Help needed with college list

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hey guys. Everyone around here seems to make these threads at one point or another, so I figured what the hell. I'm going to put my GPA as UW/W </p>

<p>Freshman: 3.0/3.7
Sophomore: 3.7/4.3
Junior: 4.0/5.0
Overall (this is an estimate): 3.7ish/4.4ish
My grades have a pretty dramatic upward trend, and I'm hoping that will really help me out. In all honesty, I had difficulty adjusting to high school and my grades suffered initially.</p>

<p>I've taken 4 APs thus far and gotten 5s on all of them, and my entire schedule next year is APs. I think I'll have nine or ten when I graduate. </p>

<p>I have a 33 ACT</p>

<p>ECs:
- I volunteer quite a bit. I don't really count the hours, but I've worked at a local soup kitchen since freshman year. I probably put in about 5-10 hours a week.
- I'm a member of our schools engineering club. I've been in quite a few competitions and won a few awards but nothing really significant.
- Classical Guitarist (8 or so years)
- Part-time job
- The main thing I do outside of schools is art. I'm not looking to be an art major, but I have a well developed portfolio. I plan on sending it to any school that displays some interest. It seems like the small LACs tend to have an interest in extras like that.</p>

<p>Anyway, my college list so far is as follows:
Amherst College
Bowdoin College
Brown University
Carleton College
Haverford College
Macalester College
Reed College
Swarthmore College
University of Chicago
Williams College </p>

<p>I recently made a thread about my current interests and which of these schools fits them best, but as long as a school has a good history and/or English department, I'll consider it. I created this thread more to see what safeties you guys would recommend and whether any of my listed schools are just completely unrealistic. As you can see I have lots of LACs on my list, but I'm open to other suggestions. Know that I do like small schools though; I don't want to be going to Madison or anything like that. </p>

<p>You guys have been really helpful in the past, and I'm sure this time will be no different. Thanks as always.</p>

2

<p>Looks reasonable. You should have a 99% chance of getting into at least one of them.</p>

3

<p>Haha yeah, that’s essentially what my college counselor said. Still it’d be nice to have a few safeties just to ease my parents’ minds.</p>

4

<p>I think vossron and your counselor are too optimistic. Look, you’ll be a strong contender at all of these colleges and you might get into most or possibly even all of them, but given their extremely low acceptance rates you have to consider most of them “reaches.” Macalester and Reed are the exceptions: they’re matches, possibly even low matches; but they’re not safeties. I’d be comfortable with your list if you had one true safety, i.e., a college with an acceptance rate > 50% where your stats (both SATs and unweighted GPA/class rank) put you well into the top quartile of enrolled freshmen, and you’d be happy to go if all else failed. I don’t think you have that here. I don’t have any idea what that safety should be without having some idea what your geographic or other preferences are. Dickinson? Earlham? Beloit? Lawrence U? Occidental? Based on your somewhat negative comment about “Madison” (by which I assume you mean UW-Madison) I take it that’s your state flagship and you’re not interested. That’s OK, but then it sets a pretty high bar for you to find a private school that’s better than UW-Madison but easier to get into—and frankly, those are few and far between.</p>

5

<p>Thanks a lot for the response bclintonk. Yeah, I definitely understand that while I’m going to be a contender for most of these schools, a lot of people applying will have better academic stats than me. I mean I haven’t been a perfect student. That last comment sounded a bit arrogant, and I didn’t mean it to come out that way.</p>

<p>And to elaborate on my counselor’s comment, he did say there would be an extremely low chance that I got into none of the schools I chose, but he then went on to say that it is dangerous playing the averages and that it’d be best if I added a safety or two. He recommended Evergreen State (I think that’s what it’s called) and Lawrence.</p>

<p>And for preferences, I live in Illinois but location is not that big of a factor for me. I’ve lived near Chicago my whole life, but I know that I’ll be able to function in a small town too. I’d cap off the amount of undergrads I desire at around 10k, and ideally I’d prefer much much less than that (like 2.5k or below generally). But yeah, just let me know if you’d like more information. I want to apply to safeties that I’ll enjoy, but I can’t exactly afford trips to visit schools at the moment. I’m kind of relying on other peoples’ suggestions.</p>

6

<p>“I think vossron and your counselor are too optimistic.”</p>

<p>If the probability of getting into these 10 schools is 50% each (just an example, some are higher, some are lower), then the probability of getting into at least one of them is 99.90235% (1 - 0.5^10).</p>

7

<p>Let’s not get into the probability debate again… :slight_smile: I would look at Kenyon and Denison as good match/safeties.</p>

8

<p>Sorry, I just meant to explain…</p>

9

<p>^^^^ maxdel,</p>

<p>Based on the other colleges on your list, I’d suggest you consider Beloit, Lawrence U, or Earlham as possible safeties. I say this because the schools you list generally have what I’d call a “high academic” character, and these schools may be similar in character though less selective.</p>

