help me trim down the number of schools i'm applying to?

<p>GPA: 3.8 uw, 4.6 w
rank: school does not rank but i'm top 10 and that would be noted i think
SAT: 2300
SATII: 3 800's
ECs and everything: pretty good, kinda laundry-ish but focused</p>

<p>help me trim down # of schools i'm applying to. i split them by match, reach, safety, feel free to correct me if i'm being too presumptive =P</p>

<p>REACH:</p>

<p>my top 5:
harvard
penn
mit
stnford
princeton</p>

<p>other reaches:
yale
brown
columbia
chicago
caltech
dartmouth</p>

<p>MATCH:
cornell
northwestern
?berkeley
jhu</p>

<p>safety:
umich
uwisconsin
rutgers
nyu</p>

<p>I think they're all organized in good categories except for University of Michigan-- I doubt that it's a safety even if you're in-state; they've had a huge increase in applications in recent years, and they're the #2 public university in the nation.</p>

<p>Are you in-state for Berkeley? If not, it's probably a reach school, since it's a UC and in-state residency is an important factor in admissions.</p>

<p>Good luck applying to all 8 ivies :)</p>

<p>What is your intended major, and how do your ECs show your interest in it?</p>

<p>Take out most of those reaches. Decide what type of school you like best and cut out whatever ones don't apply.
I think you should do more research.</p>

<p>Your list seems to be based on prestige, not fit, seeing as how your colleges are pretty different from each other. And it seems that you ordered what you saw as reaches, matches, and safeties by general prestige (which admittedly does work some of the time) but failed to take into account factors such as UC Berkeley being selective to native Californians.</p>

<p>Otherwise, great grades and scores! Are you math/sci person?</p>

<p>It really depends what you are interested in doing in college, what you can see yourself doing or what field you like.</p>

<p>What are you interested in?</p>

<p>michigan is most definitely a safety for the OP. 2300 sat and 3.8 lol. michigan is a state school afterall. Numbers rule public school admissions. I suggest you only get one safety. Safeties are safeties. With your stats, you should have no problem getting into michigan (in state). No problem at all. </p>

<p>Why are you applying to all the ivies? they're all so different.</p>

<p>I agree Umich is a safety if he's instate. He is well above the avg/median numbers and they do have a 50% admit rate. Also, I thought UVA was the #2 public school?</p>

<p>I'd cut down some of the Ivies that don't make much sense or aren't that good in your field.</p>

<p>UMich is NEVER a safety if you are from OOS.</p>

<p>lol yes, i am a math and sciency person. i am undecided major but probably premed or some type of applied math. i have lots of math and science clubs, ECs, volunteering, research, awards etc and leadership positions. plus tennis..yea.</p>

<p>and i am from NJ so i am sadly OOS for UMich, but i know for a fact that many people got into UMich from my school with MUCH lower stats than me. My school is a pretty competitive top public school that sends around 20%+ of its students out of 400+ to top 20 schools. and i hopefully will apply as early as possible, lol.</p>

<p>I am thinking about MIT EA btw. And i doubt i'll apply to dartmouth, but I do like the rest of the ivies. I've visited them all..and I agree, berkeley isn't really a match, it's more like a reach, but i don't think i'll be applying there anyways after some consideration.</p>

<p>Rutgers is a school that everyone from NJ applies to. It is like the safetiest safety especially if you're from NJ. So in the event that i get rejected everywhere I will still probably have gotten into Rutgers. =P</p>

<p>CA is huge and has many qualified students instate; nothing more needs to be said. The same goes for Virginia thanks to the Northern VA area with some of the nation's best public schools and then some (Thomas Jefferson). Michigan doesn't have as numerous of strong in-state students as Cal/VA/UNC/UCLA. </p>

<p>From my public HS books, many people with 3.5s and 1350s were accepted into Umich out of state. The books are still there so anyone can check them. Consequently, Umich is definitely the most accepting of OOS students.</p>

<p>I think what you should do is defend each of your college choices. Imagine that somebody (maybe me, maybe a parent) asked you why you were particularly interested in one school, you should be able to give a coherent answer specific to the school. This will help you slice down your list and also give you great prep for writing all those essays.</p>

<p>Here's an answer you shouldn't give:</p>

<p>"I want to go to a prestigious school with smart kids and good professors"-- every school on that list, including Rutgers, can offer you that. So why are the other schools on your list better to you than Rutgers is?</p>

<p>lfecollegeguy. Let me see something. Michigan has fewer strong instate students than Va and NC? LOL. I assume you have numbers to back up that claim? It's quite easy to see why UMich accepts more oos students than the UVA and UNC. IT HAS MORE STUDENTS!! Not just a few more, but thousands more. There are over 12,000 more ug at Michigan than UVA and over 8,000 more ug at Michigan than UNC. The strong instate comment is silly. NC and UVA can afford to be a bit more selective, they are much smaller than UM. The comments about CA however, I concur with.</p>

<p>Your matches are reach/match at best. Way too many reaches, picked based on prestige I assume.</p>

<p>Ask what kind of school you want; hardcore work/GPA deflation, party party, or intellectual, and cut some schools.</p>

<p>You indirectly proved my point as I said there are not enough numerous strong in-state students to fill Umich's spots (which is directly related to its huge size). My example with TJ and top public schools in NOVA is that they are often feeder schools into UVA and there are enough of them so that UVA can be very selective for OOS. Umich can have just as many qualified in-state, but like you said, needs almost 11k-12k more students so it is less selective. I agree with you totally.</p>

<p>However, this is not exactly a good thing as more students with lower stats can get in and thus, call Umich a safety if they have strong stats like the OP does. Which brings me to my first post in which I stated Umich is prob. a safety for the OP if he is in-state (even stronger boost). His outstanding GPA, 2400 combined on SAT II and 2300 has little to fear in my opinion. For the Ivies, it is a different story.</p>

<p>"Michigan doesn't have as numerous of strong in-state students as Cal/VA/UNC/UCLA." How could i misunderstand this statement? I would agree with Cal and UCLA, but not UVA and UNC. I guarantee you that Michigan has MORE strong instate students than UVA and NC. This is simply because Michigan has MORE people instate than those other two schools. I didn't indirectly prove your point. Michigan has MORE strong instate students that UVA and NC because they get so many more of them. I would have preferred that you just made a statement that you mispoke rather than try to get justify your silly comment. I never disagreed that Michigan could be a safety for an INSTATE person of the posters caliber. I would say the same thing for UVA and UNC if this person were instate applying to those schools.</p>

<p>You guarantee this off pure state population? Florida would therefore do much better than states with lower population than it but it is quite a fact that Florida schools are comparatively poor.</p>

<p>It is impossible to tell but I would say NOVA's top public schools along with TJ would be more of a feeder.</p>

<p>Btw. Michigan's admit level dropped to 42% this year. Considerably lower than 50%</p>

<p>lol, first of all i'm a girl =)
and second, yes i'm picking most of my reaches based on prestige. i guess that's bad, but i'm pretty flexible and can be happy with any type of school environment and academia style. So why not?</p>

<p>I agree with you lfecollegeguy. It's impossible to tell. What does Florida have to do with the conversation here? I might infer from your statements however, that Michigan people are on a whole dumber than those from northern Virginia. Look. UVA, for example, can take only so many 4.0 and high sat/act scorers. Michigan can, and does, take more of those students both instate and out of state. Obviously, not every student is rated as highly as the top few percent, but in overall numbers Michigan has more top students than UVA and UNC. You can't argue that point. If you do, you're just being stubborn.</p>