While these are fine ECs, I am not sure if they will be enough to create a stand out application for the Ivy League. But what’s so great about the Ivy League anyway? There are literally thousands of great universities that would be excited to have you. If you want to apply to a few Ivies, great, go for it! But make sure you also apply to a few of the others that will give you a sure thing.
I’m a bit concerned that you may be taking AP and honors junior and senior year only to take the most rigorous courses offered. For the highly rejective schools, they look for students who take the most rigorous courses and earn As. If you are currently getting mainly Bs in accelerated courses, please have a conversation with your GC about matching you to the level course where you will be most successful.
There are so many very good schools that will be a fit for you. And since you have med school (or a health-related field) in your sights the most important thing for admission is a high college GPA and MCAT score. The prestige of undergrad does not matter at all. Budget should also be a conversation because you need to pay for 8 years of school, not only 4. If keeping undergrad costs lower allows your parents to help with med school, that will help you in the long run.
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By the time you get to medical school, should you actually get accepted…the cost per year will likely be about $100,000 a year.
I’m still not sure why you are targeting the Ivy League schools. What other colleges are you considering?
I will get us totally back on target. You are finishing your sophomore year in high school. There is no way anyone can predict your chances at ANY college for admission fall 2025. You don’t have junior year grades, and really…a junior year PSAT, and the SAT or ACT scores will give more info.
In the meantime…make that list of characteristics that you want in a college. I would suggest you leave prestige and rankings off of this list of characteristics.
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Not to be harsh - but the odds of Ivy League are extremely small for even the straight A student.
From the sounds of it your Freshman year was “mostly B’s” and your Sophomore year is “mostly B’s”. That’s well outside “Ivy Qualifying”. The fact that you’re taking AP or Honors courses is irrelevant - it’s the grades you get in them and the only grades from your senior year that are going to matter are Q1 (maybe Q2). Kids getting into Ivy schools are usually in the top 5% of their class.
There are great medical programs that are not Ivy. While it might be great to keep one or two on your Reach list you need to be researching schools more target category schools.
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You don’t need to go to an Ivy for undergrad to get to med school. You could go almost anywhere.
Do you qualify for need based aid? If not, these schools all cost over $82k/year so you won’t be able to attend even if you get accepted.
Why not? That should really be your first step.
I agree. Your time and energy would be better spent improving your grades, participating in ECs that you are passionate about, and creating a balanced list of schools to apply to where you have a realistic chance and are affordable.
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I would add, don’t take AP and honor classes in order to get into Ivies. Take the classes you are interested in and can do well in. Keep stress down and enjoy high school. It is not worth it to spend the next two years trying to be someone who gets into Ivies just for the sake of getting into an Ivy. Keep quality of life in the present and learn more about other schools that you might like.
A pretty decent percentage of high schoolers want to go to medical school. Stay flexible. Many of them change their minds. It is about 6 years too early to think about med school too1
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…except maybe for budget considerations. If the budget for college is $50k/year (rather than “the sky’s the limit”), and med school might be in the future, it could be prudent to look for a low cost college option that would preserve some of that money for med school.
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True, though planning for med school as a sophomore seems a bit premature and there may be affordable options for undergrad that don’t require it.
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Premed classes in university are going to be more difficult compared to high school classes. “Mostly B’s” in university does not normally get someone accepted to medical school.
However, there are many medical careers other than being a doctor. When you walk into a hospital for pretty much any test or treatment, of the many medical professionals that you see, most are not doctors.
I think that you should be focusing on improving your grades. I would not recommend that you plan to take more AP classes. Instead you should be taking classes that will allow you to get quite a few A’s and only a few B’s. You also should be working to try to improve your study skills. You want to get in the habit of always paying attention in class and always keeping well ahead in your homework and studying. You also should be looking for help early when you need it.
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I urge you not to be so fixated on Ivies, particularly if you think you might want to go to medical school. The most important factor in admission to medical school is your undergraduate GPA. There are students from Ivy League colleges who do not get accepted to any medical schools. That happened to a couple of my college classmates. Their chances of getting into medical school would have been better if they had gone to a different college and gotten better grades. If they had gone to their state university, they would have also saved a lot of money!
I’m going to be blunt: you need to greatly improve your language and grammar skills to have a shot at a top college. Most top colleges require writing supplements. Based on what we see here, you need to work on that.
I suggest you spend the summer looking at what Ivy League schools seek. (See below.*) They are not all looking for the same thing. If your goal is Ivy or bust, you must understand that these colleges are not interested in just grades and test scores. That your grades and scores are high, and that you are taking the most rigorous courses at your school is a general expectation. They want much more than that and you need to show it.
*Actually, I suggest you spend the summer looking at a realistic range of colleges, in which your grades are at least in the top 50th percentile of accepted students, and ideally in the 75th percentile. You need a list of colleges, including safeties, that offer better odds of admission. Think colleges that admit well above 30% of applicants. So spend plenty of time investigating those schools.
While it’s good you’ve done these things, they don’t distinguish you from other applicants, at least not based on the info you have shared so far. Fellow applicants to those schools will have done similar things. They reject roughly 90% of applicants, many of whom will have profiles similar to yours or even better. Figure out how to be in the top 10% of applicants, then you have a better shot.
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Excellent advice. I would add that simply attending a non-selective summer program at Harvard or Yale does not distinguish your application. I think many high school students greatly overestimate how impressive those programs are for purposes of college admissions. Attending Harvard Summer School does not, in and of itself, increase your chances of getting into Harvard at all.
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In-state public universities are where applicants start their list, even if they’re applying to Ivies or similar colleges. You need them for their affordability and typically higher admission rates. Especially for med school as others have mentioned, if you can use some of that $50K a year that your parents will give towards med school, it will really help. And a 1420 PSAT is pretty good for a sophomore, so try and build on that over the summer.