Need some advice on balancing out list and picking good colleges for my majors

College Search & Selection
1

Bio:
-Citizenship: USA
-State of residence: CA
-Class: ~200
-Race: Asian Indian
-Gender: Male

School:
-Type (Public/private & size): Public, around 1200 students
-Graduates (How many go to Ivy’s/top 20): ~40 per class
-AP’s Offered: 20
-One of the top HS in the nation

Academic Profile:
-Unweighted GPA: 3.75
-Weighted GPA: 4.27
-Capped UC GPA: 4.1
-Got an upward trend, did kinda bad freshman year
-AP’s: 14 (by year: 2, 3, 6, 3)
-Senior Schedule: AP Stats, AP Lit, AP Gov, Debate, PLTW Engineering Capstone
-ACT: 33 (36E, 35M, 32R, 30S), retaking in September to hopefully get 35
-SAT: 1490 (780M, 710R/W), retaking in August to hopefully get 1560+
-SAT II: 800 Math II
-Rank: Doesn’t rank
-Course Rigor: One of the hardest in my class

EC (In order of importance/commitment):
-4 Years of Speech and Debate, Vice President (Club is quite large at our school), got awards on the local/regional level
-3 Years in American Cancer Society, Treasurer/Board member for 2 Years
-Data Analyst Intern at company that has many Fortune 500 business clients
-Research Internship at a large Medical Hospital last summer, wrote abstract for a solution to a problem in Healthcare Infrastructure (last year)
-Around 250 hours of volunteering at a hospital in a poor area (freshman year)

Other Notables (College courses you’ve taken, papers published, created own website, TAing a class, ect):
-Taking Multivariable Calc in a CC during the fall + Linear Algebra in the Spring but that won’t be on app
-Taken multiple University accredited Coursera courses in Econometrics, Programming, etc with Certification
-Writing Research Paper to submit in MIT INSPIRE Contest in the fall, mentored by a college professor
-Summer program in Economics at local university
-Boys State Delegate

Honors:
-National AP Scholar & PLTW AP Award
-National Merit Commended (at worst)

Work: N/A

Schools I’m looking at:
-University of Michigan (LSA)
-Carnegie Mellon (DS)
-University of Rochester (ASE)
-NYU (Either Courant or Stern)
-UC Berkeley (LS)
-UCLA (LS)
-UCSD
-UCI (Either ICS or SS)
-Cornell (AS)
-University of Washington (AS)
-Princeton University (lol)
-Columbia University (CC) (also lol)

Intended Major: Economics/Data Science/Statistics/Actuarial Science

2

I think you’re in reach of all of these schools. I know going into STEM is pretty competitive, but your Math scores on both the ACT and SAT are near perfect, so you definitly have a good shot. You also said you’re retaking the SAT so if you can get that 1560+, even better. From the looks of it, your ECs are on par to other applicants to these schools I’ve seen. Just make sure you’re essay(s) and LoRs are amazing and you should get into a number of these schools. Princeton and maybe Columbia may be a stretch just from what I witnessed (I’ve seen people w/ perfect SATs, 4.8 GPAs, and amazing EC get denied at my own school) so just really try to kill those essays. Good Luck!!!

3

You probably want to add some more of the less selective UCs like UCSC (which is one of those with a more math-heavy leaning in economics), since your 4.1 UC-weighted-capped GPA does not make any of the UCs you list to be anything close to a safety.

Cost limits?

4

Hm, I was under the impression that UCI and UCD (which I didn’t list but am applying to) would be safeties based on the classes I have taken and my testing scores? Also, according to UCI’s information on their website, my UC GPA is equal to or greater than the average admit gpa in the majors that I specified. (link is at the bottom) Also, in terms of cost, I would ideally like to pay less than 30K a year after financial aid but that number isn’t a hard number due to scholarships and the like.

Also, because I heard that Berkeley and LA look at uncapped weighted gpa as well and I didn’t mention that before my uncapped 10-11 gpa is 4.5.

http://www.oir.uci.edu/files/adm/IA27-fall-fr-mean-hsgpa-by-major.pdf?R=458908

BTW thanks for both of your responses, this is the first time I’ve posted to CC after lurking for a while so I didn’t know what to expect haha

5

Have you run the net price calculator on each college’s web site?

To be anything close to a safety, you should want your GPA to be significantly higher than the average enrolled GPA.

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/freshman-admissions-summary indicates that UCI admitted 65% of applicants with UC weighted-capped GPA of 3.80-4.19 for 2016. This could be considered a match, but not anything close to a safety.

For UCB, UCLA, UCSD, the admit rates for that GPA range were 14%, 14%, 44%.

6

@ucbalumnus Not to discredit all your input but I don’t think safeties are solely defined by stats. For example, I got into every UC I applied to, including Regents at Irvine and Davis. Anyway, thank you for all your help through this process. Will be going to Cal in the fall!