Realistically, what are my chances?

Chance Me / Match Me!
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  • Schools: Swarthmore, Northwestern, Vassar, Haverford, Princeton, Harvard, Notre Dame, UPenn
  • Intended Major: Psychology, with a minor in business or stats (hoping to get a masters in I/O Psychology)
  • Hispanic Female, fluent in Spanish
  • GPA (school reports out of 100 pt scale): UW 99.876, W 102.07
  • ACT: 34
  • SAT: TBD
  • Most likely valedictorian

Course load: all honors classes except:

  • Accelerated: English Lang (11- taking the AP exam as well) and Chemistry (10)
  • AP: Computer Science Principles(11), US History(11)
    - taking 5 more APs next year, in total I will be taking the hardest course load available at my school

ECs:

  • chamber choir: practice 2 hrs/week, performances mostly during the winter (on average 6-8 hrs/week during winter)- includes singing at charity events and nursing homes- (9-11)
  • Work at Chick-fil-A: 15 hrs/week during school year, 35-40 during the summer) (10-12)
  • (hopefully attending the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s YLI program at UChicago this summer)
  • VBS volunteer during the summers (9-12)
  • NHS Tutoring once a week (11-12)
  • cantor at my church (10-12)
  • school’s handbell choir for 2 years (9-10)
  • Service Club (9-12)

Awards/Honors/Recognitions:

  • most likely a National Merit Commended Scholar
  • most likely a National Hispanic Recognized Scholar
  • Excellence awards from my school (I don’t know if these even count as anything): History 9, English 9, Biology 9, Handbells 9, French I, Accelerated Chemistry 10, Choir 10, History 10- and maybe a few more at the end of this year
  • NHS
  • Tri M Music Honors Society
  • Mu Alpha Theta Math Honors Society
  • Employee of the month at my job (lol again idk if this counts as anything)
  • (hopefully Illinois State Scholar)

Letters of Recommendation: not even written yet, but I know they’ll be very good. I have 2 teachers in mind that know me very well, not just academically but also personality-wise. I go to a small school so I’ve had plenty of opportunity to bond with both. Also, one went to Northwestern (physics teacher) and another went to Notre Dame (APUSH teacher), idk if that affects anything since both are schools I want to apply to.

Let me know if you need any more info! Also, if anyone wants to recommend some match schools or some safety schools (my only one right now is NIU) that would be great! Thanks in advance for any insight!

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what state do you reside in, if it is the northeast I would expand my search out further, also you do not have any state schools on your list, why? Are you hoping for large merit awards or will go ED and could afford to pay full sticker? You have good grades but so will everyone else your competing for spots with. Need more info to suggest more.

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@NJdad07090 I live in Illinois. The reason I don’t have any state schools on my list (other than NIU as a safety school) is because the only school that is good for psychology in Illinois is UIUC (most state schools out of state tend to be way too expensive) and I really want to avoid going to a super huge school like that. I definitely cannot afford to pay full price and was hoping for merit awards (although unlikely at competitive schools) as well as financial aid. Let me know if there’s any other information you want :slight_smile:

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Have you run the NPCs on the schools that you are applying to?

Are you a junior applying next year, or a senior who already applied?

I think that your chances are quite good at the schools that you listed. While Princeton is a reach for everyone, it is probably less of a reach for you than most applicants.

At this point if I were to add any more schools I would add a safety, and would make sure that it is a financial safety as well as an admission safety.

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@DadTwoGirls I’m sorry, but what are NPCs? I’m a junior applying next year :). I actually have NIU as my safety because it’s a relatively cheap state school for me and has guaranteed admission for anyone with a GPA of 3.0 or above. Do you maybe have any suggestions for match schools?

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NPC = Net Price Calculator

Each college and university has a link to their NPC on their website give you an estimate of your probable costs. Some are more accurate than others.

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As an especially convenient alternative to NPCs, you can access this resource for estimating costs at certain colleges: https://myintuition.org/.

Also, consider the importance to you of a business minor in your search. Several of the schools you listed do not offer one.

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I would choose UIC for your safety, rather than NIU. You could also look at Iowa or UMN. With your profile, you could likely qualify for all sorts of merit money at different public and private colleges in the Midwest. My kid from Chicagoland, with a GPA that is lower than yours (but a higher SAT), was offered a large chunk of merit money by UMN.

So, UMN is likely a safety, U Iowa, UIC, and Indiana University.

For smaller colleges, Grinnell isn’t a safety, but it a low reach/high match

There are also a long list of scholarships out there that are available to high achieving Hispanic students. A Hispanic girl from my kid’s HS is attending WashU on a full tuition (with a stipend) Scholarship. Her profile was no better than yours, and WashU is definitely a competitive school.

The particular list of colleges you present here all have very low acceptance rates. Almost all are high reaches for anybody, including somebody like you. Only Vassar is not a high reach for everybody.

Swarthmore, Northwestern, UPenn, Princeton, and Harvard all have single digit acceptance rates, with Harvard’s dropping below 5%.

