<p>
Are you really asking that question? English? You can get a good english degree at virtually any 4 year accredited college. Why would a research university be better at it? Here is the list of per capita PhD programs. Look at the Humanities <a href=“Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College”>http://www.reed.edu/ir/phd.html</a> I don’t see any large public research Us there.</p>
<p>I meant engineering sorry</p>
<p>
I can’t answer that question because I’m not privy to your teacher recommendations and essays. For colleges that read applications holistically, such as WashU and Rice, those are really the deciding factors for students that are not in the top 10% of their class. If you feel confident about your teacher recommendations – that your teachers will write that you are a leader of classroom, that you are a model of academic excellence and moral responsibility, that your writing is a triumph of creativity, analysis and sophisticated language – and you also feel you have written a thought provoking essay that shows intellectual passion, maturity, and your love of learning, then those schools might be still within reach. There are too many subjective factors that come in to play to know if you are “out of reach.”</p>
<p>Also note that many colleges are much more lenient ED. Can you find out from your school counselor or some other resource what the success rate was for kids from your school outside the top 10% who applied to WashU ED?</p>
<p>I’ll see if they keep those kind of statistics. To be honest, I haven’t really even talked to my counselor until this year. </p>
<p>It’s pretty common for students to just start talking to GCs in junior/senior year. I wouldn’t worry about that.</p>
<p>I would apply to schools that you want to attend without worrying about the class rank. However, all competitive schools are just that, competitive so you need financial backups that you are more than likely get into and can afford. </p>
<p>Hey Gibby,
I just want to comment on this “I remember noticing that HYPSM had not accepted one Stuy student with below a 94 average in the last 10 years, regardless of SAT/ACT scores.”
I am a current student at Stuyvesant, according to data from the Stuy website, in the past 4 years,
15 students got into HYPSM with an average GPA below 94, and I am not even looking at EA/ED data. </p>
<p>…
I just looked at ED data for MIT, and 6 students with an average GPA below 94 were accepted from the 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 school year in total.</p>