<p>Do you have a class rank? Most of these schools don’t report an average or median GPA, but all have stats on how many of their entering students are in the top 10% of their HS class.</p>

<p>^^^vossron,</p>

<p>Here’s my concern. The OP is a strong candidate. That 33 ACT is impressive, translating to roughly 1460 SAT CR + M—a very good score, but it places him in the second quartile of incoming freshmen at all these schools except one (Macalester). As for grades, the 3.7 unweighted GPA, while good, is not outstanding. Hard to say exactly where that places him with these schools as only one, Reed, posts the average GPA of its incoming class—3.9, significantly higher than the OP’s. Maybe adcoms will discount the OP’s freshman year grades; maybe not. These are all highly selective schools with plenty of strong applicants to choose from; they all have very low admit rates, most ranging from the low teens to the mid 20s. In short, with a very good but not quite outstanding ACT and middling grades, you simply can’t say the OP’s chances of admission to any of these schools are 50%, or anything close to it—the possible exceptions being Reed and Macalester where his chances may approach 50%, making them matches while all the others are reaches. But it’s entirely possible that the same factor that shuts him out at any one of these schools—a good-but-not-stellar GPA, well below the average for Reed and presumably also for all the rest—also shuts him out of all of them. It’s simply not random in the way your probabalistic reasoning implies. That’s why you can’t say it’s 99% likely that he gets into one of them. And that’s why he needs a true safety.</p>

<p>Here’s how the OP stacks up:</p>

<p>Amherst: 2nd quartile ACT, GPA n/a (but average is likely >3.7), admit rate 17.6%
Bowdoin: 2nd quartile ACT, GPA n/a (but likely >3.7), admit rate 19.0%
Brown: 2nd quartile ACT, GPA n/a (but likely >3.7), admit rate 14.0%
Carleton: 2nd quartile ACT, GPA n/a (but likely >3.7), admit rate 29.8%
Haverford: 2nd quartile ACT, GPA n/a (but likely >3.7), admit rate 25.1%
Macalester: 1st quartile ACT, GPA n/a (but likely >3.7), admit rate 40.6%
Reed: 2nd quartile ACT, below average GPA (3.9), admit rate 34.3%
Swarthmore: 2nd quartile ACT, GPA n/a (but likely >3.7), admit rate 17.7%
University of Chicago: 2nd quartile ACT, GPA n/a (but likely >3.7), admit rate 34.7%
Williams: 2nd quartile ACT, GPA n/a (but likely > 3.7), admit rate 18.4%</p>

10

<p>Thanks for your responses bclintonk, it’s nice to get a more realistic opinion. My high school no longer reports class rank, but I imagine I’d be near the threshold for top 10%. It’s a very competitive school, so I may be somewhat borderline. Discounting my freshman grades I could confidently say I’d be in the top 10%.</p>

<p>As for the ACT, would you recommend retaking it? I took it once, got the 33, and really had no desire to take it again. I felt like that was sufficient for the types of schools I’m applying to. All of the schools I listed emphasized this idea that testing is not THAT important to them (I think Bowdoin was test optional). I think at this point I should really be focusing on the essays, as I feel like they are what will most likely determine my admittance or rejection from a lot of these schools.</p>

11

<p>I’m going to double post since it’s been a couple days</p>

<p>So far I’m looking at Grinnell, Lawrence, Whitman, and Dickinson as my matches. Do those sound reasonable? I’m still struggling with safeties, but it sounds like Ohio Wesleyan may be a fit for me. If you guys have more suggestions, let me know.</p>

12

<p>I happen to agree that you have a wonderful list of colleges. I also think you’re in at several. But BClintonK has a point about no safeties. Do I think you’ll need to attend your safety? No. Is it sound practice to have one? Yes.</p>

13

<p>You might want to look at your state flagship as a safety, though it seems you favor smaller schools/LACs.</p>

14

<p>Wow, your list and stats are eerily similar to mine. Here are my suggestions:</p>

<p>Bard
Beloit
Bennington
Gustavus Adolphus
Oberlin
Occidental
Sarah Lawrence
Skidmore
St. Olaf</p>

<p>Also your ACT score is better than it’s being made out to be. According to Fiske 2009, 33 is the cutoff of the mid 50% for Amherst, Brown, University of Chicago, and Williams, and above for Carleton, Macalester, and Reed. A 33 is competitive and not in any way going to hurt you.</p>

15

<p>well, your stats look great. i would say that the only thing that might slightly hurt u at the super-competitive schools on your list is your ECs. as for safeties, i second Oberlin as a match/safety & would tell u that u might want to look at some second-tier LACs as well. just be sure to write a fantastic essay, & you’ll be fine (:</p>