Could anyone recommend safeties, reaches, and matches for me to apply to (I’m a junior)?
Currently looking at GaTech, Stanford, MIT, UGA. I know Stanford and MIT will be high reaches.
Stats:
Objective:
SAT I: 1550 (770 M, 780 CR + W)
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.9
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 5/626
Subjective:
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):
FBLA(Treasurer, VP) - won awards and organized schoolwide student/faculty events to raise money for the club
-FIRST Robotics Club- Contribute to developing the code and debugging it for the robot. Only seniors are allowed to hold leadership in the club, but I have a strong chance at becoming captain of the programming team in senior year.
Science Bowl- We are a very small team with no leadership, and we have won regional awards.
Interact(Historian, Treasurer, President) - organize service projects within the school and community
I’m in a couple other clubs(HOSA, Beta, NHS), but my involvement isn’t strong enough to put on an app.
Volunteer/Community service:
-Tutoring students in algebra, Volunteering at the local hospital and library, NHS/Beta/Interact stuff, altogether about 150 hours so far.
Summer Activities:
-Internship at a genetics lab at Emory University in the summer of sophomore year, hope to do something similar next summer.
Other:
Applied for Financial Aid?: Yes
Intended Major: Engineering/CS, maybe biophysics
State (if domestic applicant): GA
School Type: Large public school in a rural corner of Georgia
Ethnicity: South Asian
Gender: Female
Income Bracket: 50k
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): First Generation
Reaches: Cornell, Rice, Notre Dame. You will be tuition free at any of these if you’re admitted given your family’s income. I suggest you apply ED to one of them (if you can’t decide between the 3, pick Rice). I’d recommend these over Stanford, MIT or Princeton because you have more of a chance of getting in.
Matches: GTech (semi-reach), RPI, Lehigh. You’ll get good aid at RPI given you have high stats and you’re a female (and a minority).
I wasn’t taking instate into account. I agree - GT would be a match. (However you can’t compare EA acceptances with RD as chances are greater with the former).
Your mean Stanford/MIT/GT? Nothing - your application/stats are excellent. I’m pretty sure you’ll get into GT. As for Stanford or MIT, they will be a reach no matter how good you are because everyone applying is good. So if you really want to go there, pick one for EA/ED and roll the dice. And apply to a number of other reaches for RD and see if any accept you. Plus you have a number of good matches recommended above. What’s your list looking like now?
If u want to get into a top private university, applying ED to Northwestern would probably give you much better odds than applying ED or RD to MIT or Stanford. Still not a sure thing, but Northwestern’s overall acceptance rate is about twice those of MIT & Stanford, & they seem to really give a break to ED applicants.