Looking for reaches! 3.7UW/4.2W, 36 ACT, Math [GA resident]

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Demographics

  • US domestic
  • Atlanta metro
  • Competitive large public HS
  • Not URM

Intended Major(s)
Math
Possibly CS, unlikely to go outside STEM

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.717 (listing exactly what the HS transcript says)
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.196
  • Class Rank: Outside Val/Sal, HS does not rank
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 36 one sitting (Math and English 35, Reading and Science 36)

Coursework

Taken

APHG 5
AP World 4
AP Micro 5
AP Gov 3
AP Calc BC 5
AP CSP 4
AP CSA 5
APUSH 4
Latin 3

Taking

AP Lit
AP Mechanics
His other courses are post APs - CS, Latin, MV Calc, plus Orchestra. He was rejected from distance math at GT.

Awards
AP Scholar
NMSF

Extracurriculars
Viola in highest level orchestra at school - the program is nationally recognized but he has no individual recognition
Boy Scouts but not Eagle
Self taught on bass guitar
Black belt
US Naval Academy Summer Seminar

Essays/LORs/Other
He wrote about liking facts/math, learning bass/being viola player, and helping to keep his martial arts school open after Covid…tied it together using the concept of forming a foundation. His essay is clearly his voice but his voice is direct and simple. So yes authentic, but maybe simple comes across as flat.

LORs are probably just ok. He’s a quiet kid in a sea of high achievers.

Cost Constraints / Budget
Here to blow the budget

Schools So Far

  • University of Alabama - accepted with Presidential Elite scholarship, expecting National Merit scholarship (his school is good about getting everyone to Finalist), plan to visit after other decisions come in so he has fewer what ifs in his head
  • UAH - accepted, automatic Presidential Scholarship of 4 years tuition and 1st year housing, visiting next month
  • Auburn - accepted, waiting to hear about Academic Presidential Scholarship of 17k per year, visited and liked
  • Clemson - applied EA, visited and liked
  • UGA - applied EA, best guess is deferral then acceptance in RD, will visit if accepted
  • Ga Tech - applied EA to College of Sciences for Math, best guess is rejection and transfer pathway offer for sophomore year. No official visit but he spent a week there over the summer. Top choice on this list and willing to do pathway.
  • Georgia State University - in state safety, everything is filled out including Honors College essay and app, just waiting for free apps in Nov. Cost is low as he can live at home and tuition is covered by HOPE scholarship.

He’s not set on location, type, or size. This is a pure prestige question.

I posted about my son (Smart but unmotivated HS junior) earlier this year. We are on board with him shooting for the moon. There are 529s and some grandparent funds available. Grandma thinks we’re selling him short with the Alabama option to save money. Weird, right? I thought she taught me to be frugal? But son also appears to be prestige-curious so here I am asking for suggestions.

This week the bazillion UChicago emails and postcards finally got us despite us insisting they are a trick to get our application fee. We entertained the idea, pulled up the supplemental essay prompts, and he LOVED them. I couldn’t believe it when I read them because he asks questions just like them. He is considering it and we’re thinking, wow, this kid rarely expresses interest in anything.

I have seen people on CC saying to go get the early admits and then you can go for the stars, so here we are. A little behind I realize for visits before ED1.

Don’t worry, Grandma doesn’t get final say. We are good with all the schools he applied to so far and we are setting realistic expectations about his chances.

2

Since you already have attractive admissions in hand why not throw in a few reach applications if he is interested. Vis a vis UChicago, we visited there this summer and S24 liked it much more than he anticipated. The campus is beautiful and fairly contained. They seem interested in intellectual and interesting kids so I say go for it if your son likes the supplementals and thinks he’d fit in there. You’ll never know unless you try. Since S24 has quite a few reaches on his list (all of which we’ve visited) I’m happy to offer suggestions if you let me know what he likes in terms of campus etc.

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Thank you! I think UChicago is worth his effort. He had ideas for multiple prompts and was willing to start writing even if they didn’t work out. For his personal statement, he kept trying to be finished.

He hasn’t really expressed much in terms of campus preferences. He liked Clemson and Auburn and I’m guessing it’s because the tour guides were enthusiastic and welcoming, and the tours were STEM focused. Otherwise he says college campuses all look the same to him. I can’t figure my kid out.

4

For math, is he more interested in:

  • Pure math / research (pre-PhD)
  • Applied math, and what areas of application?
    • Finance or actuarial
    • Computing, including theoretical computer science, cryptography, AI/ML, etc.
    • Statistics or data science
    • Operations research
    • Physics
    • Biology
  • Preparation for high school teaching

Math is a fairly broad area at the upper and graduate level, so investigation of the faculty interests and course offerings may be worth doing to see how they match with the student’s potential interests.

For a student taking math courses beyond calculus BC while still in high school, consider the availability of graduate level math courses for undergraduates, particularly if the interest is in pure math.

5

I’m just curious how many campuses you have been able to tour. It’s unusual to have absolutely no preference. Have you taken him to see different types of campuses and settings - big, small, urban, rural, suburban, public, private etc?. We are in metro Atlanta too. My S22 started off having no idea what he wanted either. We took him to see a variety of local colleges - Emory, Ga Tech, Oglethorpe - just to get a feel for different types of schools and settings

If Chicago appeals to him, absolutely take a shot. He seems to like big state schools. Maybe look at U Mich or UT Austin? If he likes an urban campus like GA Tech maybe Carnegie Mellon or Johns Hopkins or Boston University? My other piece of advice if your son has grown up in the South, go visit those schools up North in February. They need to understand what winter is really like up there.:rofl:

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6

I am poorly versed on the subject of math, so I pulled up what he talked about in his supplemental essay - sounds like it’s application in computing. He wrote about wanting to pursue Quantum Information and Quantum Computing. He also said he would enjoy taking Differential Geometry.

