My sister is a rising senior at a competitive suburban high school. She has taken mostly honors classes, with “on level” classes in math and has also taken a few AP’s: AP Government, AP Lang, AP Psych and IB Bio. Her unweighted GPA is a 3.8 and her weighted is about a 4.3-4.4. She has ADHD and some learning challenges and her test taking abilities aren’t great/ do not correspond with the rest of her academic record. She may or may not be taking the SAT (depending on COVID) but will likely utilize the test optional options that have been coming out at most of her universities due to COVID. She wants to major in Psychology and got a 4 on her psychology AP but failed 2 of her other AP’s mostly due to struggles with the timing of the test. She hopes to keep these scores off of her app and hope that admissions officers won’t fixate on it. She got A’s in both of those AP classes. Her GPA may not be quite as strong as it seems in comparison to other people at her school because the school and county does have a good amount of grade inflation. However, she has never gotten a grade lower than B and has an upward trend with all A’s and one B in her junior year. She is a very hardworking and diligent student and has cultivated positive relationships with teachers and her recs will speak to that. She will also work on having strong essays with me, as I did well in the essay-writing part of the college process. She has held down two jobs, participated in a year-long civil rights and social justice program which she cares deeply about, and been on 2 varsity sports teams, POMS and gymnastics, for 3 or 4 years of high school, as well as some other assorted volunteering/clubs.
What she’s looking for in a school: she wants a strong academic environment but not too ambitious/intense. would love warm weather if possible, but it obviously isn’t a dealbreaker based on the list below. she is open to all geographic regions. she likes to party to a reasonable extent, but wants an environment that is racially diverse and somewhat liberal. She hopes to get involved with social justice and animal rights advocacy.
Below is what she is thinking for her college list. Would love tips on if it seems we’ve categorized reaches/targets/safeties well, and also other schools that seem to fit her.
Reaches
-Tulane University
-University of Texas at Austin
-University of Miami
-BU, CGS program
Targets
-Syracuse
-UVM
-University of Florida
-University of Denver
-University of Wisconsin
-Elon University
-SDSU
Safeties
-College of Charleston
-UC Boulder
-James Madison University