<p>I think it’s going to be tough for you to get into HYPSM and probably Chicago, Columbia and Penn and Cal Tech. Here are some other really good schools, with plenty of strong programs, that offer excellent fin aid and at which your stats would be competitive:</p>
<p>You might well get into a few of those, at which point you can jump for joy.</p>
<p>But if not, here are some matches (low, mid, high…):
UIUC
UW-Madison
UNC
UVA
U Texas
U Minnesota
Emory
Case Western
UCLA
Georgia Tech
Wake Forest</p>
<p>…and you’d most certainly get into some of those. U of Minnesota is probably the cheapest sticker price among those, at about $27k total out of state. Though if you got into Emory or Wake, they meet 100% of need or darn near it.</p>
<p>Except that MBAs aren’t free. The good programs are expensive, AND you lose two years of earnings while you attend. A student who hustles for good internships and gets good grades can do very well studying business at any of the colleges that you are considering that have an undergrad business program. Not everyone wants to go into investment banking or strategic consulting, and many, many large companies hire undergrads from colleges all over the country AND from colleges local to their headquarters, even if they aren’t top 10 programs. You may be able to try a couple of business classes your freshman year at some of these schools to see what you think.</p>
<p>The problem with this list is that some of these are OOS where minimal financial aid will be available to the OP. He isn’t going to be able to afford UW-Madison, U Texas, UCLA, for example.</p>
<p>@prezbucky Since when are Penn and Chicago so much more competitive than Duke and Dartmouth that they are in a different tier of selectivity. Duke and Dartmouth are often more selective than Penn as a whole (and virtually always more selective than Penn CAS) and all three of those schools have historically been more selective than Chicago. </p>
<p>U of Chicago accepted 8% last year. Duke accepted 17%, Dartmouth 9%, Penn (as a whole) 12%. So U of Chicago is more competitive than Duke by quite a bit.</p>
<p>Duke DID NOT accept 17% of its applicants last year. Someone who has 11,616 posts on this website should conduct some DUE DILIGENCE before posting such drivel. The google search result that immediately comes up when you type “Duke acceptance rate” is several years out of date. The actual overall acceptance rate is 10.8% (the RD acceptance rate is 9.9%).</p>
<p>Dartmouth’s acceptance rate last year was not 9% and Penn’s acceptance rate was not 12%. You should immediately retract your post and apologize for inadvertently spreading spurious information!</p>
<p>You can stop being quite so histrionic, @hidall1. If people post incorrect information, then others are free to correct it. Just please do it politely, not with rude remarks and hysteria.</p>
<p>Also, FYI, Chicago only starting taking the Common App in 2010, I think it was. That is why they have seen such a big increase in applications and therefore the admission rate drops. The last two years the admission rates have been 8.8% and 8.4%. You really should make it clear that those dates above are for the Class of 2015, 2014, etc., not the entering year of freshmen which is what has been talked about previously. So the admissions cycle was 4-5 years prior to those dates, i.e. the Class of 2015 had an admissions season of Fall 21010-Spring 2011. Before the Common App fully took hold at Chicago, comparing admission rates to Duke is totally apples and oranges. It is hard to tell when Duke started taking the common application but it appears to be much earlier. One article I found said Duke adopted the Universal App in 2008 and had already been using the Common App, presumably for at least a few years.</p>
<p>Both schools used the common app for the classes of 2014 and 2015. Furthermore, if we’re keen on making excuses for our preferred schools, one can always argue that Chicago’s current acceptance rate can’t be compared to Duke’s because Duke does not wave the application fee for all applicants from its home city whereas Chicago does. </p>
<p>On the flip side, a Chicago supporter can assert that a comparison is untenable because Duke’s Common App supplement is optional whereas Chicago’s is not. </p>
<p>At some point you have to stop equivocating and take the numbers at face value ;)</p>
<p>@hidall1 - Any courses about methodology teach you a couple of things.</p>
<p>1) You should always label your data completely and accurately and not assume people will make inferences. This is a small point. The important one is:</p>
<p>2) When conditions are materially unequal, which you and I have both pointed out they were, results cannot be compared at all. There is no taking numbers at face value, that makes zero sense and demonstrates a certain ignorance about analyzing data. That is like saying that if one guy makes 60% of his shots in basketball and another 30%, you shouldn’t take into account the fact that the first took all his shots within the paint and the second took all his from beyond the 3 point line. It isn’t equivocating, it is understanding the circumstances under which the data was generated. I know this is hard for you to believe, but it does actually take time for people to learn when something new like the Common App is first used at a school, as the numbers clearly show. Otherwise why did the number jump from 13,000 the first year Chicago offered it to 19,000 the next and now to around 30,000 the cycle before this one and this year, despite issues with the Common App, almost 28,000 applications? Clearly it took a few years for the Common App to completely catch on for applications to Chicago. You actually help show this by listing the numbers from the Classes of 2011-2013, before Chicago took the Common App.</p>
<p>As I said, those older acceptance numbers are apples and oranges because the conditions under which they were obtained were very different. What is clear is that as the number of applications to each school became similar and conditions appear to be more materially equal, the acceptance rate for each school is also more similar. Clearly these are two of the most highly selective schools in the world and there is little difference between them in that regard. This really was a spat between you and another member over misunderstandings about data and how it can lie when not subjected to proper scrutiny. There really is no sense discussing it any longer. Especially since it is now so divergent from the original topic.</p>
<p>@humbugs - You have gotten a lot of good suggestions. I think you really need to make some decisions about what size school you want and what flexibility you want. Location is definitely a factor. Do you think the quirkiness of New Orleans is interesting to you, or is the Boston culture something you think you might want to explore? Or a more bucolic setting of Cornell, for example? Personally I think there is nothing wrong with going in undecided and seeing if business or science or both is what you want. Some schools make this easier than others. It definitely takes some research.</p>
<p>My point is that you have already seen that there are dozens of excellent choices for a student of your caliber. You can drive yourself a little nuts if you don’t narrow the list down to some manageable number by using some criteria that involves academics, finances, and non-academic preferences on your part such as size, setting, sports, weather, whatever. If you come up with some sort of grid that has those parameters, you should be able to narrow it down to about a dozen or so schools that are a mix of “credentialed reaches” (that means you have the resume for pretty much any school, but some schools are so selective even matched students get denied at a fairly high rate), highly selective schools just below that level, and maybe Alabama as a safety, if you think you could be happy going to school there in the extremely unlikely event you got denied elsewhere or the money at other schools just didn’t work out.</p>
<p>Considering a budget of 15k/yr, are Tulane and Emory considered matches for me? People have mentioned UofPitt and UofAlabama as safeties and liberal arts colleges, but can anyone recommend solid safeties that are medium sized, are approximately in my budget that are strong in engineering and possibly economics? i would also prefer colleges to be near larger cities such as Chicago or New York City where I can still have korean food away from home. </p>