Reverse chance a STEM oriented ballerina!!

College Search & Selection
1

Rising Senior- Please reverse chance me! Need help determining what would be a good match.
A little about me: I am a black girl who goes to the 3rd best Public Magnet school in my state. My school has a very competitive environment(also very big). I have been dancing pre-professionally for 12 years. I love it however I am very interested in STEM. Hoping to go on the pre-med track. I love comp sci as well. I want to be involved in dance on campus, but not necessarily minor. May double major depending on the school. In love with JHU Duke and Stanford but idk, haven’t toured more yet.
I want a university with a great academic and sports environment (hence Duke)

Hooks:URM , legacy UNC idk if that counts

Objective:
SAT: 1540 (740 EBRW 800 Math)
ACT: 34 (36 reading, 35 english, 32 math, 31 science)10 writing(waiting for my 2nd scores to come out to superscore)
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.84 UW 4.531 W (had a rough freshman year)
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): Top 5%
Junior Year Non STEM APs: AP Seminar AP Spanish Lang AP English Lang AP US History

Notable STEM Classes:
Freshman year AP Calc AB & AP Calc BC (5 on BC and 5 AB subscore)
Sophomore Year Calculus III @ NC State (A), Differential Equations @ NC State (A), AP Biology (A) (4), AP Physics C: Mechanics (4)
Junior Year(currently) AP Environmental Science, AP Physics C: Electricity and Magnetism, AP Statistics, Computer Science

Major Awards:
-Disney Dreamers Academy
-Published essay on Natural Hair Discrimination in the Workplace
-3rd Place Nationals NAACP’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics (ACT-SO)
-1st Place ACT-SO Regionals Ballet & Contemporary
-2nd Place Youth America Grand Prix Contemporary Dance -Top 24 Youth America Grand Prix Classical Ballet -Youth America Grand Prix Finals 2x
-2nd and 3rd in Regionals Science Olympiad Competition
-Boston Ballet (Professional Ballet Company) Scholarship -Carolina Ballet Scholarship
-Grand Prix Intensive Ambassador
-Made it to Girls Go CyberStart Game (round 2 of the whole thing, not over yet so not sure what results will be)

Summer Programs: (waiting for 2020 results for tasp sams mites etc.)
Telluride Association Sophomore Seminar(TASS), Governor’s School
Grand Prix Intensive -(held by Master Ballet Academy… Top ballet school), San Francisco Ballet (Professional Ballet Company) Summer Intensive
Engineering Camp, Girls Computer Science Camp

Subjective:
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):
20+ Hours of Ballet/Jazz Training a week from Late August- Early June each year
Member of Jazz Company & Jazz Elite Competition Team. Member of Ballet Company for 7 years (no longer)
-Women In Science Club (Head of publicity committee) - (I mentor third grade girls every week in science experiments)
-Women In Computer Science Club - Participating in cybersecurity and comp sci competitions, promoting girl involvement in comp sci at my school
-Hip Hop Club (Secretary)
-Tedx (Speaker position)- Will give a speech in the spring
-Black Student Union (Dance branch leader)- Choreographs for the annual Black history month performance. Works on outreach performances to local elementary schools
-National Honors Society
-National English Honors Society

-Applied for a grant for a project that I’ve been working on. Not going to spoil what it is but I hope it works out.

Job/Work Experience: Summer Internship (tentative)

Volunteer/Community service:
Part of a community outreach program that offers free, beginning dance classes to children living in women’s shelters. We provide new ballet shoes, leotards, tights, and dance clothing to the girls and boys.
-[Redacted] Teen Council- Volunteered with for the last 5 years. Participated in various projects; my favorite one was when I helped to set up a halloween dance for the disabled community.
-Boys and Girls Club (Tutor at local elementary afterschool program)
-National Beta Club
-Key club but insignificant

Recs: Will hopefully be good

Essays: Haven’t started but I have some ideas

Weak parts: my GPA sadly, dance takes up a lot of my time-worried not enough involvement in science outside of school

2

Sorry that was so long- thanks in advance to anyone who helps!