In general, I don’t think he knows what he wants to do, but math is what makes sense to him. He is 99.99% not going into teaching.

He is doing well in his AP Mechanics class. He says it’s just calculus. After his Calc BC exam, he was in a really good mood because he enjoyed the exam. Same as his AP CSA exam. He said it was so fun. I cannot relate but he cracks me up. He did really poorly in Pre-Calc though in sophomore year - barely pulled an 80 his first semester. He says that Pre-Calc was harder than any Calc class he’s ever taken. I have no idea if that’s the teacher (he liked the teacher), adjustment during Covid, or the actual material.

7

For each school, he may want to investigate the accessibility of the CS major and upper level CS courses for non-majors, because CS departments at some schools are filled to capacity (so getting into the CS major is difficult, as is taking upper level CS courses by non-majors).

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With respect to your son’s potential major of mathematics, this topic offers specific college suggestions: For Students Seeking a College Strong in Mathematics.

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That’s my kid. He did the Emory tour (both campuses) with his older sister, lived at the Atlanta campus for a week just this past July, and didn’t have anything to say about it. He stayed on campus at GT earlier in the summer and came away liking the school. His dorm was objectively worse at GT than Emory and he didn’t know what I was talking about when I pointed it out. “Why do you like Tech more?” “I dunno.”

At Auburn, we took 2 tours - Engineering and College of Science and Math. The Engineering facilities and various support offices were so nice, but he preferred COSAM, even though most of the tour had little to do with Math, because the tour guides focused on their majors (Chem, Geology). He has a different set of metrics which I cannot grasp, or he has no metrics.

We’ve done enough tours that ended with little reaction from him that we’ve stopped worrying about it and we just go for ourselves. We know he liked Auburn and Clemson. Why did he like them? No one knows. How much did he like them? Puzzled look of why does it matter? That is my kid.

(Is he on the spectrum? I’m guessing yes.)

We have relatives up north and I grew up outside NYC, and do visit in the winter. He has never fully experienced midwest and upstate NY winters though and I do not blow that off as inconsequential. But I think based on his personality he’ll be ok. I expect he’d just happily stay indoors most of the time. He doesn’t get cabin fever, and we have proof from Covid days.

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10

He has stats very similar to my niece (it wasn’t that she was unmotivated, but she is dyslexic) who is currently getting her PhD. in math. It’s not what you think of when you think “prestige”, but University of Colorado Boulder has one of the top ranked math programs. She turned down a couple of Ivies to stay in Boulder for her PhD because she loved their math dept so much.

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11

Yes, we are concerned about that too. That’s true at GT. The further we go in this process, the further he seems more set on pursuing math. Would minoring in CS be an option and open up course accessibility?

12

Depends on the school and CS department. Each school and its CS department needs to be checked individually.

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Any interest in smaller colleges? There are some that are quite good in both Math and CS, and CS is not a restricted major, meaning you can just do it if you want. The tech schools are a specific thing, but colleges like Williams, Swarthmore, Carleton, Pomona, and Grinnell, say, might be worth checking out.

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Pomona CS is overflowing; entry to the major or minor is gated by lottery to get into the second CS course, according to Computer Science Frequently Asked Questions | Pomona College in Claremont, California - Pomona College .

Swarthmore CS is also overflowing; getting into CS courses can involve a lottery, according to Lottery & Waitlist Information :: Computer Science :: Swarthmore College .

In addition, the OP’s student should consider whether sufficient upper level and graduate level courses are offered by each school’s math department, particularly if interested in pure math.

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15

Fair enough. FWIW, my oldest attended Auburn
He was in the honors college and an engineering major. He was waitlisted at GA Tech and accepted into the honors colleges at both Clemson and UGA. He loved both Auburn and Clemson. They are very similar schools. Auburn won out because he found Auburn/Opelika area to be less isolated than Clemson. At least at the time, the honors housing in the village at Auburn was much nicer than the honors housing at Clemson. I believe Clemson has since built nicer housing. For reasons still unknown to me, he just didn’t like the UGA campus. He never could clearly articulate why.

My younger son was the complete opposite. He wanted a smaller, more traditional liberal arts experience. He was accepted mech e at Georgia Tech but chose to study physics at a smaller out of state school. I think like a lot of local kids, he just doesn’t realize how prestigious Georgia Tech is for STEM. He was home for his fall break last weekend. He spent the whole time with his friends at Tech. Came home and said “Yeah, I think I would have been really happy there”. Two years ago he was adamant that he didn’t want to be close to home or in downtown Atlanta. That’s teenage boys for you.

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16

Yeah, so scratch those then!

17

UIUC has several majors that might appeal to your son. They have very strong CS, Mathematics, and a major called Mathematics and Computer Science. In addition, they also have a number of CS + X majors. Definitely worth a look!
https://myillini.illinois.edu/Programs

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However, CS or _&CS or CS+X are significantly more competitive to get into than most other majors at UIUC.

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19

Can you start in Math and CS and then change to just Math if you feel like it?

20

Popular wisdom is that Chicago tends to fill mostly with ED apps. Something to research if he is truly interested/intrigued.

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