<p>I'm not sure if this should go in chances or college search, but I was wondering if people could look over my list.</p>
<p>SAT: 800 CR, 760 M
GPA: 3.2 - Bear in mind this is at a top New England prep school in the HADES list made up on cc. I also will have taken 9 APs by the time I graduate.</p>
<p>National merit semi-finalist.</p>
<p>ECs: 2-sport varsity athlete, head of film society, literary publication, one of the campus political parties, and member of a music ensemble.</p>
<p>Potential majors: English, math, history, philosophy; linguistics or Arabic at the few schools which offer them.</p>
<p>I have a good idea where these fall in terms of reach/match/safety, but I was wondering what the community thought.</p>
<p>List:
Beloit
Binghamton
Brandeis
Bucknell
Carleton
Centre
Chicago
Dartmouth
Fordham
Franklin and Marshall
Hamilton
Hanover
Iowa
IU - Bloomington
Kalamazoo
Knox
Lawrence
Northwestern
Rochester
St. Mary's MD
Skidmore
Syracuse
Wabash
WUSTL
Williams
Wooster</p>
<p>Since you’re at a top school I think the class rank will be more important than GPA. Your SATs can only help, so I’d say just look at the places recent graduates have gotten in and make a balanced list using that.</p>
<p>Why do you have so many safeties and matches on your list? Just because you have the money to apply to these schools doesn’t mean you should.</p>
<p>Beloit - S
Binghamton - S
Brandeis - S
Bucknell - S
Carleton - M
Centre - S
Chicago - R
Dartmouth - R
Fordham - S
Franklin and Marshall - S
Hamilton - M
Hanover - S
Iowa - S
IU - Bloomington - S
Kalamazoo - S
Knox - S
Lawrence - S
Northwestern - R
Rochester - M
St. Mary’s MD - S
Skidmore - S
Syracuse - S
Wabash - S
WUSTL - R
Williams - R
Wooster - S</p>
<p>I think the GPA, despite the difficulty of the HS, will change some matches to reaches on above list, for example Carleton. You also must take into account acceptance rate which makes many an academic match a reach instead. I think it is a good list and don’t imagine it was created because OP might have the money to apply (!) - I would just do a bit more research and narrow it down - too many schools now.</p>
<p>Agreed. But many top schools do not report rank. However, colleges are familiar with how difficult they are in terms of GPA. I think that will serve you well, but make it difficult for others to comment on what might be the right matches for you.</p>
<p>Actually, many of them have ways of applying which do not include a fee waiver. I have such a large list at the insistence of my college counselor, who is concerned because my school does not provide a weighted GPA. Also, kwu’s list was much more optimistic than my own. I’ll have to think about this some more. I had Brandeis, Carleton, and Hamilton all as reaches, and Binghamton, Bucknell, Fordham, Iowa (OOS), Lawrence, and Syracuse as matches.</p>
<p>Your thinking is on target aronofsky4life for the reaches, otherwise kwu’s ranking is pretty good. You have a rational for your list and it looks well rounded.</p>
<p>Academically you have lots of safeties in one sense but in my mind if you are looking for merit I would change some safeties to matches. You get admitted to the safety, then you are competing with the higher group for merit. If you need merit to attend a private then you have to look at the ‘safeties’ on 2 levels: Admit - safety; Merit - match.</p>