I second your applying for College Prep Scholars. Will your siblings be okay while you go to “college application camp”?
Obvious colleges to have on your list would be UMN (Honors), Carleton, St Olaf, Macalester, and Grinnell. The last 3 meet full need.
However, Questbridge is indeed your best bet. It’s like an opportunity to apply ED to 12 schools instead of 1. (ED is a big deal at most highly selective schools - all colleges on the Questbridge list are highly selective and through Questbridge you get a full-ride+ for 4 years. You wouldn’t have to worry about debt or about paying for food or books and you’d even have a job to help you pay for the occasional pizza, not to help pay for essentials.)
I wasn’t familiar with QuestBridge or its partners and just looked up the list of the partner colleges. You may not be familiar with many of them @Shoeby, but it seems like most of the top 25 national universities and top 25 national liberal arts colleges are on them. These are the ones from the list of meeting all need and offering computer science that are also QuestBridge partners:
Princeton
Brown
Amherst
Bowdoin
Columbia
Dartmouth
MIT
University of Chicago
Washington University
Williams
Boston College
Caltech
Northwestern
Stanford
Tufts
Washington and Lee
Pomona
Rice
Vanderbilt
Barnard
Carleton
University of Southern California
Colgate
Wellesley
Scripps
Colby
Grinnell
Colorado College
These colleges are arguably some of the most desired colleges in the U.S. The QuestBridge summer program sounds like a great idea for you and an opportunity to receive better guidance than your high school counselor has offered so far.
Maybe I should state that we are out of that situation now, my brother is in college and my little sister is just fine! But I was still stuck in it for the beginning of freshman year.
I’ll consider applying to the college prep scholars program offered my QB, I was also thinking about applying to CMU’s computer science scholars summer program as well. So I think it’s really dependent on if CMU accepts me.
Thank you for the list!! Turns out a few more colleges that have been of interest to me are on there as well. I haven’t had much time to check. Finals are destroying me.
This may represent a typical course progression and level. However, your SAT total shows you scored at least 710 on the math section as a junior, which suggests a much greater than average level of performance in math.
I worry about this. Math is my weak point academically. In any other classes I am pretty advanced, honors, first chair, AP, DE, IB. So it is going to definitely stand out when AO’s review my transcript. Do you think there is anything else I can do to kinda perform ‘damage control’ to this part of my application?
As with anyone who will be applying to colleges, I’d say your success will depend mostly on matching yourself properly to a school. Based on your concerns, you might want to avoid Harvey Mudd, for example, at which the 25th percentile SAT math score is 770, but the vast majority of colleges remain open to a student with your achievements.
I second, third or fourth the suggestion to apply via Questbridge.
Also, you may want to take a deep dive into woman’s college as a very supportive place for STEM majors.
Your Math SAT clearly shows you strong performance in math but I agree that you should consider how far in math courses you have gotten when applying to schools. I would not apply to CMU, the published SAT Math range for 25-75 is 800-800. You should also apply to schools where you don’t have to apply by majors (lots of those already recommended).
I think you would be an asset to any school you attend and will be successful where ever you land.
Hi, I have not read your entire forum…but I’m a QuestBridge alum at davidson and I’d really really recommend applying through it… if you have any questions regarding the application process too I’d be happy to help
Apply to both. For all you know you may get into both and the dates will allow you to do both, and at worst if you only get into one you won’t have regrets.