Safety and match school suggestions?

College Search & Selection
1

Stats:

UW GPA: 3.8/4.0

Weighted GPA: 4.5/5.0

SAT: 2320: 760 Math, 800 Writing, 760 CR

SAT II: Math (740), Chem (740), Biology (800), Spanish (800)

Essays: Pretty good! I would probably call them in the 95/100 range.

Extracurriculars: President of Spanish Club (also in National Spanish Honor Society), President of YCS Club, Area Representative for Interact, School Scheduling Committee, City Teen Advisory Board, Managing editor for school newspaper (was on it for 3 years), Managing editor for school politics paper, Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), computer science stuff

Summer: went to Stanford Summer Humanities Institute and am applying for Yale Young Global Scholars this year. Went on international service trip to Nepal to build houses and stuff, and am applying to go to Guatemala this year.

Community service: 115 hours freshman year (Presidents Award) because I was on Freshman Leadership Corps, and after that I was on the YCS and Interact board and went to all the events, so ~40 hrs/year.

AP (prospective scores): Chem (4), Bio (5), US History (5), Spanish (5), Chinese (5), AP Psych (5) [junior year] ; AP Comp Sci, AP Lit, AP Econ, AP Physics, AP Calc [senior year classes]

Recc Letters (good estimates): Awesome from journalism teacher, good from Comp Sci teacher, good from Spanish teacher, okay from bio teacher

Couselor recc: probably generic. I go to a HUGE public high school (500+ in my grade), so she doesn’t have a lot of time and doesn’t know me that well.

not applying for financial aid

I’m looking for:

in or near urban cities (basically not rural) with a fairly large student body size (10k+ students).

preferably on east coast, but that’s not a required thing or anything

private nonprofit

something that’s still fairly selective, maybe in the 40-30% acceptance range

non religious and co-ed

preferably without a very Greek-driven social scene

If you have any colleges or universities in mind, please do let me know! I’m having a bit of trouble coming up with safety colleges that I think I would be happy at, and I’d be grateful for any suggestions at all.

2

Possible majors?

California resident?

You can sign up in June or July at http://admissions.ucr.edu/whyucr/ourguarantee to make UCR a safety.

3

Boston University, Boston College, New York University, University of Rochester (smaller than 10,000+)

4

Boston college, yale, Duke, georgetown, George Washington, NYU. With your stats I wouldn’t feel compelled to limit myself to moderately selective colleges. If merit aid is important to you (or your parents) GW is a good choice. BC gives out a very limited amount of merit aid. U.maryland is actually a great college but not widely known in many parts of the country. Wesleyan is also a good choice but a bit smaller

5

If they follow the same protocols in 2015 as they have in recent years, Tulane will have a free application and non-binding Early Notification (including announcement of merit scholarship). You would hear by Thanksgiving.

6

What do you want to study?

7

Really? Someone listed Yale as a safety? I would be very surprised if the OP didn’t get into NYU or BU.

8

Similar to earlier suggestions but:
Boston U
NYU
American (technically methodist but you would never notice)
GW
Northeastern
Tufts (they would probably reject you if you didn’t apply ED, they are bitter towards top applicants)
Carnegie Mellon
Brandeis
Richmond

9

Carnegie Melon? Rice?

10

Have you tried the SuperMatch tool on the left side of this page?

11

Out of the named schools, OP, Brandeis, University of Richmond (barely), American U, Northeastern (barely), Boston U, Boston College, GWU, NYU, and URochester have acceptance rates in the 30-40% range. I don’t think a 30% range is a safety, honestly - I wouldn’t consider Brandeis, URichmond, Boston U, Boston College, NYU, GWU, or URochester to be safeties. They’re matches. Yes, you have high stats, but these schools are very competitive: they get more qualified applicants than they can admit. You will probably get in, but it is not a guarantee: that is pretty much the definition of a match.

Syracuse, Villanova, and Fordham are some safeties that are in/near urban areas. Also, if your parents are full-pay, there are a lot of East Coast public universities that fit that charge, like Temple, Georgia State, University of Georgia, University of South Carolina, College of Charleston, James Madison, Florida State, UNC-Greensboro.

12

Northeastern’s acceptance rate is 32% so it is not “barely” in the 30-40% acceptance category.

13

You must treat any college with a 30% acceptance rate as a reach and any school with a 30-40% acceptance rate as a match (and demonstrate a lot of interest starting now - fill out request info forms, etc).

14

Lol, Yale and Duke are definitely HIGH reaches for me. Both are not even close to my ‘safety’ zone.

15

Match: NYU, GW, Northeastern, BU

Safety: Rochester Institute of Technology, Drexel, Pace

16

There is a difference between pretty safe (and with your stats, there are scads of colleges/universities that could fall into that category, so run the matching calculators for size, location, etc. and see what you think), and dead-on safe. Here are a couple of threads for you to check through for places that flat-out guarantee admission for students with your stats:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1562918-updated-list-of-schools-with-auto-admit-guaranteed-admission-criteria-p1.html
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/