<p>A brief summary of my academic/work history:</p>
<p>-Graduated HS with a 3.7 UW/4.0W, 1980 SAT, few EC's</p>
<p>-Current a Sophomore at UMaine. Was a CS major my first year, hated it, ended year with ~2.6 GPA. Changed major to Financial Economics, love it, currently a 4.0 (and will most likely end semester with a 4.0). Proud Greek fraternity brother and Freemason.</p>
<p>-Worked for 4 years in HS at a grocery store. Interned this past summer at a bulge bracket bank doing Wealth Management.</p>
<p>-Currently working as an RA at UMaine, along with continuing my Wealth Management internship AND working at a nearby casino as a poker room host.</p>
<p>My goal is to work in Investment Banking after graduation (though I've considered Gov. work like NSA/CIA/FBI financial divisions). </p>
<p>I'm searching for a higher-tier school that'd accept someone with my stats, and that offers substantial financial aid (my parents don't give me any financial support).</p>
<p>So far, these schools stand out: Cornell, Dartmouth, UVA, Carnegie Mellon, Bates, Colby, Vanderbilt, Boston University, Boston College, NYU.</p>
<p>Any ideas/opinions/thoughts would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>What is your cumulative college GPA? If it is not 3.7+ you would have it very hard for most of the universities you mentioned except for BU. If it is above 3.7 then BU is a safe, UVA and Vandy a probably, and NYU(poor financial aid for transfers I heard), BC, Cornell, CM a maybe. I don’t know about Colby or Bates, but I can tell you that it would be extremely unlikely for you to be accepted by Dartmouth.</p>
<p>First off I’m glad to hear you found your passion and are doing well but your cumulative GPA with that 2.6 for your two semesters of freshmen year are gonna pull down your 4.0 for only one semester of credits. If you took about 30 credits or so your first year you will end up with about a
3.0 maybe a 3.1. Unfortunately that is not gonna be very competitive for most if not all of these schools since they will have people with close to perfect college grades from more prestigious schools than Maine. I must also add that you were a very good student in high school and since you would be a sophomore assuming you are applying for the spring then those days might help but they aren’t necessarily high enough SAT scores for a lot of the schools on your list that would still require them for sophomores or even just transfers. I think your best bets would be NYU provided you aren’t applying to stern and BU. Sadly both of these schools will be unaffordable since they are notorious known as not giving good financial aid and as a transfer they will most likely expect pull pay or very close to that.</p>
<p>Tomeu11: My cumulative is currently a 2.6~. If I hold my 4.0 this semester, it will be a 3.11. If I can keep it up in the spring, it’ll be a 3.4-3.5. (I’m retaking a few classes)</p>
<p>Invader: I’d be applying for Fall 2013/Spring 2014.</p>
<p>I also forgot to include Georgetown and UMich in my list.</p>