I think OP’s current GPA is closer to 3.0 than 3.6 and I don’t believe s/he’s taken the SAT yet. The 3.5 GPA and 2200 SAT are goals.
@austinmshauri 2300*
@NASA2014 but to both me and my parents, it is not worth paying oos tuition for a school ranked #181. Umich is ranked somewhere in the 20s, big difference.
But umich is the most expensive OOS university in the nation. Why not go to cc and finish the general electives, does what I’m doing. I’m applying for the summer session at PSU 2016.
Dude, she doesn’t want to go to NDSU.
lol im done talking about north dakota
I’m curious, do people just apply to colleges that are high in ranking?
@NASA2014 Yes, many applicants do laser focus only on highly ranked colleges, sometimes to their severe detriment come acceptance time. I’d say OP shares that sentiment and focus on prestige, as do her parents, which makes her pretty average in terms of privileged students attending good high schools. Now, her stats are a bit too low for her to solely hang her hat on elites and super elites, and I’ve seen OP expand her college search to look at some proper matches and safeties over the course of this thread. That’s definitely what CC is here for–to help kids get a realistic idea of their chances and opportunities, and push them to investigate new/other options. But I think it’s very important, at a certain point, for those of us who are pushing specific schools/realistic chances to back off is a student simply isn’t interested/is sticking to their guns. So while OP definitely needs to round out her safeties list based on her current, actual GPA, I understand her not having an interest in a state flagship she’s never heard of. Sometimes we just have to back-off, even if the school we have in mind may be a good fit. OP has another year and a half before she applies to schools, so there’s time!
^ Some people due (for whatever reason). It makes no sense to me.
@“Erin’s Dad” I think for some students, it’s also the parents who value a high rank above anything else (sounds like this might be true for the OP). I know that my parents certainly did (perhaps it also has something to do with the Asian culture they grew up in). They didn’t want me applying to any non-brand name American school because in their opinion, it wasn’t worth it; in the end, I didn’t push it, because it wasn’t worth the fight and most of those other schools wouldn’t have given me (international) aid anyway.
Now that a person finally brought this up on CC to me, I have to rant about it.
I absolutely hate when someone asks a question like “how well known is ____ university?”, and another CC member attacks and them for “prestige hunting” (Im sure a lot of you would do that). So many people are afraid to ask about how prestigious colleges are, because of vicious people who don’t care about prestige, and think college fit is more important than that.
My point is, PRESTIGE IS IMPORTANT TO MANY PEOPLE, obviously including me. And that is totally fine, because it is just our opinion. 'Prestige-hunters" don’t attack people who don’t care about name recognition, do they? Yes, ranks are not the only thing that’s important, I care about a little bit of both, which is why I am not interested in schools like UVA, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Carnegie, VTech, etc., and I am sure most people think that. We care about prestige because we think our future even more farther away than college is important, such as JOBS. Most people would agree that having a better job is much more important than having a better college life.
For example, my Asian father, who cares more about success would for sure tell me that choosing Harvard still would be much better than choosing Vandy If I didn’t like H’s college life as much as V’s, if I got into both. He believes that if I work hard and suffer right now in the present, it pays off because I would have a better future. That just shows that my dad is more extreme about reputation than I am, which is fine. I am not saying that people who are extreme about college fit won’t be successful for job recruitment, but I think it is totally okay for people to only care about prestige, and would 100% defend that person if someone were to scold that “prestige-hunter”. After all, it’s their life, not yours.
Now, if NDSU was in my state, I would definitely consider it as a safety even if most have not heard of it. But obviously it is not, so that is clear evidence to you that I do NOT only care about prestige.
OrchidBloom is right, because many universities that people have never heard of do not give out much FA, simply because they do not have as much money as well known universities. This is also a large factor for my parents in deciding which colleges I should apply to.
You really think that Duke and Carnegie Mellon aren’t prestigious? Hate to break the news to you, but you are going to have a hard time finding a prestigious safety school.
@albert69 …what? Since when did I say that Duke and CMU weren’t prestigious? The point that I was making was that just because schools are prestigious does not mean that I am interested in them, therefore I do not ONLY care about prestige. You would be crazy to think that those schools weren’t reputable
But here’s the thing–going to Harvard won’t necessarily make your life easier after college than it would be if you went to Vanderbilt. You aren’t guaranteed to get a better job than someone who went to Vanderbilt just because you went to Harvard.
So state colleges aren’t prestigious? If that so, I now understand why people go into debt because they decide to go into an expensive college just to receive a degree.
omg. I never said that state colleges weren’t prestigious. In fact, I mentioned VTech as prestigious in my extremely long rant. to be blunt, many people don’t know what NDSU is, and many people also care about reputation.
I am not this rude to people usually, but seriously, back off. stop arguing with someone just because they are not interested in the college you are attending. I wish you luck at ND, but I am just not a fan of that college.
@dsi411 You are definitely correct, but the key word is “not necessarily”. Going to havard may INCREASE the chances in finding a better job, especially in the eyes of someone looking for prestige, therefore, makes live just a little easier.
I’m going to a community college actually.
Oh, I misunderstood your meaning. Sorry.
@proudterrier Hey! when you were talking about my stats being too low, did you mean my 3.2 gpa, or my goal (final 3.5 UW)?
@albert69 thats ok! sorry if i was unclear
@cowycam7 Just current GPA, but I know you’ll be working to pull it up. Bear in mind, I’ve mostly been commenting from a place of your finding your safeties–there’s nothing wrong with having some reaches. It’s so hard to accurately provide recommendations on projections, but I’m sure next year when you have your updated GPA the forum will be able to provide you with much better ideas! FWIW, while considering 1-2 state schools will be smart for safeties (and I think you already are), I don’t think you need to consider too many/too far flung schools. So don’t get too stressed out by people suggesting schools you’ve not heard of. While the schools at the very top of the rankings will be tricky because they are for everyone (even with 4.0 GPAs), I’m sure you’ll get into a few prestigious schools. They may just surprise you–I ended up getting into and going to a school I had never considered–I only applied b/c my mom made me. You never know! Good luck your junior year, and on the SATs!
The problem that appears with many “prestige hunters” on these forums is that anything that could possibly be a safety tends to have too little prestige to be an acceptable school, since college prestige tends to be correlated to admission selectivity.