3

I think you’ll probably be able to go most wherever you like. I’d be shocked if you aren’t being heavily recruited right now.

1 Like
4

First of all, congratulations on many impressive achievements.

You are a brilliant, high achieving, high stats URM with amazing ECs. You are also a black woman in STEM. While I don’t know whether you’ll be accepted at every place at which you apply, and you should have a list of matches and a safety as well, I really think that you are competitive anywhere.

What I mean is that you could, conceivably, be accepted at every reach to which you apply, and I would be shocked if you weren’t accepted to at least one, however, I cannot actually say from which one or which ones you will get acceptance. I could also be wrong, so having matches and safeties is a good idea for you as well.

While your GPA seems low, the fact that it puts you in the top 5% of your magnet school means that your school has grade deflation, and you should consider your GPA to be the equivalent of over 3.9 at other high schools. Moreover, if the GPA is almost all the result of your freshman year, you’re OK.

Check out your school’s Naviance for a better picture regarding the chances of kids from your school. You will likely find that kids from your school with similar GPAs are being accepted to colleges with very low acceptance rates. A GPA of under 3.8 may have made your path a bit more challenging, but I think that you will do fine with your present GPA.

Being legacy at UNC means that you will have a much better chance than non-legacy OOS applicants if you apply to UNC. It won’t help you for Duke.

Since you would like to be involved in dance, you should attend a college with a good dance program which either has a good ballet or good jazz program.

I would recommend Duke, Northwestern, Cornell, USC, CWRU, Columbia, NYU, BU, UNC, or WashU. Smaller colleges include all of the Claremont Colleges, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Wesleyan, Colorado College, Barnard, and Skidmore.

While you are competitive for JHU and Stanford, they don’t have as strong dance programs as those I mentioned above.

All are reaches (though most would be low reaches for you, and some could be high matches), so you should not choose all of them. For matches and safeties, we would need to know what you state of residence is, to know your in-state possibilities. If it is, say, Illinois, UIUC is an excellent safety. If it’s Ohio, OSU is known for its dance program, and would also make an excellent safety (and Denison would be a great match). U Michigan is also an excellent choice, especially if you are a Michigan resident

What can your parents afford? The fact that you are likely to have many acceptances won’t help if your parents cannot afford tuition.

Are you in a Posse city, or does you family income qualify you for Questbridge?

5

You might look into the Millennium Scholars program at Penn State. D has a friend there now; it’s very impressive.

6

@MWolf Thank you so much!! I find your advice very insightful and helpful.

Some further information: My family does not qualify for financial aid, so I will be relying on outside scholarships/ merit scholarships to possibly help, as my parents are also sending my brother to college at the same time.

I’m not well versed in how being a twin fares in the admissions process but I have heard of individual colleges giving specific scholarships if both go there.

State of residence, North Carolina so looking at : UNC and NC State.
Funny that you brought up UMich because that one is on my list after spending summer there!

Also I tried looking up how to access my school’s naviance but I will talk to my counselor about it.

7

@taverngirl Thank you! I will look into that

8

Legacy doesn’t provide a boost for in-state applicants, but acceptance rate for in-state at UNC CH is 40% or so, and your stats are in the top 25%, making UNC a match or a low match.

While I think that you will be accepted to many of the “top” colleges I mentioned, there is not all that much merit aid available at these colleges, so you may look at colleges which are more generous with merit aid than some of the colleges I mentioned above. However, even colleges which rarely provide merit aid do have some scholarships. Kids from my daughter’s school were accepted to U Chicago, Vanderbilt, U Michigan (OOS), Tulane, WashU, CWRU, Cornell, and Connecticut College with good scholarships.

I think that you should actually be looking for the best choices for you which are a good balance between the college having academics which will challenge you, and the availability of scholarships and other merit aid for somebody with your profile.

