<p>His scores are strong for a black male. His being a NASA Sharp apprentice will make him stand out big time. His being accepted to MITES also is a plus in terms of how MIT will regard him. His planning to major in the hard sciences also is a big plus. Since you and your wife did not graduate from 4-year colleges, that will also boost his chances and explain his relatively low scores for applicant pools such as MIT's. His grades and scores in an IB curriculum demonstrate that he has the ability to handle a tough courseload.</p>
<p>My thoughts are that he has decent shots at everything except U Penn, which I saw reject a black male with similar stats and curriculum.</p>
<p>Since you have 4 other kids, my advice would be for your S to follow merit aid or at least apply to outside merit scholarships to reduce your load. There are plenty of scholarships that he could apply for and have decent shots at getting if he uses fastweb and local resources to find those scholarships, and if he does a careful job with his applications.</p>
<p>Obviously the Ohio state schools will probably offer him major merit aid since he's a top in-state resident. </p>
<p>I strongly suggest that your S consider are University of Maryland Baltimore County (the overall college has a low rating, however the school is highly rated when it comes to their Myerhoff program that prepares students for doctoral programs in the hard sciences. This particularly is true for black males. Graduates go off to top universities in the country including Harvard. Myerhoff scholars get full tuition, room and board, mentoring, internships, etc. They are treated like royalty. The college prez is a black male who graduated from college (U of Illinois- Urbana, I think) at age 19 with a degree in math.)</p>
<p>I also think that Carnegie Mellon and Case are likely to offer him excellent merit aid. </p>
<p>He also may want to add U Wisconsin to his list. It has excellent scholarships for students like your son and is a top 35 university.</p>
<p>I don't suggest that he mention the foreign travel. It highlights the fact that you probably are Panamanian, not African American from a non recent immigrant family. Many top colleges are becoming increasingly aware that lots of their black admits are immigrant African/Caribbean or kids of such immigrants. They are trying to give more of a tip to African American nonimmigrants, whose families were hurt by the racism that led to affirmative action.</p>
<p>Unless your S raised the $ himself to travel abroad, the foreign travel will make it seem like he's from a privileged background, something that will not boost his admission chances. </p>
<p>When your S puts together his applications, he needs to highlight debate and NASA SHARP and possibly band. He does not need to list all of the one-time service activities that you did. Top colleges are not interested in long EC lists, but info about ECs where a student demonstrated leadership, did research, made an impact or won major awards.</p>