I am a sophomore in ranked 53 high school. I just want to ask for a recommendation of which college I should apply at my junior year. I prefer to go to college with a high rank.
-I have a 3.1 Gpa UW and 3.52 W. ( I’ve improved my GPA since the freshman year)
-I have 300 SSL hours and got a president award
-I am in a chorus as a tenor
-I go to 53th national ranked high school
-I played soccer for 2 years
-I am in a Model UN club
So please list the college that I have an average and a high chance of getting into. Let me know if you need more information about me to chance it accurately
you are a sophomore, I’m assuming you never took the SAT, you have no ap’s, and you don’t have letters of recommendation.
im not saying you can’t do it; you could.
give it time, take ap courses, do what you love to do for extracurriculars, take the sat’s, and raise your gpa!
What do you mean “which college I should apply at my junior year?” Unless things are different next year, you usually apply to colleges during your senior year.
Your best targets are the schools where kids of similar academic achievement from your HS have successfully targeted in the past. Thus, your GC is a great source of info for you (“So please list the college that I have an average and a high chance of getting into”).
Also, you can start the conversation w/your parents on what is affordable.
@ivyyhopeful Yeah, I am planning to take APCalc AB and AP environmental science, @AcceptableName I was talking about early admission. @IvyLeaguer225 I am planning to study bio or civil or aerospace engineering. @T26E4 money isn’t my problem, they said they will support me long as I get into a great college. I just want to let you guys know I know I won’t get into ivyLeauge, I just want you guys to tell me which college with a high rank that I have a high or average chance with, I wanted to go to University of Maryland college park but I realized I have a low chance, so I am looking for a college just as good as UMD’s ranking or lower. I appreciate you guys trying to help me.
It is too early to target specific colleges. Wait until you have standardized tests and at least a junior year GPA/rank. And when the time comes you would need to keep in mind any constraints your family might have for you (ex. finances, geographic etc.) as well as any person preference you have (ex. size of school, location of school, interest in sports, interest in Greek life etc.)
There are a lot of things going on here… but one I think is worth addressing before you get your heart set on any college is:
Ask your parents for a number. For myself and a lot of my friends, that talk was eye-opening. Parents sometimes don’t understand how much college costs have risen and think that you will likely get some magic scholarship materializing from nowhere. That will help you narrow down costs and figure out your options so you can find schools you love and can afford.
It’s far too early to be thinking about what colleges you should be looking at. As a B student taking a reasonably rigorous schedule (which your WGPA suggests) you will have plenty of choices, though unless you get straight A+'s from now on, probably not the colleges well known for their single digit admission rates. That’s okay. Right now your job is to do the best you can in the courses you are taking. Make sure that you don’t waste your summers. Colleges like students who work, volunteer or explore interests outside the classroom - summer is a fine time to do that. Don’t burn any bridges - take math every year, make sure you have Bio, Chem and Physics, take minimally US History and World History, take at least three years of a language, preferably four. Take an Art (performing or visual) course or two.
If you really want to you can read some books about college admissions. I recommend looking at Colleges that Change Lives, America’s Best Colleges for B Students and perhaps one of the books by former college admissions officers - I really enjoyed The Gatekeepers, though it came out a long time ago now. It does give you an inside look at how selective admissions works. But until you have PSAT or SAT test scores and a real idea of your rank (if your school ranks) you can’t really look at anything specific.
@mathmom Thanks for helping me out, I will wait until the my junior but I have few questions, people say college admission doesn’t look at your freshman GPA and they mostly look at sophomore year and junior year grade? Is that true? and also, I want to ask if college admission looks at semester grades or quarter grades? Because I get 3.5 Gpa for quarter grades however, I do bad on the exams and that is why my semester’s GPA is low. Please Reply, thank you!
I second reading Colleges that Change Lives for now.
Do your utmost to get B’s and A’s in every class, focus on a couple EC’s (but never to the detriment of your grades), make sure you have 8 hours of sleep a night, prepare carefully but over the long run (weekly practice starting now) for the SAT or ACT (take a practice test for each, see which one you do better at), try to take notes about little things you like or find interesting, and visit several local colleges, including a Liberal Arts College, a regional private university, and a regional public university.
If you live in Maryland, visit Goucher, UMD-BC, St Mary’s Maryland, McDaniel, Loyola Maryland, Towson. Write down your impressions into your notebook, then try to figure out what you like and what you dislike about them. (from this list 3 are public, 3 are private, two are large, two are medium, two are small, one has an excellent business school, one has an excellent STEM program, etc.) Figure out their objective strengths but also their strengths for you.
Run the NPC on each of these six schools (perhaps add Penn State, Temple, Hobart&William Smith, Muhlenberg, and SUNY Albany for instance) and bring all the results to your parents. Make sure they sit down before you start reviewing those results because it’ll likely be a shock.
Talk with them about what they can afford "out of pocket (from income + savings).
Do you have a college fund, for instance? Should you start working (although preparing for standardized test scores and getting a high score will likely yield higher returns than a minimum-wage job in terms of money.)
Run the Supermatch tool on the left side of this page. Then run the Net Price Calculators of the schools in which you are interested (google them) and talk to your parents about the numbers.
Most colleges look at freshman year grades, but if you have a bad freshman year followed by much better grades, that is far better than the reverse. Admissions officers understand that some people have a shaky start in high school. If you do poorly on exams, you may want to learn some more effective study techniques. There’s a lot of new research on the subject: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-we-learn/ You may also want to find colleges that put less emphasis on final exams and more emphasis on papers. I took a lot of college courses with 1 paper, a midterm and a final. You had to be good at exams to do well in those courses.
@mathmom@MYOS1634 @“Erin’s Dad” Thanks for the answers. I did talk to my parents and they told me that they have a bank account for my college money since I was in the elementary school. Instead, my parents giving me an allowance, they been saving up for my college! @MYOS1634 And I were actually interested in Penn state but what is the difference between university park vs other campuses? @mathmom Also I am getting an internship with a professor, which will count as a 1 internship credit. Does that play a decent role in the application?
@mathmom what college do you recommend? Someone metioned about penn state and I searched it up and penn state university park campus requires high gpa and other campuses in pen state are average 3.0? Which college do h recommend ?
You are not a good candidate for early college (mentioned in your earlier post). Your GPA is low. Get your SAT or ACT tests taken in junior year. Go visit a few colleges in your area. Go see a large state university, a medium sized college, and a small liberal arts school. Think about whether you like an urban or rural field. Consider what you might want to study.
for now.