My College List

College Search & Selection
1

Hello everyone,

I’m an international student from China and a junior in an American system high school.
Would y’all please provide your opinions of my college list? I am planning to either study nutritional sciences or education with a possible minor in music.

Brown University
Dartmouth College
UNC
Washington University in St Louis
George Washington University
Tufts University
Boston University
Purdue University

I have a SAT score of 1450 and an ACT score of 33 (hoping to improve both), and my cumulative GPA should be around 4.05-4.1 (I have not yet checked this with my counselor).
By the time I finish high school, I will have taken 8 APs.

Thank you in advance.

2

Congratulations on your hard work and success! Your test scores are very high and grades good. What is your UW GPA?

All the schools on your list are obviously terrific. They are also extremely competitive. I like to use this example: a tip-top LAC told us that 70% of applicants were fully qualified, and the school thought they would succeed in every way if accepted. It accepted 14%. So 4 in 5 fully qualified applicants were not accepted. It’s just supply and demand.

Brown and Dartmouth accept single digits in RD. UNC only takes a small % of OOS students, so is very tough for OOS students. Wash U accepts a large % of its incoming class in ED, so RD acceptance % is low, and it puts a big emphasis on “Interest”–visiting the school and interviewing if possible. I love Tufts. BU seems good for your interests. Tufts and BU and the other schools in Boston have received increasing numbers of applications in recent years. GWU and Purdue seem more like matches for you, but not guarantees. GWU can be very expensive (more limited aid), if cost is a factor.

I’m not trying to be negative, just realistic. High-stat students might be accepted to any of these, but also might be denied admission to most or all of them, just because of the high number of applicants. The GREAT NEWS is that there are many outstanding choices available, and it seems like lots of them will be accessible to your especially if the financial side works.

So I’d advise you keep all of these you love. You are a very reasonable applicant at all of them. AND you add a couple of schools that would be good choices for YOU, would be affordable, and where you have a strong chance of admission. I sort of think of schools with a 40%+ acceptance rate as being safeties for high-stat students, though it can depend on the specific situation. For example, Purdue is higher for all students. It might be for OOS students. You could research that.

A couple of other schools you might explore:

Case Western Reserve University (CWRU “Crew”): Seems like a great fit for you. It is a top national STEM university. Urban like some of your others; mid-size like yours, including Brown, Dartmouth, and Tufts; has nutrition majors and a major med school/university hospital right next to campus. It’s in a nice area of Cleveland with museums, symphony hall, theaters, etc. right adjacent. There is also a music school right next to campus (you probably pass walking from freshman dorms to main academic quad) (see link), so you might have opportunities there. Not a safety, maybe more of a high match.

https://case.edu/medicine/nutrition/education-programs/undergraduate-programs-in-nutrition

https://www.cim.edu

Indiana University: You are considering Purdue, which is great, and just a couple of hours from Bloomington (IU). It has a very nice state flagship campus in a nice college town, with a pretty natural area (Brown County) nearby, nutritional science program, and one of the VERY BEST music schools among state universities. It has a very large population of international students, including many from China, if that is a plus for you.

https://www.indiana.edu/academics/degrees-majors/degree/nutrition-science-bs-iu-bloomington-ahnsbs

https://music.indiana.edu

University of Pittsburgh: Large urban school, probably fairly comparable to BU, but not in Boston, so fewer applicants in recent years, still competitive admissions, excellent students and programs. It has a new nutritional sciences program starting next year.

https://www.shrs.pitt.edu/ns

I’d think your odds pretty high at Pitt and IU but obviously I can’t say for sure.

Good luck!

3

Ohio State is also excellent in nutrition https://ehe.osu.edu/human-sciences/human-nutrition , and the major lives within the College of Education and Human Ecology, so you could explore education within that same umbrella. The OSU School of Music is excellent too, and offers a minor for non-music majors. https://music.osu.edu/areas/minors

4

Thank you for your kind help and encouragement!

