Hi all! I’m a high school senior with a list of way too many colleges to apply to but very few match or safety schools which I realize is a bad idea. My main criteria are: good programs in econ/ir/business, really good financial aid (need-based and/or merit), medium-size ideally around 6,000, and a really interesting and passionate student body.
Current College list in approximate ranking order:
1.) U of Chicago
2.) Stanford
3.) U Penn (with Huntsman, lower without)
4.) Brown
5.) Georgetown
6.) Harvard
7.) Johns Hopkins
8.) Claremont McKenna
9.) Cornell (legacy)
10.) UC San Diego
11.) Washington U
12.) UC Berkely
13.) George Mason (accepted to speech team)
14.) UC Los Angeles
15.) UC Santa Barbara
Test Scores:
Old SAT 1st try - 2330 (800 reading, 780 math, 750 writing)
Math 2 - 760
Spanish w/ Listening - 740
8 AP tests, 6 of which are 5’s
Just took a new round of subject tests with math, spanish, and lit and will be taking the ACT pretty soon
Academics:
Unranked
UC GPA - 4.25
Before senior year: UW - 3.8 W - 4.1
After senior year (counting expected semester 1 grades) UW - 3.85 W - 4.3
Had pretty low grades 9th and 10th with few weighted, straight A’s in all weighted courses 11th and 12th so strong upwards trend but shaky start
Senior year course-load: AP Microecon AP Gov AP Art History AP Comp Lit AP Calc BC AP Physics
Background:
California pretty competitive public school
Low income white male
Extracurriculars/awards/volunteering/work experience:
-A couple years as the business lead for hs robotics team, won world championship, raised about $150,000, and was flown to Japan for a sponsor visit
-A few years on speech and debate with 1st and 2nd place awards and scholarships at national and international tournaments, plenty of specific awards and rankings to mention (mainly in extemporaneous speaking, some debate)
-Finalist in the selection process for the USA debate team
-Around 8-9 years volunteering for local homeless shelter, now the first minor on the board of directors and an operations intern for the last 3 years, fair amount of advocacy in local politics over issues of homelessness and extreme poverty, a very personal issue to me
-Boys State California first ever champion in both Oratory and Legal Advocacy
-Worked with a few different startups doing accounting, pitch deck design, business strategy, speaking consulting
-Started a couple failed entrepreneurial ventures that make for good stories
-Co-Founder and President Spanish Club
-Co-Founder and President Young Democrats Club
-1 year business manager for high school newspaper, raised about $15,000
-A ton of classes taken online or audited at my local university, not sure if that’s relevant
-National Merit Commended Student
Would love some suggestions on good safety and match schools, and maybe a diagnosis of which of those schools I can already consider safety or match (pretty sure most of these are far reaches). Thanks!!