I am a junior from a very competitive high school. I had a 3.78 gpa freshman year, but my family went through a nasty divorce sophomore year and as a result, my gpa dropped to a 3.44 overall. I did however manage to get a 4 on the AP World Exam sophomore year. When things started settling down over the summer, I really panicked and decided I needed to kick it into gear senior year. I am taking 4 AP courses this year, 1 honors course, 1 language course, and Calculus. I am working very hard this year and managed to get straight As my first quarter. I am hoping to keep this up for junior and senior year. I also took the SAT this year and received a 2010. I am hoping to improve this to a 2200. If I keep my grades up I am projected to have about a 3.6 UW overall and a 3.9 W. I will have taken 9 APs and 6 Honors throughout high school. My extracurriculars are Cross Country, Key Club, House league basketball and Church Youth Group.
I am planning on applying to BU, UCLA, UCSB, NYU, Northeastern, Virginia Tech, UCSD, UWash, UTAustin, UCSC, and UC Berkeley. What are my chances of getting in?
WashU, Northeastern, Berkeley are kinda reach based on your GPA. A lot of student’s parents get divorced. But if it REALLY had a bad influence on your grades you should mention that in your application. Your SAT is alright but if you can improve it it would be better. BU and NYU you might have a chance. If you have any leadership that can help boost your application, as well as a good essay and rec letters. I don’t know much about the other schools so I can’t comment on that.
Are you a CA resident?
Have you run the NPC on all these colleges and shown the results to your parents?
BU= do your parents have 280K in a college fund for you, can they afford that out of pocket?
UC Berkeley, UCLA = reach if in state (you’d need a 4+ UCGPA - if you don’t know your UCGPA, calculate it); probably not from OOS
UCSB =match in state and high match OOS. Note that OOS costs are 55K/year, no financial aid.
UCSD = reachable reach instate, probably not from OOS
NYU = reach; lousy financial aid
Northeastern = match if you get 2200, high match for 2100 (they love high scores)
UCSC = safety
Virginia Tech, , UWash, UTAustin = all are OOS if you’re in CA; if you’re in one of these 3 states, then many universities become impossible. UT is not possible due to how hard it is to get in from OOS. UWash, depends on the major and it’ll be 50K; VTech is a good match, again what’s your budget?
You should pick some matches, there are many good schools out there and you have too many reaches.
Keep up the good work, that is the best way of getting into the best school.