NJ bio student aiming for non-Ivy T20

Chance Me / Match Me!
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Demographics

  • US Citizen
  • New Jersey
  • Mid size competitive public school (not too bad for NJ though)
  • White Female

Intended Major: Biosciences

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • 4.0 UW
  • 4.6 W (max 5)
  • School does not rank
  • 1560 SAT: 790M 770E

Coursework
11 APs total (school offers ~17 but it’s near impossible to schedule 12+)
Taken and all 5s: CSP, Chem, Physics I, English Lang, APUSH
Taking currently: Physics C (mech+e&m), Calc BC, English Lit, Bio, CSA, Stat
Max foreign language class is French IV, also fluent in Polish
Max math is Calc BC-- school doesn’t offer higher

Awards
State science competition winner
Model UN award winner
AMC district top score

Extracurriculars
President/Board Member on several activism clubs (feminism, environment, volunteer club, lgbt rights [have actually done things of value on large scales within the clubs gaining international recognition]), Band Drum Major, tutoring organization founder, student council vice president, work with congressman, multiple summers as a head lifeguard, varsity basketball

Essays/LORs/Other
I am very close with the teachers that wrote the LOR, hopefully pretty good
Depending on the person reading essays, like a 6-9/10

Cost Constraints / Budget
Not applying for aid

Schools

  • Safety: Rutgers, Purdue, Penn State
  • Reach: UCLA, UC Berkeley, UMich (EA), Georgetown, Emory, Northwestern, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice, WashU
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It’s a very fair list. You’ll get in your safeties and I’d surmise a reach is possible.

If you will be happy with your safeties then you are all set.

Congrats on all you have achieved.

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Thanks :heart: Glad to hear you think it’s fair-- really just aiming for one reach haha.

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So here we are in January with students getting itchy waiting for results and anxiety-posting ‘chance-me’ threads.

@iloveseltzer, no matter what anybody says here it won’t reduce the anxiety. On the other hand you can work on anxiety-management yourself, by actively making a plan: think of a handful of things- little & big- that you can turn to when the anxiety starts to creep up. There should be at least one you can do anywhere / anytime. You want a mix of things that require physical exertion, things that require enough concentration that you can’t be thinking about college admissions, and things that help somebody else. Some things will do double duty (shovel the walk for an elderly neighbor, for example).

And to distract you in the meantime I am going to call you out for your self-ranking of your essays as ‘6-9/10’ and estimate that teachers who know you well will “hopefully” give you “pretty good” LoRs!

Any student who rates herself as competitive for the top 20 colleges in the country, with an UW 4.0 GPA, a 1560 SAT, and 5s in both STEM and humanities APs, should have the gumption to say that they have confidence in their essays and LoRs.

I get the whole modesty thing, and not wanting to be seen as bragging or showing off, but when you title your post with “I see myself as being in the top 1.3%* of college entrants” (aka, ‘chance me for T20s’), the time for modesty is over.

Do you seriously see your essays as so weak that an AO could rate them as a D (60%), and at best only an A-? Do you think it is really possible that teachers who have given you top marks, who know you well and who have agreed to write an LOR would only give you a ‘pretty good’ LoR? if so, why are you asking them for an LOR?!

Own your achievements- you can do it without being boastful or obnoxious. If you don’t back yourself, why should anybody else? :grinning:

*approximately 40,000 places in the T20, and approximately 3 million college entrants

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This right here was the single most comforting thing I have read, even if that was not the primary intention. I guess I just wanted to keep my expectations realistic. Thank you :heart:

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100% the primary intention <3 wishing you the best!

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If you are planning to study Bio (or any life science), consider replacing Penn State with PITT (University of Pittsburgh)

You have a good chance of getting into some of your Reach.

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Good reply.

I still don’t know what colleges are in non-Ivy T20. I see 13 colleges listed by OP. Who are the remaining 7?

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There is no definitive T20 list of schools. I think what OP is saying is that some of her schools are considered to be T20 schools by the various ranking systems(U.S. News, Forbes, Niche, etc.).

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The non-Ivy T20s (t20-ish) on the OP’s list are Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Northwestern, Rice, Vandy, and WashU.

UCLA, Berkeley, and Michigan are also typically in or around the top 20, but I think when most kids think “T20s” they are thinking of the Ivies and other highly selective private schools.

It’s basically the private schools ranked among the top-25 of national universities by USNews, so:

Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, UChicago, Columbia, Caltech, UPenn, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, CMU, Emory, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Rice, Vanderbilt, Washington U. As you can see, I listed 22. Top-20ish.

They are very selective/rejective, have massive academic reputations, and typically provide very strong outcomes – though, of course, that last bit seems to be a function of major and location moreso than school.

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The whole T20 thing is actually a nonsense- T20 of what? by what metrics? not to mention, how different is T22 than T20?- but it appears that most people mean T20 research unis. So, taking out the 7 Ivy leagues you could add places such as MIT, Stanford, UChic, CalTech, Notre Dame, USC, CMU, Wake, UVa, GaTech, NYU, Tufts. Some people see CalTech (or even MIT) as too specialized to be in a general “top 20” list.

The key is that any way you slice it, combined these schools represent a tiny % of students entering university!

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They should just say, “the most rejective private universities with the largest endowments and best financial aid” – but that’s a real mouthful. hehe

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What are you thinking you might want to do after college? I’m curious about which flavors of biology interest you most.

There’s so many great schools to study biology. It would also be nice to know what kind of school environment is most attractive to you (other than T20). Looks like you want larger schools?

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Definitely one for the bigger schools (except Rice…). I plan to go down a bioinformatics and computational bio track in undergrad.

Location means about nothing to me in a college (just not rural) and I largely applied to schools with good student life. I don’t have some insane T20 obsession, but in my mind it made more sense to go to my state school over any target schools just because of costs, which is why my list looks the way it does.

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I was accepted to Pitt! I left it off this list for reasons I’m not sure of (maybe because I was accepted), but also because I applied later in the rolling cycle, around mid-November, and don’t expect to see much scholarship money because of it, so it seems like an unlikely choice. You’re right about the great bio program though-- I have a couple friends who love it there.

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Congratulations! You have a great resume; I will be surprised if you do not get into two on your reach list. You could get more of course, but two seems like a decent bet. Good luck with the waiting and try to distract yourself, keep up your grades, and so on.

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