Finally, is money a factor? Some of those schools have excellent merit scholarships, others not so much.</p>
<p>well. I have 800 writing, 730 reading, 680 math (I will retake in october) and I have an 800 on the german satII. I have 5s on APUSH, German, and Spanish. My school does weight GPAs, but because the school I go to is fairly prestigious, it’s not always the best indicator of, well, intelligence. </p>
<p>I’m not really a greek girl, but it is improtant for me to go to a school where people are vaguely social (i.e. I hated UChicago when I visited). I don’t want superhot, but other than that I am pretty flexible.</p>
<p>Sounds pretty awesome, our goals and SAT scores are really similar. I read on another post that you might be going to U. Alabama? Why would you do that when you could go to the Ivys? I had like the same list of colleges and I’ll probably go to Alabama, so I’m just curious as to why you might decide to go there.</p>
<p>Glitterati, fewer than 5% or so at any ivy were not top 10% in their high school class. It’s 2% at Penn. Most unhooked at ivies were top 2, not 2%, in their class. And ivies only give need based aid. That’s why lots of good students are at Alabama (full merit rides) and many other non ivies.</p>
<p>What about some liberal arts colleges? Middlebury would be great. Or look at a few that might be a bit less selective than Rice and Duke----Whitman, Hamilton…</p>
<p>I’m not quite sure about that, but it’s very likely that you know much more about this than I do. I’ve talked to numerous counselors about it, and if you check the statistics many top universities accept a small percentage of students with a gpa below 3.0. If she keeps up her academic performance and even improves it then I don’t think her grades will hinder her. Then again I’m just an 18 year old girl who only knows this from looking at websites and e-mailing admissions counselors. I don’t intend to argue, this is just the little information I know from my limited resources.</p>