Looking for Safeties...

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hi! </p>

<p>Right now i'm in love with several highly and moderately competitive schools, mostly Yale, Cornell, and UPenn. While i know Yale is a fair reach and think i have a decent shot at cornell and upenn (although i'm HORRIBLE at writing interesting personal essays...), i feel like i don't have enough safety schools that i really love. I prefer medium to large schools in medium to large cities (VERY important for me), and do want a fairly competitive school as one of my favorite things about college is that i will get to be around very intelligent people. I want to stay in the northeast (ie, not too much farther than DC or western pennsylvania), and go to a school that's socially progressive (although that's not exactly hard to find in a good quality college) and offers a wide range of in depth programs in life sciences and maybe languages. </p>

<p>While i'm fairly familiar with my options, i'd appreciate if any of you could recommend colleges that meet this description and that you find appealing. If you could say why you liked the schools, that would be helpful. And... if you happen to feel like stroking my ego with respect to Yale, UPenn, and Cornell (Ag school), i wouldn't complain. </p>

<p>SAT I: 770 CR, 800 M, 780 W (12 essay)</p>

<p>SAT IIs: 800 Bio-M, 770 Math IC, 800 Latin</p>

<p>APs: English language (5), Latin Catullus (5), Environmental (5), US History (5), Latin Vergil, Calc BC, Physics C, English lit, Psych. </p>

<p>GPA: UW: ~97.7, W ~99.7
(our school adds 5 points on the grade averaged into the GPA for honors/AP classes, of which i've taken 9 in 3 years)</p>

<p>Rank: 2-5/325 (unranked past 2) </p>

<p>Senior Yr Courseload: French 2, AP: Latin, Physics, Calc, English lit, Psych,
Spanish 4 (without test)</p>

<p>ECs listed on app:
Theater: 3 various shows
Math team: high scorer, 4 years
Science Olympiad: 12 time medalist (1 state medal)
Student govt. - 4 years, BOE liason and PR officer
Class officers - 2 years, Treasurer/nothing
Gay Straight Alliance - 4 years, President 1 year
NHS - 2 years
Job - 1 year at local arts center running classes for autistic people
Lots of various tutoring
4 weeks (2 summers) of volunteer work at NYSDEC environmental camp
2 years Columbia Science Honors Program
2 weeks Northwoods environmental restoration project
1 summer stream monitoring w. Westchester CVMP
2 weeks GYLC conference</p>

<p>Awards: Something like 20 awards from school, Yale book award, 3 National latin exam gold medals, one silver, Medusa Mythology exam Corona Olivae, invitation to AIME exam junior year, local Audubon Society scholarship. </p>

<p>Teacher Recs: 1 superamazingcouldntbebetter... 1 good</p>

<p>Counselor Rec: should be good</p>

<p>Essays: probably not amazing</p>

<p>Upper middle class white male from a high quality public school in New York.</p>

<p>Let me know what you think!</p>

2

<p>bumpity bump</p>

3

<p>your safties should be like georgetown</p>

4

<p>bump bump bump</p>

5

<p>In what area lie your subjects of interest? In my case, it is a subject that is offered at few schools in depth (Chinese).</p>

6

<p>gtown cant really be considered a safety, but a safe match. definitely look at BC as a safety</p>

7

<p>I don't know too much, but I could throw out BU as well.</p>

8

<p>John Hopkins, Northwestern, Univ of Chicago, and Swarthmore are all just below the Ivies.</p>

<p>Other schools that are possibilities and just as hard as the Ivies you are applying to would be Duke, Caltech, MIT, and Stanford.</p>

<p>Safeties for you: NYU, UCLA, Carnegie-Mellon, UC Berkeley, Georgetown, Univ of Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and Michigan.</p>

9

<p>Yes, NYU would be a safety for you, and it's in a large city.</p>

10

<p>UCLA and UC Berkeley should only be safeties if you live in California. Same with North Carolina, if you live in North Carolina only. Since you live in New York, it doesn't really work for you.</p>

<p>Since you do live in New York, however, Cornell is practically a match. A good safety would be some place like University of Michigan. Apply there really early in their rolling admissions process, like the end of August, and you probably will get in, and then won't have to worry about safeties anymore!</p>

11

<p>Thanks for the advice!</p>

12

<p>yay another SHP member! if you like engineering, look at Carnegie Mellon, they have a sick engineering department. Otherwise, as people have said, JHU and UChicago are solid schools for the sciences, UMich for math. good luck!</p>

13

<p>Anyone who says Tufts gets shot in the foot :P</p>