<p>I've applied to 4, but I've heard that most people apply to a lot more. Should I send out a few more? Right now I only have one reach and one safety.</p>
<p>I think with your stats, you should apply to more colleges. </p>
<p>Also, why did you choose Middlebury as your reach? Do they put more emphasis on test scores?</p>
<p>@ali</p>
<p>I don’t really think my stats are very good (anyone who doesn’t wanna search my post history, it’s 3.0 GPA and 34 ACT), and I applied to Midd 'cause it’s just my ideal school. I really don’t expect to get in, but I’d love it if I did.</p>
<p>I mean with your stats it’s a toss up at a lot of schools, so you should apply to more.</p>
<p>You should add at least another safety school.</p>
<p>@wufran</p>
<p>I’m actually having a lot of trouble coming up with any true safeties. Most of the schools that appeal to me are higher tier LACs, since they give the best financial aid. It’s easy to pile them on the list to fill in my reaches, but I haven’t found very many (any) affordable schools I could call safeties, barring community college of course.</p>
<p>the average/ideal is 6 schools: 2 safeties, 2 matches, 2 reaches. i would definitely apply to a couple more schools, at least. there over 3,000 colleges and universities in america. i’m pretty sure you can find at least 1 that can be a safety ahahaha</p>
<p>It looks like you have a good upward trend. What’s your GPA without freshman year? You could apply to some colleges that don’t look at that (though to be fair, the only ones that come to mind are Princeton, Stanford, and the UCs, half of which will probably be impossible for you and the other half of which will cost too much…). I’m sure there are others, though, so it might be worth a look.</p>
<p>It also sounded like your GPA was higher for your school than it would be for most others. Do you know what your valedictorian might have? I have a friend who goes to a school where their val apparently might have a 3.75, if they’re lucky- is it a similar situation for you?</p>
<p>I’m applying to 14.</p>
<p>You’re only going to get to do this once in your life, why not go all out? A couple of years from now you won’t know if you would have gotten into a school if you didn’t apply to it. Might as well apply to a lot.</p>
<p>@wulfran
It would be ~3.25 without my Freshman year, and I believe our valedictorian has a 3.8, so you’re right on both accounts, but even looking at it like that, my GPA isn’t very good.</p>
<p>@HelpWithSchools
I think I’m gonna wait for my Midd and OSU decisions to come back (2 weeks for Midd, any day now for OSU), and then apply to a few more if I’m rejected or deferred at those. I have Hamilton, Grinnell, and Beloit on my list right now, but I’m gonna need to pick some safer schools if I don’t get at least one acceptance.</p>
<p>Your 3.0/3.25, though, is considerably different from one at my school, where the valedictorian might have a 4.4 or thereabouts. Taking that into account, it would be a little easier to find a safety. If your school uses a different system of point values for calculating your GPA, you could try converting your official one to an unofficial, more-standardized one, which could give you a better comparison to average GPAs at colleges. If it’s entirely because it’s almost impossible to get As, though, you might have a harder time.</p>