I go to a very competitive public school, often ranked in the top 20-top 100 by the U.S. News.
My SAT is 1490 and for subject tests I have an 800 in U.S. History and a 780 in a language.
My GPA is 3.6 uw, 3.9 w and 4.1 UC. Haven’t had a major change in unweighted GPA since Freshman year, but have maintained it with increasingly difficult course loads. School doesn’t rank due to level of competitiveness, but I’d say I am an above average student there.
What sort of colleges should I be looking into based purely off of these stats. I mean in terms of reaches and matches, as I already have a safety I’m guaranteed admission to.
Thanks in advance.
Tentative academic interests?
I love foreign languages and politics so I’m thinking international relations.
Geographic preference? Where do you live? Preference on size of school? Are sports, music, theater or something else similar important? Do you have a budget?
Preferably small and suburban/rural. Urban is ok though. I am trying to play baseball at the college level, but academics come first. Budget-wise, no. I’m just going to apply and see how much aid I can get. CA resident, but no geographical preference.
What has your own high school’s guidance team recommended? Start with that list.
Talk with your parents about the money. Run the Net Price Calculator at each college and university website to get an estimate of your likely cost. All too many who don’t take this into consideration at the beginning end up with nothing but unaffordable admissions offers.
Are you a junior or a senior? If you are a senior, then admissions deadlines are coming up fast for some schools, and already past for some other schools.
If you don’t have a budget, then the first thing to do is to fix this. You need to know what your budget is. Also, you should try to minimize or avoid debt for undergrad as much as you can. It makes no sense to pay $70,000 per year for university unless your parents are very wealthy. Given that you are from California, it is unlikely to be worth paying more than the cost of a UC or CSU for your undergrad unless you can do this without taking on any debt.
@Gumbymom can probably suggests which UC’s and CSUs you would be likely to get accepted to.
Baylor
Well hopefully you are a Junior since the application deadline has passed for the California UC’s. The CSU’s are extended until Dec 15 so if you have not applied yet, I suggest you apply now for Cal Poly SLO, San Diego state, CSU Long Beach and Fullerton. Few Cal states have International relations majors but since you seem undecided so they are worth your time to apply. SDSU and CSUF have notable baseball teams. Also consider USC, Claremont Colleges, Occidental, Pepperdine to bame a few private colleges.
That is not a good plan. You need to make sure that you are picking schools that you at least have a chance of affording.
You could study public policy, IR and languages at a school such as Hamilton, which enhances its curriculum in these areas with a D.C. term. Based on your GPA, the school would seem to represent a reach for you. However, based on your increasing course rigor, indicated prioritization of academics and standardized testing profile (your SAT score lands neatly near its 75th percentile), admission might nonetheless be realistic. Claremont McKenna, Occidental, Middlebury, Connecticut College, Colby, Denison, Dickinson, the University of Richmond, Lewis & Clark and the University of Puget Sound represent a range of additional colleges that would be suitable for your academic interests. You could trim out any that might seem overly selective. With baseball, however, the majority of these colleges could be open to you.
^ I agree that Claremont McKenna could be a good choice - i’s very strong in gov/poli sci/IR, and foreign languages are superb at the 5C’s (with rich course offerings because of the shared consortium resources)… and the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps joint athletic program has D3 baseball. Recruited athletes typically apply ED (CMC has both ED1 and ED2), and it would be a low-reach for you in the ED cycle. (Your SAT is exactly at their median and your GPA only a hair below median… and in the ED cycle they accept 32%, in part because so many of those applicants are recruited athletes.) It’s a high-reach in regular decision though (single-digit acceptance rate in the RD cycle), so this is kind of an all-or-nothing school.
William and Mary could be a good reach school academically speaking, but they’re D1 for athletics and you sound as if D3 might be a better fit. Maybe Wesleyan? Other promising D3 schools include Pitzer, Occidental, Whitman, Grinnell, Macalester, Dickinson, Franklin & Marshall, Gettysburg, Brandeis, Hamilton, Emory, Washington & Lee… and maybe Middlebury and Tufts, but those last two are probably in the “only if you apply ED” category with CMC. ED would also be a big help at Wesleyan, Emory, W&L, and others.
If you’re a senior, time is running very short - hopefully you’re a junior? If so, put yourself on radar with athletic departments by filling out the forms on their websites - every school has one, but here’s CMS Baseball for example: https://www.cmsathletics.org/sports/bsb/recruitquestionnaire
I think CMC would be a reach due to GPA. How about Dickinson?
Your stats really dont have an effect on where you should be looking at. If you do your research, you will be amazed ot find that there are dozens of institutions that offer excellent programs that do not require an extremely competitive GPA or costs you ten of thousands of dollars. As someone whose attended three different colleges, from the very prestigious and more, dont waste your time by thinking the more competitive a school is the better education and experience it will offer you!
Attend a community college for the first two years. The courses are all virtually the same. It doesnt matter if you are at Princeton or Sierra Community College. You all need to take the same introductory courses. Arguably the CC ones are better because the professors have much more time for 1-1 with you and Ive found that the courses offered by local CC’s can be even harder than ones offered by the “heavyweights”!
Macalester, if it would work for you financially. It’s urban but feels kind of suburban, I think.