HS Junior Wondering What Schools I Should Apply To

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

About me: I’m a 17 year old white female living in Seattle, Washington from a low income background, living with an anxiety disorder which has greatly affected my grades throughout the past three years (I am taking medication for this now, it has been working amazingly).

My anxiety disorder had previously caused me to miss 1-2 days a week for school, causing my grades to plummet. You can clearly see in my GPA how much it affected me on a day to day basis, and now that I’m taking my medication I feel better and my grades reflect this.

My grades: For my Freshman and Sophomore years I held a 3.2 unweighted, with a 3.5 weighted. Just recently, and at the end of my Sophomore year (when I had begun to take my medication) I started getting a 3.8 - 4.0 unweighted, 4.2 - 4.5 weighted. My Junior year is almost over, and I’m ending it with a 4.0 unweighted and 4.8 weighted.

My course load:
Freshman - Algebra I, Integrated Science, Honors Freshman English, WA History, PE, Computer Foundations, Spanish 2
Sophomore - AP World History (3), AP Macroeconomics (3), Geometry, Honors Sophomore English, Biology, Spanish 3
Junior - AP English Language and Composition (?), Chemistry, AP United States History (?), AP Environmental Science (?), AP Spanish Language and Culture (?) , Pre-Calculus
Senior - AP English Literature (?), AP Biology (?), AP Statistics (?), AP Government (?), Human Anatomy and Physiology, Art

PSAT Score in 2015: 1100
PSAT Score in 2016: 1280

I will update this thread with my SAT/ACT scores in the spring.

My EC’s and ETC:

  • National Honor Society
  • Spanish Honor Society
  • Two years of JV swimming
  • 100+ hours of community service
  • Model UN
  • Random Acts of Kindness
  • Speech and Debate
  • (2017) Working as a lab assistant (biology)
  • (2017) Science Expedition in Alaska
  • (2017) HTML and CSS Certified
  • MENSA
  • GSA
  • Microsoft Word / Excel / PowerPoint Certified
  • Spring Musical

Extraneous Facts:

  • Due to my economic standing, I will be applying for scholarships.
  • I now have a 140 wpm typing speed.
  • I’m gay.
  • Favored to receive various awards via the College Board for my AP studies.

Alright, now to the colleges:

Safety Schools: Washington State University, Seattle College
Reachable-Goals: University of Washington, Pepperdine
Reaches: UCLA, University of Chicago, Northwestern, UC Berkeley
Major Reaches: Stanford, Notre Dame, Yale

Please reply with:

  • What type of schools I actually have a chance at
  • What I can do to improve my chances
  • What schools I should apply to

It’s my personal dream to go to UCLA or University of Chicago - I know it’s a long shot but I’m willing to put the work in.

I’m aspiring to become a surgeon / doctor, but I am considering double majoring as I have 60+ college credits racked up.

Thank you for reading this, please consider leaving a reply - I will reply to all of them.

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Hi! Fellow junior/anxiety sufferer/etc here! First of all, congratulations on your improvement - it takes a lot to pull yourself up :slight_smile:
Unfortunately, your GPA is problematic, but it’s better to improve over three years than to start strong and plummet after your freshman year. If you perform well on standardized tests (above the middle 50% of the colleges you apply to) this will help to offset that.
If your community service experience is in a field that is important to you, I would play it up. The lab assistantship is awesome. One thing I would try to do next year, if it’s something you can handle, is to go for some leadership positions. Maybe try to be a GSA officer or something similar? Alternatively, starting something like a coding club or a mental health awareness campaign would show proactive-ness (?). I understand that you may not have the time or the spoons to do that.
I think Pepperdine is a good match if you work on your SAT/ACT scores.

3

Run net price calculators on each school website. UCLA & Berkeley are going to be out of reach financially because you are from out of state.

What is your overall UW at end of junior year? An upward trend is helpful, but does not offset your lower grades completely.

Also, many of the schools on your list aren’t going to accept the college credits you already have.

You PSAT scores doesn’t appear to be in the ballpark for Yale, Stanford, or UChicago. Especially with a lower GPA. Northwestern & ND are still big reaches.

Have you got a copy of the Fiske Guide to Colleges? It is a good resource to research schools. You probably need schools that give good need based aid, so most out of state public universities won’t be a good fit. You might look at Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall, and Mount Holyoke as matches that provide good need based aid.

4

@OneNormalKnight First off- thank you for the wonderful reply! I’ve been thinking about a mental health week at my school, as the health classes barely talk about it at all here. I haven’t really thought about leadership positions yet, but I will definitely now. GSA officer sounds very realistic by the end of the year :slight_smile:

I’ll definitely work harder on studying for those standardized tests!

@intparent Thank you for your reply - I think I’ll be looking at more in-state schools now after doing the net price on out of state schools. My UW GPA will be around a 3.6-3.7 but I will definitely update this thread at the end of the year to get a more accurate representation of it.

I’ll look into that book, and those various matches. Thank you!

5

So you need to be clear on this. Out of state PUBLIC schools generally do not give good need based financial aid (there are a couple exceptions like UNC and UVA, and UMichigan has gotten better recently, but your stats are not aligned for them).

There are a few public universities that give good MERIT aid to OOS students with fairly high stats (U of Alabama is one).

Private universities or liberal arts colleges can give good need based aid – you want to look for colleges that “meet need”. It is, of course, their definition of need and not yours – but if you run the net price calculator on each college website, you will at least get an idea of what the cost would be. One problem, though, is that the best aid comes from the schools that are hardest to get into – but there are some schools that meet need that fall in your academic range. Improving your standardized test scores would help with this for sure. Some of those schools that meet need are not “need blind” – students who need a lot of aid are less likely to be accepted. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be accepted – just that you need to be a strong applicant for them.

Another thing to know is that merit aid and need based aid don’t stack at a lot of schools. If you get awarded both, a lot of colleges just replace some of the need based aid with whatever merit aid you get (and even do this with outside scholarships). They might reduce your loans or some of the student contribution amount by the scholarship, but not all schools do this. And the web sites aren’t usually clear – you sometimes have to ask the financial aid office at the college for clarification. The main message here is don’t assume you can get the need based aid shown on the net price calculator and then merit aid to further reduce your costs; it often does not work that way. But varies college by college.

6

If your ultimate goal is medical school focus on colleges where you can excel (GPA above 3.8). This may mean going to a lower ranked college so that you are the big fish.

I agree that with others that you should focus on smaller liberal arts colleges, especially those where you can get good aid and get high grades.