I want to go to a top 20 school...

<p>Yeah, I know its late to be deciding where to apply, but I didn't think I had any possibility of going to some of the top schools until recently. </p>

<p>Here's my stats:
Im a Caucasian female in the midwest
I got a 1900 on the sat
* CR: 710
*MATH: 510
*Writing: 680
I have a diagnosed learning disability in math.
I got a 31 on the ACT
*CR: 35
*ENG: 33
*Math: 23
*SCI: 33</p>

<p>My gpa is a 2.7 ***. but has increased from sophomore year at a 2.4 to senior year at a 3.5</p>

<p>My gpa is low due to many factors, however my family life being number one. I have lived with an abusive alcoholic father all my life. Sophomore year he tried to strangle my mother. Life hasn't been easy during high school.
This is all mentioned in my essay, not "victim-like" at all. </p>

<p>What are my chances/ which schools would I fair better at?</p>

<p>any one want to actually comment?</p>

<p>I think you have a fairly good shot, but chances threads are meaningless and have no correlation to your actual chances of admittance.</p>

<p>A top twenty school with a 1900 and a 2.7 is a long shot…</p>

<p>I don’t know about your chances, but I would look around for schools that have a January 15th or later deadline. I know Emory University (Atlanta) is my last deadline (January 15th) but I don’t know of other schools that go much later than that. Good luck!</p>

<p>Sending the SAT would be a bad idea, when your ACT is significantly better.</p>

<p>Your GPA makes it pretty much impossible. An upward trend is good, but that one doesn’t seem like enough, when talking about the very most selective school.</p>

<p>Of course, I have no idea how they look at learning disabilities, and if you can convince them that the senior year grades are your actual capabilities, now that you’ve gotten a handle on the learning disability, and with the explanation of your family life, your chances seem to go up, but I don’t know if it’s enough to give you a shot.</p>

<p>Obviously, if you’re going to try for one of the schools in the “Top 20” (kind of an arbitrary line), you’d want to aim for one with a higher acceptance rate. Of course, some may be known for being more understanding of learning disabilities, but I have no idea which these would be.</p>