I meant bottom half for Rochester. I’m not sure if they publish a Common Data Set, but according to collegedata, 58% of their incoming class had a GPA of 3.75+. Average GPA was 3.8. You’re close to the bottom half.
Yes, build those relationships over the coming months.
I meant bottom half for Rochester. I’m not sure if they publish a Common Data Set, but according to collegedata, 58% of their incoming class had a GPA of 3.75+. Average GPA was 3.8. You’re close to the bottom half.<
[/QUOTE]
Do you know if this is unweighted or weighted? My school doesn’t do weighted averages.
Ok, you want a range of schools. URoch is a good one, especially for your combination of music and CS. Are you interested in liberal arts colleges (LACs) or universities? Schools that like scores more than gpas are hard to come by; I’ve heard Vanderbilt and Wash U StLouis are two. You might look at Carleton, Swarthmore, both reaches that have taken lower GPAs from my school. Those for your reaches; look at Bucknell, Franklin and Marshall, Case Western Reserve, for match. State school for safety; if you’re NMF, look for some merit schools that like NMFs,as well.
I haven’t thought too much about LAC’s yet, but I would consider one.
Another school I may apply to is USC because of NMS.
Would I have a chance at Swarthmore? From what I’ve heard it’s almost as selective as the top ivies.
^^^ Unweighted. High schools can have different weighting systems, or none at all, so colleges will use the unweighted as a base, but they will also look at the HS weighted or calculate their own weighted (like the UCs do). So if it’s not specified as a “weighted gpa”, you can safely assume it is unweighted.
Does being instate give me an advantage?
Swarthmore is very tough. Again, you MIGHT squeak in with stellar test scores, recommendations, and essays (my kid also got in there).
Have you done any college visits yet? Have you spent time with a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges? Now is the time to be doing that, you don’t want to be applying randomly in the fall or trying to squeeze in visits then. Finish your testing and visits this year (and visit over the summer if needed) so you are ready to apply in the fall. Fall of senior year is stressful enough without trying to get your test scores (including subject tests) up and make a lot of visits.
I agree with @marysidney. A state school for a safety is usually the way to go due to selectivity and cost.
Being in-state for a private school does not give you an official/published/mandated advantage, but you will have an advantage because of proximity. The school has reason to believe you’re more likely to attend, thereby increasing their yield and increasing their ranking, so being located close to a private can be somewhat of an advantage. There are lots of other factors that would trump that advantage, though, so you can’t depend on proximity to give you any edge for a private, the way you can for an in-state public that has a mandate to accept so many in-state applicants.
Have you done any college visits yet? Have you spent time with a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges? Now is the time to be doing that, you don’t want to be applying randomly in the fall or trying to squeeze in visits then. Finish your testing and visits this year (and visit over the summer if needed) so you are ready to apply in the fall. Fall of senior year is stressful enough without trying to get your test scores (including subject tests) up and make a lot of visits.<
[/QUOTE]
My school has the fiske guide to colleges which I will check out after midterms. I plan to start visiting over february break. Should I visit every college I apply too? It could get expensive if I have to fly.
Being in-state for a private school does not give you an official/published/mandated advantage, but you will have an advantage because of proximity. The school has reason to believe you’re more likely to attend, thereby increasing their yield and increasing their ranking, so being located close to a private can be somewhat of an advantage. There are lots of other factors that would trump that advantage, though, so you can’t depend on proximity to give you any edge for a private, the way you can for an in-state public that has a mandate to accept so many in-state applicants. <
[/QUOTE]
That must be why people from my school have so much success with URoch. I probably will look into the state schools. My understanding is that state schools are very numbers heavy, so do EC’s really matter for those? I still find it hard to tell whether I have good or bad EC’s. My EC’s sure are a lot of time (close to 2 hours a day outside of school for music alone), but I don’t know how good they look.
You can waste a lot of time if you apply to colleges you haven’t visited. Colleges may look fine on paper or online, but sometimes it is clear after visiting that it isn’t a good fit for you. Some people have the attitude that they will visit after acceptances are in. Problems with that are (1) the time period can be really short, many acceptances come out in late March and you only have until May 1 to decide, (2) tickets then need to be purchased on very short notice, and can be expensive – a few schools give vouchers to cover part or all of the cost of flights to accepted student days, but it is a very small number of schools, (3) April is often a busy time for seniors with spring ECs having performances, state tournaments, etc., making it hard to get away, (4) you could end up applying to mostly schools you don’t want to attend after all, and (5) lots of students end up having to just drop schools that might be a very good fit off their list in April because there isn’t time to visit them all or it is too expensive – schools that might have been a great school for them.
So, sometimes it is not possible to visit. But visit if you can. I’d really recommend against attending someplace you haven’t visited, and leaving it until the end has quite a few pitfalls as described above. If you absolutely can’t visit, do the following:
Be sure you pick schools that are reaches, matches, and safeties, and be sure your safeties are schools you would genuinely want to attend, are very likely to admit you, and you know you can afford.
On the whole, ECs matter more for private schools which tend to have more “holistic” admission policies, but that doesn’t mean ECs are not considered for publics. They’re “considered” pretty much everywhere, but if you feel that your ECs are mediocre, that’s definitely something to think about when targeting schools. A school’s Common Data Set should tell you how much they consider ECs: very important, important, considered, or not considered. I believe collegedata has that info, too.
I often find it hard to determine the quality of an applicant’s ECs, relative to others, so you’re not alone there! Hopefully other posters can weigh in, maybe someone with a music background can assess your ECs accurately.
URochester can’t be a safety due to selectivity (regardless of SAT score). It can only be a match.
A safety for you would be SUNY Geneseo or SUNY Bing.
How much can your parents afford?
Update: Will be finding out about SAT scores on April 2nd. Fairly confident about how well I did, I’m guessing at least 2300, with most of the lost points being on writing, but it depends how the curve turns out.
I have also visited Wesleyan and Vassar and liked both of them very much, particularly Wesleyan. My grades are also picking up, mid term grades were 100 for physics, 99 for precalc, 98 for spanish, 97 for english, 92 for APUSH multiple choice, and 76 on the apush dbq (my teacher is cruel).
Vassar and Wesleyan will have many opportunities for you to play music. Both have excellent music departments. We are most familiar with music at Vassar. Vassar just had their orchestra concert where they feature two students in solo concertos. It always draws a huge crowd of students, parents, faculty, community people and even the college president. You will have many options for chamber music, jazz ensembles etc. If you want lots of music, Vassar is great!
2310 overall Sat
800 CR 780 Math 730 Writing
Wow, congratulations, those are impressive SAT scores. Well, now you’re done with the SAT Reasoning 
However, regardless of what you do, include colleges that admit 30 to 40% of their applicants, and colleges that admit more than 40% of their applicants and/or your state flagship’s honors college (pay attention to deadlines, especially wrt merit scholarships).