Background- Asian middle class, no hooks, above average high school in terms of rankings but most go to our local state schools. Once in a while someone gets into somewhere amazing.
Objective Stats
GPA- ~97 UW, ~99-100 W; 4.0 unweighted on 4.0 scar but we use 100% scale
SATs- took March so no scores but 1410 PSAT so assuming I get the same thing. I feel fairly confident I did as well or better.
Rank- 2/110, high chance I will be #1 after this year
Rigor- 7 APs, 9 honors throughout high school, most rigorous of anyone in my grade, especially senior year
ECs
FBLA-2 years- treasurer(11), president(12)- 1st at regionals, didn’t do too well at states, joined this club due to my interest in business that started late sophomore year
Model UN- 2 years- treasurer(12)- outstanding speaker, two events per year
Tennis- 3 years- Varsity team, club team(winters), clinics year round, especially during summer which is almost 20 hrs/week- as you can see lots of time spent on this all year with improvement shown as I went from 7 to 2 on our team
Tennis volunteering- summers- 75 hrs over the summer with local tennis programs
Students against destructive decisions(SADD)-4 years-treasurer(11)- I know a lot of other schools have this but we have one program in this club that’s really awesome. I can’t go too in detail about for anonymity reasons but I would even consider writing an EC essay on this one.
Engineering competition-11th grade- did not do well at all, first time we’ve joined this competition and did terrible so might as well not put this, not much time spent on it either
A few others(NHS, piano, etc) not as important but stuff I’ve done all four years other than NHS which only upperclassmen join.
Reaches
Cornell- AEM(super reach)
Georgetown- McDonough(super reach)
Carnegie Mellon- Tepper(reach)
Lehigh- Computer science+business(reach)
Matches
Lehigh- Finance(solid match)
Bucknell- Accounting and Financial Managment(solid match)
Safeties
Pitt(safety- hoping for honors college/scholarships)
Penn State UP(safety;hoping for honors college)
Temple(super safety+amazing automatic scholarships)
Would love to hear your guys’ opinions on my list and if you have any suggestions.
Your list looks reasonable. What are your financial restrictions? I notice that your safeties are larger in size than the other schools. Maybe add a few more matches. Would you want to head out of state to - William and Mary? Or what about Villanova or Wake Forest?
@mybstnw About 25k/year max. I don’t mind out of state if it’s reasonable in driving distance but I would need a place with good FA/scholarship opportunities. My reaches and matches are all financially feasible according to net price calculators. I visited a few schools and I see the benefits of the different sizes and so size didn’t really matter to me much. I dont know much about William and Mary or Wake Forest, but wouldn’t Villanova business be a reach? I’m open to adding some more matches but I don’t know how to figure how what other schools are matches for me.
Each school publishes a Common Data Set- here’s the one for Villanova http://www1.villanova.edu/content/villanova/enroll/statreports/_jcr_content/pagecontent/download/file.res/CDS_2015-2016.pdf
What is the breakout for your PSAT scores. Math? Verbal?
I would guess that you live in PA so there are so many schools in that part of the country!
@mybstnw 740 M/660 CR+W(32 CR, 34 W)
I thought business at Villanova was a little bit harder than other majors. Also it seems to be a bit too religious for me. I know Gtown has a religious affiliation but it doesn’t seem to be as prevalent.
Lafayette should be a match
How “reachy” are my reaches? Do you guys think they are too extreme or are they reasonable reaches for my stats?
I think you’re fine with your reaches and safeties, but you should add a couple more matches. Dickinson (International Management) would be a good one. Case Western Reserve would be another one. Fordham?
@MYOS1634 I haven’t heard of any of those colleges but I’ll do some research on them, thanks!
Your reaches are fine. I second Lafayette. We liked using the Fiske Guide to Colleges to learn more about schools.
Sorry for bumping this so many times but I had a few last questions.
My first choice by far right now is Georgetown. Would it hurt to apply EA as it is more competitive? Although the acceptance rate is lower, everyone else is deferred and the acceptance rate RD for deferred students is the same as RD students. Would I have a chance at Georgetown EA since its more competitive or should I just hold on until RD? My ideal scenario would be getting accepted EA and then being done with college admissions before Christmas.
Also CMU seems to be unaffordable for me so I would like to add another reach that meets 100% need and preferably has an EA option. I don’t have many preferences other than it being within a few hours of PA and then I’ll visit to see if I like the feel of it. Thanks!
And I had Penn State and Pitt as my safeties, but I would really love to get into the honors college at both and get a nice merit scholarship at Pitt. Is this possible with my stats or is that a bit unrealistic?
Pitt selects on scores but 1410 would be iffy as they love really high scores.
Penn State selects on course rigor, essays, and EC’s. Admission rate is about 8%.
You have Temple Honors as a sure safety since it’s automatic for stats.
Look into Miami Ohio honors, excellent business school.
Have you run the NPC on Case ?
Dickinson, Lafayette, Franklin&Marshall, would all be good matches.
@myos1634 Would my course rigor/ECs be sufficient for Penn state honors?
Make sure your GC states explicitely in his/her rec letter (only for Schreyer) that 7 AP + 9 Honors is the most rigorous in your school because they want 20+ AP/Honors/AICE/IB/Dual Enrollmet (basically, 5 Honors classes per year in school, or some of those replaced by APs), Foreign language up to AP, Math up to Calculus, all three of Bio, chem, physics. Your essays will be important - topics are up July 1st, start working on them then. But if your GC states you couldn’t have more than 16, they won’t hold it agains you, especially if you sought out other opportunities to learn (program at library, museum, dual enrollment, community education, EdX, Coursera, anything where you can show you want to learn more.)
Any thoughts on whether I should apply EA to Georgetown or not?
I don’t see why not, but make sure you have your subject tests - to be taken in june and again in the Fall. So your testing needs to be done May, June, August (SAT is rumored to have an August date) and one more (November scores accepted).
@Myos1634 I plan on keeping June for an SAT retake if necessary and then do subject tests whenever the first fall date is.
It’s better to do the subject tests in June, because oftentimes your subjects parrallel what you’ve been studying as a junior so the material is fresh in your mind. Then you prep throughout the summer to have a shot at really increasing your SAT Reasoning score.