Hello!! I’m a high school junior and I’m working on perfecting my college lineup in which I will be applying to in the fall. I hope to apply early action to as many schools as I can (that won’t bind me to going there), and haven’t decided about early decision yet. I have decent credentials, and I am planning on applying to some ivies, UCs, etc. My top 3 right now are Harvard, Boston University, and Northwestern University. My dream school is Harvard, but considering how competitive admissions are, I doubt i’ll get in. I’m in need of safety schools that are good for neuroscience, and if it helps I plan on going to medical school after college, in hopes of being a psychiatrist. My mom did a post-masters program at Northwestern, and is technically considered a Northwestern alum if that helps. I also plan on applying for financial aid, so safeties that give good money are crucial for my list. I do not plan to submit my SAT/ACT score to any college, and schools that are test optional/blind are preferred. As for location, anywhere East cost is fair game. Chicago or anywhere in California as well (I’m from Chicago). Boston is my ideal location, though. Preferably nowhere south and avoiding midwest besides Chicago.
I’ll list my stats below:
4.94 Weighted GPA (on a 5.0 scale)
5.42 Unweighted GPA (on a 5.0 scale)
-7 AP classes (A 6/7 of them)
-2 time published author in both english and spanish
-Student council president (freshman + sophomore year)
-PAC (principal advisory committee)
-Xray (School Newspaper- Sophomore year- staff writer)
-XRay Editor In Chief (1 yr-present)
-bilingual
-founded my own club “club empower “ focused around student empowerment sophomore year
-founded my own online archive project “the know your worth project” focusing on promoting positivity, empathy and understanding
-stc youth commission student consultant
-harvard summer school alumni (conducted research study in mental illness)
-national honor society (inducted junior year)
-service hours through NHS
-leadership position at part time job
IN PROCESS:
-georgetown summer student medicine alumni
Rhodes is a good suggestion for pre-med. Good academics and a lot of support for the pre-health students with nearby hospitals for shadowing. They also have an early application to GW Med School option junior year.
Miami-OH would be another good safety. It’s more rural but has strong pre-health advising and a gorgeous mid-size campus.
Skidmore and Union in NY are LACs that may be more low match than safety but are great schools worth a look.
(You have a typo in your GPAs. What is your unweighted on a 4.0 scale?)
ETA: After seeing @AustenNut post below, these schools all offer merit scholarships, some more competitive than others, but without knowing your budget they may or may not be affordable enough to be considered likely schools for you. Also, some schools may require an SAT/ACT for merit consideration so keep that in mind as you do your research.
What’s the budget? Saying that you will need financial aid can really differ. For instance, someone might need financial aid for a school that costs $75k but not $45k. But if your family’s Expected Family Contribution is less than $15k, then that’s a different picture altogether. The more info you can provide, the better our recommendations will be.
The California UC’s offer little to no Financial aid (need based other than Federal aid if eligible and merit aid in small amounts and highly competitive) to OOS students. You should run the Net Price calculators but expect to pay near full fees at around $70K/year. If you are targeting Medical school then you need to budget for at least 8 years.
The UC’s only use 10-11th grades in their GPA calculation and give extra Honors points to OOS students for AP/IB or UC Transferable DE courses taken during this time. Here is the calculator:
You can knock the UCs off your list- OOS is a budget-buster for you.
I don’t know what a post-masters is if it isn’t a doctorate, but if it’s exec ed that typically isn’t considered for legacy status. NU says that legacy status is “considered” - I wouldn’t count on it being much of a lift.
Harvard summer school “alumni” may be technically accurate, but don’t kid yourself that it is going to give you alum benefits. It’s a “pay to play” and they are explicit that attending won’t give you an admissions boost (ditto this summer at Georgetown). That doesn’t mean they can’t be great- some of the collegekids did them and got a lot out of them. Just know that AOs will only be impressed based on what you do with the experience, not that you have done it.
Neuroscience is a hot major right now- it’s an overcrowded major- but as @ColdWombat pointed out in another thread:
I am a neurophysiology professor. I agree with the others that are saying having a “neuroscience” undergraduate program does not matter one whit. My undergrad is in biology (chem minor). It was a cell and molecular heavy program. My PhD is in biology. It was a neurophysiology heavy program. Med schools and grad schools won’t care about a neuroscience major/minor.
Your kid could do research with a prof if they’re interested. That’s a great way to get more specific. I did research with a neuro prof for all of undergrad.
