<p>I am getting stressed out right now about making my college list.
I don't know how to identify a reach, target, or safety.</p>
<p>I know:
A reach is a school where you don't meet the criteria or has low acceptance rates.
A target is a school in which you meet the criteria but still unsure if your are getting in.
And a safety is somewhere you are guaranteed to get in.</p>
<p>But, it's still so hard to determine it based on my grades and test scores.</p>
<p>I have a 96.6% GPA and I didn't take the SAT yet. On my PSAT I got a 1480 which is a horrible score. 510 Critical Reading, 480 Math, and 490 Writing. Most colleges just count CR and W so I basically have a 990, which is terrible. :-( But hopefully, I would do better when I take the actual test since it wasn't a good day when I took the PSAT.</p>
<p>If I do significantly better on my SAT, what colleges do you think would be good for Reach, Target, and Safety.</p>
<p>My list so far is:
Princeton
MIT
NYU
The City College of New York (CUNY) [Maybe Macaulay Honors College]
Stony Brook University (SUNY)
Binghamton University (SUNY)
Northeastern University</p>
<p>I may add more or take away from what's already here.
If you have suggestions feel free to tell me.</p>
<p>Please help me out and please don't judge me based on my PSAT scores. =]</p>
<p>You have to list your ECs, leadership positions, strength of schedule, etc. Based on your PSAT I would guess that you have an extremely easy schedule, because I honestly don’t see a nearly straight A student getting a 1480 on the PSAT. Unless you get it up to at least 1950 you probably won’t have a chance at any of your schools–well I don’t know about the NY schools, but especially Princeton, MIT, NYU, and NEastern</p>
<p>And a safety is somewhere you are guaranteed to get in.</p>
<p>A safety is a school where you’ll surely get accepted AND you KNOW that you can afford to go to. That means a school that is cheap enough that you can pay for out of pocket, or you know that you’ll get a big assured merit scholarship, or you know you’ll get assured grants from the gov’t based on your known EFC.</p>
<p>A safety is not a school where you hope you’ll get the needed FA or merit scholarship. You have to know that it be affordable. There have been students posting this spring that their “safeties” are not affordable. So, it’s really was not a safety.</p>
<p>^Are you taking the most rigorous course load available at you school and truly challenging yourself? That’s what top colleges want to see. They don’t want students who take easy classes to get easy A’s and pad their GPA</p>
<p>This discussion is somewhat premature as you don’t have an actual SAT score to measure yourself with, but if you take the SAT and you get results similar to your PSAT score, then I would recommend taking an SAT prep course or maybe trying the ACT. Some students just naturally do better on the ACT.</p>
<p>In terms of schedule strength, have you taken any AP or IB courses, or have you just been sticking to honors or on level</p>
<p>Oh okay, My school is VERY new. The first graduating class is graduating this year. So, as a result they don’t have many AP classes or programs for that matter. I am taking the hardest class my school has to offer and that’s AP English. x.x I took a college class in 10th grade and I definitely know I should take one again.</p>
<p>I REALLY hope I don’t get scores anywhere close to my PSAT score. I have prepared a lot so far, using books, iPhone apps, and going to SAT prep.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be taking all AP classes, as long as you are taking the most rigorous course offered by your school. It is the regional admissions officers’ jobs to learn about the schools in their regions, and your guidance counselor is supposed to inform the schools you apply to about your own school, so the admissions officers should know. They won’t judge you based on the limitations of your school, they just want to see that you are challenging yourself as much as possible</p>
<p>Thank you so much. I have been pondering about that for a while now. But yes, I take the hardest workload my school could offer to me, except the fact that I didn’t take college classes this year.</p>
<p>I don’t think it would be possible to improve on your PSAT by the 700 points that you need to improve by in order to keep your list. The SAT is generally considered to be more difficult than the PSAT and you have to be able to tackle essay as well.</p>
<p>You need to get crackin on SAT prep. The PSAT is a horrible, horrible measure of gauging your SAT score (at least in my experience). Check out the SAT forums–lots of great advice.</p>
<p>Really, even if we had your ECs, awards, etc, we can’t gauge your chances without SAT scores.</p>
<p>Thanks for the encouragement. Yes, I am a junior and I want to have everything set up by the end of this year so senior year won’t be so complicated.</p>
<p>I can tackle the essay portion because I write essays all the time in my class, but I think I need to prepare more in Math because I take a while to answer the question at times.</p>