Ideas for safeties/matches for me?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Hi all! I'm looking at colleges and I am trying to come up with a few viable safety or match schools. I have a few, but I'm not really psyched about them, and I was hoping you guys had some ideas for me. </p>

<p>Here's my info: </p>

<p>Junior at private, K-12, prestigious prep school in CA</p>

<p>4.3 (may actually end up as 4.35 by the end of the year) weighted GPA - school does not rank. Technically it is out of five, but nobody gets a five - it is impossible. (would mean having an A+ in eight APs per year with no lunch period and the school puts a cap on 4 APs/year) Valedectorians usually have ~4.7</p>

<p>2250 SAT (800 CR, 720 M, 730 W)</p>

<p>All Honors or AP classes
-Freshman year Honors everything except Algebra II
-last year AP Euro and Honors everything else
-this year APUSH, AP French, Honors Precalc, Honors English, Honors Biology (currently highest average in H.Bio)
-next year AP Bio (or maybe APES), AP English, AP Calc AB, AP Psych</p>

<p>National Honor Society and French National Honor Society</p>

<p>Active participent in our nationally recognized theater program - member of elite "Certificate" program in Musical Theater.</p>

<p>Member of award-winning productions, have been selected to perform at world's largest theater festival in Edinburgh.</p>

<p>Selected to be one of four Student Directors for next year - will be responsible for casting, directing, and producing a full play with peer cast members.</p>

<p>Competitive equestrian at national level</p>

<p>Active volunteer (American Cancer Society's Relay For Life as a cancer survivor, children's homeless shelters, etc) & tutor (3rd grader and 7th grader)</p>

<p>I can WRITE! :) </p>

<p>Will most likely pursue major in Psychology - will be taking courses in this subject at Stanford Summer College. </p>

<p>I'm looking for SAFETY/MATCH schools on the East or West coasts only, please. No Midwest or any further South than the Carolinas (although I am looking at Vandy). </p>

<p>Thanks!!</p>

2

<p>East Coast – with your numbers – safety or near safety</p>

<p>Northeastern – (often generous with merit scholarship money)
Maryland – Same
Fordham – Same</p>

<p>Match --</p>

<p>Providing a list of “match” schools is very hard for someone in your category. Taking a look at Vandy – your stats seem to match up well with their incoming class, however, they take less than 20%, so it’s hard to say anyone is a match. The best you can do is apply to many.</p>

<p>The usual suspects would include:</p>

<p>BU, BC, Tufts, Brandeis, NYU, Georgetown, GW, Cornell (both Arts and Human Ecology), Penn, Brown (these three are reach ish are reach ish). I’m sure I’m leaving out a few.</p>

<p>I can’t help on west coast.</p>

3

<p>Cost limitations? You may want to run the net price calculator on any prospective schools. Your safeties must be affordable, as well as being certain admits and schools you like. Most out of state public schools do not give much financial aid to out of state students, though some have relatively low list prices.</p>

<p>UCs, CSUs, and community-college-then-transfer-to-UC-or-CSU are obvious safety candidates for a California resident.</p>

<p>UC and CSU calculate GPA their own way as described here: [url=&lt;a href=“Cal State Apply | CSU”&gt;Cal State Apply | CSU]CSUMentor</a> - Plan for College - High School Students - GPA Calculator<a href=“UC%20and%20CSU%20differ%20in%20that%20CSU%20considers%2012th%20grade%20course%20grades%20if%20available,%20but%20that%20is%20not%20likely%20to%20be%20relevant%20to%20you”>/url</a>.</p>

<p>Virginia and North Carolina supposedly do offer decent financial aid to out of state students, though they are probably not safeties for admissions. Virginia Tech, NCSU, and SUNY schools are relatively inexpensive at list price for out of state students.</p>

<p>Excluding the midwest excludes some fine lower cost schools like Minnesota - Twin Cities, and some good public LAC type schools like Minnesota - Morris and Truman State.</p>

<p>Stanford’s summer session offers psychology courses which include one lower division statistical methods course and several upper division courses. Seems like if you are ready to take the upper division courses, you are past the AP psychology level.</p>