My unweighted is around 3.9.

I should probably add my ECs too.
The majority of them are centered around music; I have played the Chinese harp for more than ten years and piano for a bit less. I will soon be taking an exam for the latter to be a certified professional. I also play violin and am currently pursuing a Grade 8 diploma (the highest grade below a professional certification).
I lead my school’s string ensemble and perform in its concert band (though I am not in the class). Other than that, I have accompanied for a friend several times on piano for her music school audition.
Other ECs have included community service, the most prominent of which is CG Kenya, a support and awareness group for young women with scoliosis. I expect to lead the country’s group in my senior year.

5

I’d second Ohio State. Great school, Columbus is a good place for tech and medical opportunities. I don’t know much about nutrition science but associated it with OSU for some back-of-the-brain reason. I did a quick search for it under OSU Academics while writing my previous post and did not see it listed as a major. Now I know why–its in the College of Education and Human Ecology. I appreciate that. In terms of your list, I’d put it in the same broad category with Purdue (and IU)–excellent large state university, and good in science and medical areas.

One thing to consider at IU, CWRU, OSU, Pitt, or any of the other schools on your list: what kind of access would a student in nutrition science or a similar major have to classes, lessons, practice time, etc. in the music program or in other programs, for example, at the Jacobs School of Music at IU or at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM) (see link). For example, could you take a class/lessons at CIM and get credit at CWRU? Or could you take classes/lessons at Jacobs at IU as a non-music major, and, if so, how many and which ones?

Severance Hall is home to the Cleveland Symphony, one of the best in the country. It is right next to the CWRU campus. CWRU students get free and/or discounted tickets to performances. CIM is just about 2-3 blocks away on Euclid Avenue, which bisects the campus (it used to be 2 schools–Western Reserve College and Case Institute of Technology). I wonder if you’d have any opportunities with the Cleveland Symphony. It would be walkable from campus, maybe 15-minute walk from freshman dorm complex.

https://www.clevelandorchestra.com/tickets/1819-season-schedule/

6

Is there a specific aspect of nutrition that interests you? That can affect your list.

UNC and Purdue make sense to me for nutrition, but I am a bit curious as to where the rest of this list came from. Generally speaking, the stronger programs for that major are to be found at the public universities that were originally founded as colleges of agriculture. If you want an Ivy on your list, replace Brown and Dartmouth with Cornell’s College of Human Ecology.

If you have chosen your list for specific geographic reasons, then check these out:
University of Missouri, Columbia
University of Maryland, College Park
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

7

Reach school wise, you might consider USC. Thornton is quite accessible to non music majors. There’s a graduate nutrition program and an undergrad minor. http://catalogue.usc.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=2&poid=1618 The School of Education also has several undergrad minors. It’s a very flexible university as far as allowing and even encouraging students to blend disparate interests.

8

I chose some of these schools because I was interested in them generally, not necessarily based on my major. Though nutrition is a good option, I am not completely decided, so I wanted to apply to excellent schools across the board for undergraduate study.
I considered Dartmouth partly because family friends are living in that area.

9

Nutrition is a specialized “vocational” major so it will be harder to find than more traditional “academic” majors.

All in all, you need more matches (for you, it’d mean acceptance rates 30-40%) and safeties (40%+ acceptance rate).

Get a Fiske guide and/or a Princeton Review’s best colleges.

A top-notch, non conservatory* option for excellent musicians who are serious about a non music major would be St. Olaf.
*Meaning you can participate in the highest-level ensembles without being a music major or enrolled in the conservatory.

10

Great point about nutrition majors. I don’t really know much about the field but understand that a program can have a more “vocational” approach where a student is preparing for a specific career as a registered dietician or something similar. Or, it can have a more academic, more scientific-based approach (think organic chemistry, metabolism, etc.) that prepares a student, probably directly for a career but also is good preparation for graduate studies in nursing school, medical school, or other medical/scientific fields. I think you can see what I mean in the first link, for CWRU nutritional sciences, in post #1 in this thread. Again, I’m no expert in the field, and maybe someone more knowledgable can add to my comments. I think they are substantially on target though.