There is neuro content in many bio classes that don’t have “neuro” anywhere in the title. I only took one neuro-specific course in undergrad. You can get plenty of neuro content in your classes without having even a neuroscience minor. Far more important are the general biology and other basic science courses.
That allows you to pick the school based on other factors – good luck!
So you need to build from the bottom up, looking for debt-free options. It can take 15+ years of being a doctor to pay off your student loans- quite a few regular (adult) posters on CC have Dr friends who finish paying off their own debt just as their kids head off to college… You want to start med school with as little debt as possible. You- and 60,000 of your peers- dream of Harvard, and since you’re the best in your world, and Harvard is “the best” in college world, why shouldn’t you? but if your long-term adult plan is a career as a neurologist (or similar) then step out of dream world and go for reality.
Can you put on a 4 scale - or say - are you all As or a few Bs?
None of the three you mentioned are safeties for anyone - Rhodes is a great school but small and not in your geographic zone. As I’m learning about neuro, there are psych based, bio based, minors and some say - even if they don’t have the formal major, don’t worry - you can still take the classes. I’d be less concerned where I go because you’ll likely end up in grad school. And for med school, you need good grades and a good GPA.
You might look at a Brandeis, UVM, and UNH. If you’re in Chicago, look at UIUC even if they don’t have the formal major as more realistic and well known in the major. U of Arizona has a neuro program and strong merit.
Given med school, you want to keep costs down and a place where your gpa can be up.
Ps if you are chasing aid, depending on your need as determined by the college (not you), you may need to open your geographies. Have your family run NPCS for Harvard, BU, and NW. This will give you an idea as to whether you qualify for aid (how much) or not at all. Your list of three will be nearing $350k if not more of full pay.
A lot of universities have very good premed programs. Neuroscience is also reasonably common (one daughter has two bachelor’s degrees, one of which is in neuroscience).
How much financial aid and what you can afford without debt are going to matter. There are relatively few universities that both are need blind for admissions, and guarantee to meet full need. None of them are safeties.
UVM would be a safety in terms of admissions, is good for premed, and has a good neuroscience major. It has merit aid for out of state students. However, even with merit aid it still will cost a bit over $40,000 per year (their NPC did correctly predict merit aid and cost of attendance in our case). If this is too much then it won’t be affordable. Similarly the various Universities of California won’t be affordable. We had a number of cases of out of state public universities offering aid that got us into the $40,000 per year range, but not lower than this.
Given that you are from Chicago, I am thinking that your in-state public universities are very good options. I think that you should look closely at UIUC for example.
Exactly. If you want to keep medical school as an option, try to avoid debt for your bachelor’s degree if you reasonably can. Given the quality of your in-state public options, I would not take on debt to go elsewhere if you can handle in-state public universities without debt.
Because you are applying test optional for sure, I’m going to suggest Bates, which is well known for being test optional since the 80’s. D’s good friend majored in neuroscience there and is currently doing a PhD in neuroscience at Stanford. Bates won’t be a safety, but it, and other top LACs, is worth investigating.
There are a ton of colleges that offer neuroscience as a major. I can’t link here, but college vine has a good list of colleges offering neuroscience majors. A lot of them should be safeties for you and may offer amazing scholarships to someone with your stats. Safeties for you from that list could Lycoming, Temple, Mercer U, ASU, Fairfield U, or CU Boulder.
It’s too bad you’re discounting anything in the Midwest. Grinnell is amazing and has a huge endowment. Carleton, Kenyon, and Macalester are excellent.
I think you need a better idea of your budget. How much will your parents pay per year, including room and board? Don’t forget about plane tickets and spending money. How much in loans are you prepared to take out? As a student, your four year max is $27,000. How much debt do you want to be saddled with before you start med school? It’s great to aim high, but there needs to be a plan beyond the end of four years of undergrad if med school is likely.
If your family has been paying for you to attend summer experiences at Harvard and Georgetown, then I am moving forward with the assumption that your budget is not in the $15k range. Your family should run the Net Price Calculator (NPC) at every school that is under consideration. If it asks for your academic stats, then it will likely include the minimum amount of merit aid that you could expect.
Others have already discussed the benefits of coming out of college debt free. You also want to go to a school where you feel as though you can thrive, as you will need to thrive in order to be a competitive applicant for med school.