Haverford and Notre Dame have acceptance rates in the teens, and only Vassar has the “huge” acceptance rate of 23%

So your chance are slim for all of them. Not because you are unqualified or under-qualified, but because there are thousands of qualified applicants for each of those colleges, and the majority of qualified and highly qualified applicants are rejected.

However, you are competitive for merit money (and a good amount) at many other competitive colleges.

If that is you list of reaches, I would knock out Princeton and Notre Dame from the list. You can keep Harvard as your lottery ticket if you want.

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“NPC = Net Price Calculator”

If you google “net price caculator princeton” you will find the NPC for Princeton University. Of course you can do the same for every university on your list. It will ask you to input a bunch of information most of which is related to your family’s financial situation. It will then give you an estimate of what it would cost to attend.

If your parents are divorced, or if they own a small business, farm, or rental property, then the NPC is likely to be not accurate and far too optimistic. Otherwise they are usually relatively accurate.

In some families the parents do not want to give all of their financial information to their children, so the parent would need to run the NPC, or at least input the financial information.

“Do you maybe have any suggestions for match schools?”

I am not familiar with Illinois (just spelling it is a challenge). We live in the northeast of the US. McGill is quite good for psychology and would be either a match or nearly a safety with your stats in terms of admission (whether is a match or safety in terms of cost would be a separate issue, financial aid is rare at McGill). There are of course very good universities in the northeast – Harvard comes to mind but I would not call it a match.

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I would consider University of Virginia, if you want to study psychology. They have an excellent program. I don’t recall NU having anything particularly special about their psychology department, but that may have changed since I went there. My one other piece of advice would be to think hard about your statements as to why you want to attend each school—they want to know why you chose them in particular, so do your research on their departments, professors with specialties you are interested in, etc.

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For psychology, Harvard, Princeton and Vassar from your list could all make excellent choices. For potential additions, look into the programs at Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Pitzer, Wesleyan, Bates, Hamilton, Mt. Holyoke, Smith and Barnard. For a suggestion closer to home, look into Carleton.

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@merc81 Thank you for mentioning that! I’ll definitely look more into it.

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You certainly should include the high reach schools on your list. But please understand that they are very high reaches for anyone and there is a high likelihood that you won’t get accepted to any of them.

You definitely should run the NPCs on all of the schools that are possibilities for you. You’ll start to get an idea of what various schools will expect your family to pay. You should also start the discussion on what your parents are willing and able to pay. When you run the NPCs, you’ll get some picture of their finances , and if their situation is such that they can pay, say $25k as a stretch and the private schools are saying they need to come up with $50, 60, 70, 80k , those schools might be out of price range for you. Many a student has come up in this situation. You are not going to get financial aid from these schools if the numbers do not qualify you for such. And some of these schools have no merit money available. They are not going to give you a scholarship, no matter how great you are if you do not have the need by their definition.

There is a huge gap between those most selective schools and NIU. The true art of college hunting is to find those schools that fit your desires and are affordable and will take you. Your choice of major leaves most schools wide open. If you really are adverse to very large schools, look for ones at the size that is comfortable to you and also not as selective as your top choices.

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With respect to your career objectives, this site could be helpful: https://www.psychology.org/careers/industrial-organizational-psychologist/.

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There’s really nothing that these schools offer that you can’t get from an in-state university for a small fraction of the cost.

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If your family is middle class or lower, some of the most selective schools on your list may turn out to be cheaper than your state school. I know Yale is not one the schools you list, but I am most familiar with it. Families with $75k or less in annual income and typical assets will have $0 parent share beginning with the entering class. The student will be expected to contribute $3,700 but gets a one time $2,000 start up stipend. The median net cost (tuition, room, board, books, travel and personal expenses less grants) for families with income between $65k to $100k for the Class of 2021 was $5,500, for income between $100k-150k, it was $15,300. https://news.yale.edu/2019/10/03/new-scholarships-ensure-affordability-yale https://finaid.yale.edu/costs-affordability/affordability HPS will have similar levels of support, all with 100% grant aid.

With your record and background, I would not hesitate to apply to several reach/high reach schools if financially feasible. I agree that you should have some safeties and matches lined up as well. I would suggest applying to state schools as soon as their apps open up. Many, if not most, are rolling admissions, even for honor colleges. If you can get some early results, you can better cull your list, either adding more safety/matches and reducing high reaches or the opposite. Also for many schools, it is advantageous to apply for need and merit aid early if they have limited funds and make awards on a rolling basis.

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@coolguy40 Yes, most of the top schools for psychology are actually public universities. However, going to out-of-state public schools tends to be more expensive than going to private schools. Also, most public schools are much bigger than the schools I mentioned, which I want to avoid. I live in Illinois, and UIUC’s psychology program is amazing, but there are about 40,000 students in the school.

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Just a note about school size. There are lots of ways to make a big school feel much smaller. Honors programs, Greek life, clubs, activities, sports, and even the students within your major.

My D is at another large public and it’s a much smaller feel than she expected.

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It seems you may have accessed rankings for graduate programs? An undergraduate-focused school such as, for example, Pitzer would probably top most, if not all, public universities for the undergraduate study of psychology.