Is my list reasonable? Safety school recommendations?

College Search & Selection
1

-T H E L I S T-

Columbia ED + legacy (still deciding)
Brown (High reach)
Tufts (reach)
Cornell (high reach)
Rice (reach)
JHU (high reach- very competitive for bio program)
Emory (low reach)
Williams (high reach)

Boston college (match) - EA U of Mich (match) - EA UT Austin (match) + dad went there for grad school-- is this considered legacy? U of Pitt (low match/safety?) U of Pitt (low match/safety?) UIUC (low match/safety) MA College of Pharmacy and Health (safety) U of Washington (low match/safety)

I know these are a lot of schools so I might take out some reach schools. There are 3 other schools I am thinking about (so many schools i know right ) – U of Rochester, Stony Brook, Wesleyan

  • A B O U T M E- Intended major: Biology (I want to be a doctor) Ethnicity: Asian Gender: Female Family income: <100K (i will be applying for financial aid)
GPA: 4.0 without weight, 4.4 weighted (my school only lets me take 3 APS) ACT: 34 Composite (one sitting), essay: 8 (I know pretty low) SAT2: BIO-M 780 , Math 2C- pending on score, I took physics but pretty sure I bombed it LOL AP: -AP Bio (4), AP Calc BC (5), AP Physics 1 (4), AP WH (5) Next year AP Course Load: AP Chinese, AP CHEM, AP STATS, AP LANG (I begged my counselor to let me take 4 AP courses).

:

NHS (10,11,12) NHS President (12)

Korea Business Club (9,10,11): My team won 2nd place in the KAIAC Korea Business Competition (its sort of like FBLA but for international school in Korea)

Cooking Club Co-President (10,11,12): We cater food for school events (dinners, holidays, etc). I proposed an idea to run a school cafe and it might be approved (pending).

Elementary Math TA (11): my AP Cal teacher invited me to assist her in her elementary math club/afterschool class.

Korea Science Olympiad 1st Place: our school’s olympiad team won 1st place in the Korea Science Olympiad.

Research/Lab work: Lab Job Shadow/Intern at a cancer-research biology lab at a major university in Korea, Research participant (me and a few other classmates did research about sleep and how it effects health) --> the research paper will be published.

Volunteer at Soup Kitchen (app. 100 hrs). I also plan on hosting an all school event to help the homeless.

- AP Cal teacher: She likes me and she's quite picky with who she likes. She asked me to assist her for her math club/afterschool math class and she actually told me that she carefully thought about who should assist her and invited me (she emphasized on the "invitation only" thing). She also told me that for the previous graduating classes, she was quite exclusive when writing recommendation letters.
  • AP World History teacher: I was one of the most active participants in his Honors US History class and AP WH class. He wrote that in my yearbook. I am pretty sure he will write me a great letter because we had such a great teacher-student relationship and I LOVED his class.

I think both recommendation letters will be pretty good.

- I am not a GREAT writer but I have an idea of what I want to write about. I sent a copy of my rough draft to my counselor to look over and she said that she loved the idea but there are still gaps that might confuse the reader.
2

What state do you live in? Have you run the NPC on each of the schools that you are interested in?

3

i dont live in the US! I live in South Korea (i go to an international school + i am a permanent resident). I used to live in NY if that helps with anything.

4

also, im planning to take an EDx course in anatomy by U of Mich during the summer and on the side during the fall. would this help in college admissions?

5

With no state residency anywhere, all of the public universities on your list* should be moved into the reach or high reach category, since you will need large merit scholarships, not just admission, to be able to afford them. Check their net price calculators to see what their financial aid for out-of-state students is (probably none).

*Except maybe Michigan, but check the net price calculator to see if its out-of-state need-based aid will be enough.

For safeties, you may want to consider colleges with automatic large merit scholarships. http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ may help, but verify on school web sites because some of them have changed.

6

Michigan is a reach for international applicants.

7

if my parents agreed to pay full price for state schools, would they still be considered reach/high reach?

8

Yes. Michigan admitted fewer than 20% of their OOS and international applicants this year. Next year, they will likely admit approximately 15% of those applicants. That makes it a reach regardless.

9

How about for UW, UIUC and U of Pitt. All of them have like 40%-60% acceptance rates.

10

It seems rather unlikely that parents with an income under $100,000 per year will be able to pay $45,000 to $60,000 per year for your college, unless your family has been frugally living far below their income level and hence has plenty of accumulated savings and plenty of unused discretionary income left after taxes and required spending on housing, food, etc…

11

You’re not going to get much of anything other than merit aid, so you might want to go track down one of the many fine lists on this site that identify schools that give solid merit money. Your numbers look good so you’ll qualify for something somewhere, but you may find things go better for you if you approach from the angle of best scholarship hunting rather than best school. When you get to the very top of the lists everyone is a rock star and everyone deserves merit so a lot of those schools don’t award much. For example on the Brown web site they’ve famously posted how many 4.0 and perfect scores they don’t accept every year. If you aim down a bit there’s much more room to stand out and win money.

12

UIUC Engineering is a reach for any OOS or international applicant, but in the Arts and Sciences, it is a target/safety. So is Wisconsin. Pitt is more like a safety.