@citymama9 that’s a good idea I hadn’t thought to see which schools already have a good amount of Hispanic students there. As for sports I’m not sure I’d want to play in college but if I quit soccer at the last minute and do cross country like my track coach wants from me I may be able to make myself into a recruitable athlete, but I love soccer so I’m not too into that option.
Bump
Add UVA. Scratch WashU, Northwestern, USC, Northeastern and Elon. Keep both your in-state safeties.
@Defensor if you don’t mind me asking why cut those schools and why add UVA?
Your list is too long, you need to “thin the herd”. It’ll take a ridiculous amount of time to fill out all those apps and write that many essays. Your parents insisted on keeping Brown and Notre Dame, so they stay on the list - who cares since they’re paying the app fees.
USC too far away and not as good a choice as several already on your list. Social life and weather at Northwestern is lousy. Northeastern is a big “meh” compared with several others on your list.
No need for 3 safeties. Elon is private, out of state, not cheap, not very big and pretty selective, gets a whole lot of apps from OOS. As far as safeties go, your odds are better with the ISS’s you selected.
UVA is an excellent school, better overall than most on your list. Outstanding academics, great campus. No, I didn’t go there, so I’m not an alumnus fanboy trying to push it on you. Just saying that it’s definitely worth a good look.
@Defensor definitely some food for thought. USC is an outlier in terms of location, but they have a 5 year OT program that is very intriguing to me so that’s why I’m applying there. Interesting about Northwestern I was thinking of eliminating that anyway due to concerns over the weather and social life and because for the most part my schools are all east coast. Northeastern I thought would be a good match with potential for merit aid and because they do a nonbinding EA so I hoped I would get in EA and have an acceptance in hand. Elon would definitely be the safety I would drop but with admissions being so unpredictable I thought 3 was a good number. UVA is definitely intriguing and it has a nonbinding EA option but because I’m OOS I figured it would be a low reach and I don’t need more reaches so I’m unsure about it. Definitely seems worth the app though. Thanks for all your insight!
That’s certainly a list with good range to it. I would call Emory and USC low reaches or reaches.
As for what an adcom might say about an app showing seven attempts at the SAT… it probably depends on their mood. If they’re feeling snarky, they might say something like, “Let’s look at GPA and ECs on this one…”
Oops, sorry – the part about taking the SAT seven times belonged on another thread. Sorry about that.
You mentioned you’re unsure about UVA because you don’t need more reaches, but with my suggestion you’re getting rid of 3 other reaches - WashU, Northwestern, and USC. All 3 reaches are also non-east coast schools that are a long way from home, UVA is next door to you. Ditch the reaches and Elon, add UVA, and you’ve shortened your overly long list by a net 3 schools.
Elon should be easier to get into than UVA, and I believe it’s very inexpensive for a private school
So I narrowed my list down to Duke, WashU, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Emory, USC, Villanova, Miami, BU, Loyola Maryland, and UMD does that seem like a solid list? I’m still deciding between WashU and Duke for my one ED card I have to visit both again to be sure and will be doing that in August. Bearing in mind I have no problems attending any of my matches or safeties, and all are affordable is this an okay final list?
Thats sounds like a great list. I have a suggestion that might make you even more competitive for these schools. I think that you should only send the ACT score as your composite is 99th percentile, and if you have taken the ACT two times or fewer I would suggest studying a little bit more on your weak sections and then retaking as you are smart enough to raise that by at least one point or two which will just make you even better looking to colleges another thing that you could do is study for SAT Subject tests and take a few of those to show these colleges what your strengths are.
@Undecided3494 thanks for the feedback! Yes I might try to take the act again this fall because I think science is the easiest section to go up on especially as it shares similarities with the reading section which I did very well on so I think I can get that up to maybe get a 34 composite that was my first and only time I’ve taken the ACT. I also just took Latin and world history last weekend and biology m in May so I should be set for subject tests.