<p>Here's a little bit about me:
Junior
GPA 3.9 unweighted
PSAT 26
ACT 33 sophomore year
taking ACT & SAT soon </p>
<p>Junior classes:
AP US History
AP Language
AP Physics C
DE Calc III first semester
DE Discrete math second semester
French 4
Model UN</p>
<p>Senior year:
AP French
AP Literature
AP Computer science
DE Number theory & cryptography
UN
(DE Physics, possibly)</p>
<p>I do want to study math and maybe computer engineering. I'm applying to MIT, Princeton, UChicago, UMichigan, CalTech and HMudd so far. Do you think I have a mix of reach, match, safety? What other schools should I add? Thanks for helping.</p>
<p>PSAT score =226 (sorry)
Michigan residents are either Blue OR Green. You’re probably right about MSU being a safety. Do you know of any LAC with a good math program?</p>
<p>Most of those schools are strongly competitive to even 4.0+/2400 SATs are a cr*p-shoot. You need a broader range. Your HS guidance office should have information to help you narrow your search. Our county system has summary statistics and scatter-charts showing GPA and SAT or ACT and admission success/fail for a large number of colleges.</p>
<p>All of these schools are very difficult to get into. I’d apply to UM early so you hear back in December. As a resident of the state, you should get in , but it is a competitive school and I’m not sure you can consider it a safety until you get accepted. If you don’t get into UM by December, I’d put one or two real safety’s in the mix (maybe like a URochester or something similar).</p>
<p>Not entirely sure what my family can afford. UMich is in reach financially, but that same amount is a much smaller percentage when applied to the top tier schools. I’ve read Princeton helps students out a lot.</p>
<p>Princeton has the healthiest FA of any college but is a reach for everyone. Also UMich offers most of its grants based on need. Are you actually low income or mid/high with little funding available.</p>
<p>I’ll tell you something: at the end of my junior year, I planned on applying to 4 schools, 1 reach, 2 safties, and 1 match.</p>
<p>By the winter of senior year, I applied to 23 schools in a variety of locations and cost.</p>
<p>My advice: apply to a broad range of schools, safties to reaches. You never know what can happen. I applied to mostly reaches and I haven’t been rejected to any yet.</p>
<p>Don’t limit yourself. Applying to 23 schools costs A LOT of money, but when spring comes, my options will be unlimited, assuming I get accepted to some more. If you want to weigh things like aid packages, I don’t see how applying to a bunch of schools can hurt.</p>
That depends on how you feel about getting into a school you can’t afford. If you just want to say “I made it into…” but not go there, fine. Otherwise why throw away $ on applying to a school you can’t possibly get through? Most parents on these boards will tell you the first screening you should do for school admissions is affordability. If you haven’t discussed this with your parents you should now.</p>
<p>As long as we’re offering general advice, mine is to apply early. NOT early decision, but early action and rolling admission. If you get into schools you like, you have a better spring and can take some off the list in December. If you get rejected, you can polish your app, talk more to your recommenders, and add more safety and match schools.</p>