Hi everyone, I’m applying to college this year and I’m struggling to come up with an idea of what schools I should apply to. I’m worried about aiming too high and getting rejected from everywhere, with nowhere to go. My only “safety” school right now is my state university (which isn’t too bad). Could anyone give me some pointers on where to apply?
Here are my stats:
SAT Math: 800
SAT Reading: 780
SAT Writing: 790
SAT Math II: 800
SAT Chem: 800
GPA unweighted: 4.0
GPA weighted: 4.35 (so far…senior year AP’s don’t count, do they?
Rank: everyone with over 4.0 is automatically marked as #1 in our class at our school (in reality I’m #2 due to the unweighted music classes I take)
Ethnicity: Asian (affirmative action goes against me)
Gender: Female
Major: ChemE
I am good at multiple instruments and I participate in a sport outside of school (no school team). I am captain of two clubs and have about 250 hours of volunteer service. My only work experience is babysitting and pet-sitting. (Do those count? Should I put them on my application?)
Thanks in advance for any feedback, anything would be helpful. I am the first in my family to go through this college process (in America) and I have no idea what I’m doing. Any comments would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
You’re Asian which doesn’t help, but you’re a female with an engineering interest, which does. Your stats are stellar. I presume your HS curriculum is challenging. Your extracurriculars are a bit weak, and you need to do a better job of conveying who you are as a person, but if you do that you should be competitive at a lot of programs. You should develop a balanced list of schools with strong engineering ranging from major reaches (MIT, Stanford) to lesser reaches (Duke, Cornell, Rice) and low reach/matches (CMU, Johns Hopkins), as well as safeties. Beyond that depends on your interests and personality, which doesn’t come across much in the OP.
Thank you for your response! My extracurriculars include Science Olympiad (captain), Mock Trial (captain), and literary magazine. I also have lots of awards for music, a Scholastic Silver Key for writing, and a couple others that I’m blanking on at the moment. I am in NHS and I have also participated in the Math League and Chem Olympiad (I did well but not well enough to mention in both of those).
So you’re very well-rounded, with tons of science (Science Olympiad, Math League, Chem Olympiad), music (multiple instruments + awards) and humanities (literary magazine, Scholastic award, Mock Trial captain), plus some non-scholastic sports and 250 hours of volunteering. The trick will be to organize these and present a clear picture of yourself and who you are, and not come across as someone who dabbles in a lot of things. If you can do that, you have a decent chance anywhere.
You almost have identical credential, racial background, and intended major as my D applied to college a couple years ago. My D lacks sport but has work experience. Basically you can apply anywhere but make sure you have some matches and a a couple safeties. The major question is which school fits you best and do you need financial aid. Also, do you have a location preference. There is a wide range of schools with excellent ChemE programs from low matches/safeties (UCSB, UMN-TC, Wisconsin, etc) to reaches (MIT Stanford). For some schools you should be able to get merit scholarships while others have great need based aids.