<p>My son is a rising senior looking for a strong applied math/statistics program.</p>
<p>He would like a medium size school (4,000 10,000 undergraduates) in a suburban location (very close to, but not actually in, a bigger city).</p>
<p>He attends a very competitive Catholic HS that sends at least a few grads to top 20 schools each year. The school does not rank but he probably falls just outside the top 10% of the class. His unweighted GPA is around 3.75. and his weighted GPA is just over 4.0 - with 9 honors and 4 AP classes to date. (He plans to take 3 more AP classes.) His grades show a steady upward trend from freshman year (mix of As and Bs) to junior year (all As). He will be at least National Merit Commended, with a chance at being a Semifinalist. His ACT composite score was 34 and SAT was 2010. His ECs are modest, with no special honors.</p>
<p>His strength is his math ability: He scored a 5 on AP Calc BC exam as a junior and will take Advanced Differential Equations as a senior. He will have an excellent recommendation from his math teacher.</p>
<p>He already has two reach schools (Northwestern and Boston College), and he has two State schools for safeties. But what he really needs now are match schools in the middle. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>LindsayX3: You'll find lots of discussion about the National Merit Scholarship Program under the "Financial Aid" Forum on CC, but here's a link to the source:</p>
<p>lindsayx3: You are a candidate automatically if you take the PSAT. If you are commended you will receive a letter indicating such and then you are placed into consideration for semifinals, etc.</p>
<p>i would consider boston college more a match than a reach. your sons preferences are quite restrictive, though... or at least appear as such. i (and others) might be able to be a bit more helpful if his preferences were ranked in order of importance and desired alternatives were given (if not 4000-10000, would he rather go to a school with 2000 students or 20000 students?).</p>
<p>anyway, a few more schools id add to the list:</p>
<p>boston u
bucknell
carnegie mellon
lehigh
michigan
minnesota
nyu
rochester
rpi
rutgers
wisconsin</p>
<p>The American Statistical Association web site is <a href="http://www.amstat.org%5B/url%5D">www.amstat.org</a> and they list colleges that award degrees in statistics. It is a great field that can lead to a variety of careers.</p>
<p>Rochester is a fit to all of your criteria. I highly recommend Rutgers as a match, a great school for math and statistics. It is a large school, however. I also agree with eric that BC is more of a match than a reach.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your suggestions. We live out West and hadn’t really heard much about Lehigh or Rochester, but we are definitely going to give them a closer look now. Rochester, in particular, seems to fit my son's criteria well. We will also look at Vanderbilt although with their relatively low acceptance rate, that might be another “reach” school -- which is OK, if Boston College does turn out to be more of a “match” than a “reach.”</p>
<p>My son knows that he does not want a big school, so Boston U and all of the State universities mentioned are out for him. We did visit CMU and RPI, but they were “much too techy” and didn’t feel right for him. (That broke my heart – I’m an RPI grad!)</p>
<p>Vandy & BC are not reach schools for him. He's definitely in the mix at those. Being from the left coast gives you an advantage, also. Give GA Tech a look, as well.</p>
<p>I would like to give a correction... Vanderbilt is not in a suburban location. It is smack in the middle of Nashville and West End, a swankier part of downtown. Vandy is a good school, but by no means suburban.</p>
<p>Agree about BC being a match school. I’d further argue that with the excellent 34 ACT (I would not submit his SAT score) Northwestern, IF Early Decision, would be a match as well. </p>
<p>Unlike NU which offers stats as a major in Arts and Science, most of the few U’s that do offer it independent of their math dept. do so in engineering divisions. Along these lines, I’d certainly consider both Rice and Hopkins – similar to NU in terms of admissions difficulty, not undoable.</p>
<p>I’d also strongly second U Rochester as an excellent, safer match. Neither Lehigh nor Bucknell meet your requirement for a nearby city. While Wash U, Emory and Tufts do not offer separate stats majors (to my knowledge) they do all offer solid overall math programs. Cornell, UNC, and UVa are all larger than your posted cutoffs but not by much (13K/13K/16K, as I remember) and also should be considered (Cornell’s math department is particularly strong, only Biostatistics is offered as a stats major undergrad via the Ag school).</p>
<p>Have you considered Harvey Mudd? West Coast (suburban LA), excellent math dept., 5-6000 kids when you include the full Claremont consortium. Not a safety, but good reach.</p>
<p>With a 3.8 unweighed GPA and a 34 ACT composite, your son has a good shot at the University of Michigan, which meets all of your son's criteriea save size. I would encourage him to check out Michigan. I also advise your son to use his ACT rather than his SAT as his ACT score is significantly better than his SAT.</p>