I have an unweighted 4.0 and a weighted 4.43 as a junior in high school, most likely will rise again at the end of this year. I By the end of the year I will have completed 5 AP classes and plan to take another 4 or 5 again for my senior year of high school. I have an SAT score of 1850 math: 670, reading: 570, writing: 610. I have a tutor for the SAT now and will be retaking it in March and May in hopes of raising my scores up. I am looking for a college with a somewhat nice campus, not ridiculously urban with a strong emphasis on research and biochemistry. If you would please help me shrink my college list, and rank them based on my GPA and SAT scores that would be much appreciated. Feel free to add any schools you might think fit me!
Also consider taking the ACT. You’ve probably already heard that many students do much better on one vs the other. Don’t forget to take SAT2 tests as well.
Hate to be the bearer of bad news but these are pretty alphabetical…and also improbable for a person of your stats. Get the score up first (by either the ACT or SAT) and then you can have a better idea. Also, look into those places. Quite a few are “ridiculously urban.” I think you need to investigate more based off of your wants, needs, and financials and then come back with a smaller list.
Agree with above. You need to do some soul-searching and have some conversations with your parents and refine your goals, then others can help you refine a list. Have you visited many colleges? Even visiting ones nearby that you might not be interested in attending can help you get a feel for what you want in a campus. Some things to consider:
How large or small of a campus are you looking for?
What are you hoping to find as far as research opportunities?
Are there particular parts of the country you would or wouldn't like to live in?
Are sports important to you? Greek life?
How easy of access do you want to a major city?
Are you OK with a really remote location?
How strong of a liberal arts core are you interested in?
Are you comfortable on a campus where religion is a factor?
Will travel costs be a burden?
And most importantly, you need to have a serious talk with your parents about how much they expect to contribute to your college education. You need to learn about loan options available to you (and to your parents if they are willing). Without knowing how much you can afford, it’s hard to separate a list. A safety school needs to be not only a school you feel confident you will be accepted to, but you also need to be able to afford it. What state do you live in? What are your in-state public options?
You really are all over the boards. Not-too-urbanish to me would immediately exclude some of these schools, like BU or Johns Hopkins. But is really remote OK, or should Bucknell come off the list? BU doesn’t really have a traditional campus. The feel of a school like MIT vs. a school like Villanova is completely different. Are you interested in co-ops? You have a couple of co-op schools on the list. Is that a priority?
Are you rock solid on what you want to study? If not, throw out Cambridge and Oxford. They are also very hard to get in to and weight scores (Especially AP and SAT IIs) very heavily, so if you are not a big standardized testing person, they may not make sense for you.
Otherwise, I second what everyone else is saying. Your score as it stands is too low for Ivies unless you have a huge hook, we need an idea of what you are looking for in a school, and you need to talk to your parents about finances.
I don’t think anyone is going to try to chance you on a list that long. And your score is WAY too low for a lot of these schools. Someone above said 200 points…I’d say 300 or even 400 points of improvement are needed for several of them (and not just Ivies, schools like Pomona, U of Chicago, Harvey Mudd, JHU, etc.).
Also consider taking the ACT, some say its based more on what you learned as opposed to your intelligence, per se. Worked for me, I wasn’t happy with my SAT but had good grades in lots of AP classes, etc, and did much better on the ACT
As an update, I will be taking the ACT as well in hopes of a higher score. I refined my list further. To answer your questions. I am looking for a school to:
Have a campus and not be ridiculously urban (excluding BU because my parents both went their and I am applying regardless)
Encourage research and have a biochemistry major
Be above 4,000 enrolled students
Not be unbelievably rural
With access to a city relatively nearby
I have further refined my searches to have:
Safeties: UConn, Providence College, UVM, and U Maryland College Park
Probable: BC, BU, UC San Diego, George Washington U, Northeastern, University of Michigan, Pepperdine, Villanova, University of Washington, UC Davis, UCSB, University of San Diego, and RPI.
Reach: Brown, UC Berkeley, Tufts, UPenn, MIT, and Duke
(I REALIZE MY SAT SCORES ARE VERY LOW FOR THESE SCHOOLS RIGHT NOW)
Assuming that monetary issues are taken care of, can I have some advice based on the criteria provided?
Your SATs are too low for Michigan as an OOS student, you need to move that to the Reach category. Consider it about the same as Berkeley. Pepperdine is also smaller than your criteria (and a very Christian oriented school, which is fine if that is what you are looking for, it is just different from the other schools on your list).
I’d suggest you get a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges and read up on each of the schools on your list, and try to narrow it down a bit more. Do some visiting as well. Look up the SAT ranges for each one and figure out where you fall in the range. If you are below the 50% mark (especially in CR or Math), it probably isnt a match, it is some kind of reach (remember that the lowest scoring applicants often have a hook of some kind, so you can’t just assume you have just as good a chance as anyone else in the lower percentiles). Starting a spreadsheet would be a good idea. Then when you get new SAT scores and/or an ACT score, you can see how you stack up on the test scores.
Although you have a strong GPA, test scores are the way that colleges can compare students across their whole pool of applicants – a high GPA and low test scores CAN (but aren’t always) an indication that your school isn’t that strong. So they are kind of watching for that.
When you say to “assume the monetary issues are taken care of”, are you saying that your parents can shell out a quarter of a million dollars for your education? (And maybe they can, some families are able to, and that simplifies your search a lot). Or are you saying that you haven’t looked at that yet and/or assume you will get need based aid or merit scholarships to cover your costs?
Also, what is your home state? That can make a difference in your chances, too.
I live in New Hampshire, still debating whether or not to apply to UNH.And I am saying that my grandparents have funds set up with large sums of money set away that can only legally be used on education anticipating more than the three grandchildren they have. Therefore, yes, the money side of things is taken care of.
I will be generous and assume you can get your SAT (or comparable ACT) score up by 200 points.
Using naviance or collegedata or collegenavigator or any other such tool, look up the 25 - 75 SAT scores. SCRATCH off the schools where you fall closer to the 25th than to the 75th. This will cut your list by about half.
Of the remaining schools, run the net price calculator found on each school's website. If the net price ends up being unaffordable, search for merit scholarships offered by the school. If they are available AND your scores put you above the 75th percentile of admitted students, keep it. Otherwise, put the unaffordable schools out of consideration. There is NO point in being accepted to a school you cannot afford.
Now you will have a realistic list of schools to consider and you can start thinking about the kinds of specifics you want in a college.
That rules out so many schools that could, for whatever reason accept me on a whim in the reach category. I’m a strong student at a competitive school but I simply struggle with standardized testing.