Dartmouth had jumped out at me on your list as well, just because it is the only school that is not an urban one (UNC is in a great college town–to me, maybe the best one–but within a larger urban area). I’ve been to Dartmouth and Hanover about 4 times over the last few years, visiting the school twice. I love the school and the town, which is immediately adjacent to campus. Very bucolic. If you have family there, that would be great.

I may have missed it but don’t see a nutritional science major at Dartmouth, but double-check me. If you go there, though, I imagine you could work out something like a biology major with a concentration in nutritional areas, if that remains your area of interest. There is a med school there, so a great opportunity for internships, etc. I know one of our tour guides there was pre-med and had done lots of internships at the hospital. Dartmouth, of course, will do a great job with that kind of thing, and in allowing students to craft a specific program of study.

11

Just to add, it might be a benefit for your general area of interest if the school has a medical school/hospital or an affiliation with one, which I think is the case for all or almost all the schools on your list. It looks like Purdue might be the exception, but IU has a medical school campus in Lafayette (and in Bloomington), which is immediately adjacent to West Lafayette (Purdue). It’s also true for IU, CWRU, Pitt, USC, and OSU. My oldest was born at GWU Hospital!

12

Since you are an international applicant, you need to consider everything that would be a match for a full-pay US applicant to be a reach, and what would be a safety for a full-pay US applicant (except for the small number of auto-admit programs that also are auto-admit for internationals) to be a match. The places that are reaches for full-pay US applicants are super reaches for you. If you are in line for a green card, all that changes once you have your green card in your hand.

US immigration policy can change from one second to the next, so if you don’t want to study in China, put some Canadian/UK/Australian/etc. options on your list as well.

You have also mentioned education as a possible major. Are you thinking of teaching at the preschool, elementary, or secondary level, or are you more interested in educational policy? If you want to teach, what type of school system would you hope to work in one day? Again, all of those can affect your choice of place to study.

13

I have an update: I was researching Purdue and found that they are no longer accepting freshmen for their Main Campus. The only option for them is the Polytechnic Institute, which has campuses in various cities. Their programs have none that I would like to study (all related to engineering/robotics), so I might have to cross them off my list.
@happymomof1, I am considering some UK and Canadian universities.
I would like to teach at the secondary level, possibly at a public school.

14

Teaching certification for public achools depends on the place you want to teach. Before going through an education degree program anywhere, please verify that you will be able to work there after finishing. Long term work permission is difficult to get in the US. Some states have been able to get work permission for international teachers, but those visas often are restricted to one or two years, and of course there is no guarantee whatsoever that those programs will still exist by the time you would graduate.

In the US secondary school teachers often complete a subject area bachelor degree, and then complete a master of arts in teaching (MAT) that leads to state certification. This would give you a bit more time to think about teaching, and your BA or BS could be in a career field that gives you other post-college options. That said, it really is important for potential teachers to spend a lot of time in classrooms observing teachers and learners. If you decide to go the MAT route, arrange to do some classroom volunteer work at a secondary school near you every semester, so that you can get a good sense about whether or not that job really is for you.

You need to contact the nutrition department at Purdue and ask whether or not nutrition majors are required to start at the polytechnics, and if so, what the course sequence is there. If nutrition majors normally don’t begin courses in their major until junior year, then it is fine to get the pre-reqs such as general bio, general chem and organic chem, calculus, etc. and any gen eds out of the way at a two year institution.

15

Purdue still accepts freshmen - perhaps not for nutrition? Look at another major for direct entry.
It’s typically better to start at the main campus as an international since it’s typically more residential and it’s easier to get involved and create bonds with classmates.