Below is a pretty wide-ranging list of schools that focuses primarily on the geographic areas you mentioned, though I did include two schools in the Twin Cities and one in Illinois that is not in the Chicago metro area. With a couple of exceptions, I think that you would likely be able to get some very competitive prices after merit aid from many of the schools I’ve classified as Extremely Likely or Likely. Note that these categorizations are based on my very fallible guesses of what your chances might be. I am not an admissions professional.
If you know you only want urban school, or only schools of a certain size, etc, then that can help eliminate some of these schools (which made the list based on the number of neuroscience majors, using that as a proxy for the strength of the programming). Additionally, some factors may sway you (i.e. you’d prefer a mid-size school but like the idea of Boston so much that you’d consider a smaller school like Emmanuel).
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
Allegheny (PA ): About 1600 undergrads
Augustana (IL): About 2300 undergrads (not in the Chicago metro, but could be a good fit for your interests)
Christopher Newport (VA): About 4500 undergrads…unlikely to be as competitively priced, but you prefer larger schools, it’s a good option.
DePaul (IL): About 14k undergrads
Emmanuel (MA): About 1900 undergrads at this Boston school which is part of the Colleges of the Fenway which has cross-registration at other Boston universities and combined sports and performing arts opportunities.
Loyola Chicago (IL): About 12k undergrads
North Central (IL): About 2400 undergrads in Naperville, in the Chicago metro area
Saint Michael’s (VT): About 1400 undergrads
Susquehanna (PA ): About 2200 undergrads
U. of Scranton (PA ): About 3500 undergrads. This school requires test scores, but test scores that might be “test optional” at Harvard may well get you significant merit aid here (and at other schools in the extremely likely or likely sections).
Ursinus (PA ): About 1600 undergrads
Wheaton (MA): About 1700 undergrads
Likely (60-79%)
Lake Forest (IL): About 1700 undergrads
Muhlenberg (PA ): About 2100 undergrads
SUNY Geneseo: About 4500 undergrads
U. of St. Thomas (MN): About 6k undergrads
Toss-Up (40-59%)
Connecticut College: About 1800 undergrads
Lafayette (PA ): About 2700 undergrads
Lehigh (PA ): About 5500 undergrads
Mount Holyoke (MA): About 2200 undergrads at this women’s college. Women’s colleges are often more financially generous and have easier admissions than comparably strong coed colleges.
St. Lawrence (NY): About 2200 undergrads
SUNY Binghamton: About 14k undergrads
Union (NY): About 2100 undergrads
Lower Probability (20-39%)
Brandeis (MA): About 3600 undergrads
Franklin & Marshall (PA ): About 2100 undergrads
Macalester (MN): About 2200 undergrads. It’s not east coast or Chicago, but if you end up wanting to be closer to home (but further than your hometown), this school is generous with financial aid, is in a vibrant city, and is very strong academically.
Smith (MA): Women’s college of about 2600 undergrads
Low Probability (less than 20%)
Vassar (NY): About 2500 undergrads
Wellesley (MA): Women’s college of about 2500 undergrads
Hi everyone! Quick update! My GPA in my school district is on a 5.0 scale, so that isn’t a typo, but on 4 point scale, 3.95 unweighted and 4.32 weighted on a 4.0 scale. I’ve heard what everyone says about the “pay to attend” college summer programs, but I did both more because I’m passionate about the medical field & psychology! The schools I mentioned in my original post are reaches, hence the reason I’m searching for safeties! Thanks so much for all the help!
While you can still update your OP, I do think you have reversed your unweighted and weighted… as you currently have your unweighted higher than the weighted. You may want to include your GPA on the 4.0 scale in the OP as that will be more meaningful to most people.
Hi! Thanks for the feedback. I mentioned up top that Harvard is an unrealistic expectation to have, hence the reason I am searching for safety schools. I also mentioned I am shooting for psychiatry, not neurology. As for the post-graduate program, it wasn’t a masters, she got an additional certification of some sort through classes at Northwestern and gets the same alumni benefits as everyone else who graduated from there! Neuroscience is where my passion lies, so my major is not at all up for debate when it comes to picking one.
Hi, thanks so much for the feedback! None of the schools I mentioned up top are safety schools, hence why I am searching for them. UC schools are super expensive and my list is not finalized, so I’m probably going to end up taking a few off. Overall though, I am just eager for more realistic suggestions with safeties for me
You may want to include your GPA on the 4.0 scale in the OP as that will be more meaningful to most people.
Good catch about the reversed GPA- that was a typo on my part!