9

Have that money talk with your parents. Sit down with them and run the Net Price Calculators on the websites of the places on your list. In addition to no longer need to pay for your dance studies (assuming that all of your dance classes are at your college/university), what other expenses do your parents have now that will go away once you are in college? Those figures enter into the budget too. When you know what the numbers are, you will be better able to determine where you can apply.

10

I just want to say - you go, girl! I have enormous respect for ballet dancers, it’s an incredibly demanding art. Add to it your math stats, grades and other (impressive!) accomplishments, and I can simply conclude you’re a gem :slight_smile: If I were your mom I’d be bursting with pride! So good, good, good luck to you. You’ll rock wherever you’ll find yourself, but I hope it is in the school of your dreams.

11

If you’re looking for merit, WashU, Case Western and USC should definitely be on the list - all have good ballet as well. My STEM ballerina will be attending Duke in the fall, it would be a great fit for you until you mentioned merit - there’s some, but it’s not as plentiful as the previously mentioned school.

12

Thank you so much @katliamom ! I really appreciate it. ? Will keep updated on how the college process goes.

13

@Darcy123 Thanks for the advice! May be a dumb question but is USC Southern California or South Carolina ? And congratulations to your D20! (Not sure how to use to CC acronyms yet lol)

14

I meant University of Southern California in that post - I think you’d have an excellent chance at their merit awards. University of South Carolina was also on my daughter’s list and they have a very good Balanchine program and we heard good things about their Honor’s College. My daughter received very good merit there, and I imagine it would be a safety or match for you.

15

For a family that “does not qualify for financial aid” and “will be relying on outside scholarships/ merit scholarships to possibly help”, your actual budget is by far the most important element in picking a college list. You need to start running NPCs now and finding out how these compare to your budget. Your college list will be vastly different if you need a full ride or close to it, compared to if you can afford to pay your estimated cost of attendance.

Many of the recommendations in these sorts of threads end up being wonderful schools to aspire to in theory but can be completely unaffordable in practice. For example, great merit aid at USCal usually means a half tuition scholarship, but the cost is then still about $50K per year if there’s no need based aid. Case Western is not much better ($45K per year after merit aid is typical for a full pay family). Until you provide better guidance on where you stand from a budget perspective, soliciting college recommendations can be worse than useless, because you end up thinking you want to go to e.g. Stanford and don’t look for options that might actually be affordable.

16

I just wanted to add to what @MWolf said above- JHU has an excellent dance program. They’re home to the Peabody conservatory of dance.

17

JHU does have a great dance program but it is definitely a contemporary program in the Peabody conservatory (no minors or double-majors). Not sure if classes are open to non-majors.

Duke would probably be a great fit. They have a very active extra-curricular ballet program (they put on ballets, for example) as well as an outstanding dance program. There was a thread asking a very similar question to yours over on the dance major board, and, and I’m pretty sure the student ended up at Duke. The one thing I would mention (which you probably already know) is that Duke is very white and has a low percentage of Black students (I think about 7-8%).

UNC-CH does not have a dance program at all, and AFAIK not much ballet on-campus at all. NC State does have a dance major and some performance groups on campus, but not, I think, much ballet.

Have you looked at Columbia/Barnard? I don’t know that much about them but they are known for having a strong ballet program. Plus you are in NYC and have access to all the resources there.

Also on the dance major board there was a parent with a strong dancer who ended up at Stanford and is loving it there and finding lots of opportunities, so you might look for her posts.

If significant merit aid is a priority, you will probably need to widen your search, as most of these schools offer only limited merit aid, and mostly provide need-based financial aid.

Good luck!

18

It sounds like you have the potential to be a professional ballerina. Have you ruled out dancing professionally?

19

A lot has changed since I posted this, but I wanted to update- I got into Stanford REA, UNC( w/ a scholarship + Morehead-Cain Finalist), NC State (Park finalist), and University of Michigan so far!!

3 Likes
20

It’s actually kind of funny- my life took a complete 180 from all the information I provided in the post above.

This goes to show- life is crazy and unpredictable. I never would’ve thought I would be where I am today!!! Got into the dream school <3 :smiley: