My top two schools are Penn State University(university park) and University of Washington at Seattle. I know these are tough schools and I’m mentally ready to be denied if that’s the case, but I just want to know if I even have a chance getting in! Here’s my info I have now:
Race/Ethnicity: Hispanic/Latina
Sex: Female
State: NC
Grade: Junior
GPA: unweighted- 3.8 weighted- 4.25
Rank in class: top quarter
Classes taken and will take:
-AP Earth and Environmental (taken)
-AP Language and Composition (taking)
-AP United States History (taking)
-AP Biology (will take)
-AP Literature and Composition (will take)
-Honors Chemistry (taking)
-Honors Biology (taken)
-Honors Anatomy and Physiology (taken)
-Honors Spanish 1,2,3,4,5 (taken 1,2,3 taking 4, will take 5)
-Honors civics and economics (taken)
-Honors world history (taken)
-Honors Algebra 1 (taken)
-Honors Geometry (taken)
-Honors algebra 2 (taking)
-Honors Pre-Calc (will take)
-Honors Psychology (will take)
-Audtioned Chorus (it’s required to have an art at my high school) (taking)
-Honors English 9 and 10 (taken)
ECs:
-varsity swimmer (went to states and regionals freshman and sophomore year, not swimming junior and senior due to long term hip injury)
-Apart of Spanish Club, Animal Club, Beta Club, and Junior Civitan Club
-National Honor Society, Spanish Honor Society, and Tri-M Honor Society member
-Apart of a Junior Volunteer program for hospital in NC(volunteered in Med/Surg nursing unit, Emergency Department, and Radiology Department)
-Tutored children in local elementary school who do not speak English in math, science, and language arts
-Translated for Spanish speakers at homeless shelters for local program
-Local babysitting job (if that helps in anyway)
-Junior Ambassador (volunteer group at my school for juniors, admitted based on teacher recommendations, GPA, and course load)
SAT: have not taken, will take new version
ACT: have not taken
I’ll update when those scores are out! Thank you all so much in advance, you have no idea how much y’alls opinions will help!
What is your financial situation? Both of these are going to be really expensive for out of state students, and you won’t get any need based aid. Unless your parents can afford $50,000 per year, you need to look at other options. Regarding chances, no one can tell you much without test scores – you need to get your SAT and/or ACT scores to get any reasonable response. Your GPA and course load look fine so far, though.
My dad just retired, but prior to his retirement the income was about 75,000-110,000 I would say. He does work in contracting part time now, however, so the income might still be the same or less! Thank you for your response and help!
You need to ask your parents very soon about this. There is no point in pursuing colleges you can’t afford. People with that income range who are still working don’t usually have a couple hundred thousand dollars sitting around for college education, even if they haven’t just retired.
Each college has a net price calculator on their website on the financial aid page. Ask your parents to work with you to run them for any schools you are interested in. Each college uses their own formula for determining aid, so you need to run it for every school. Note that if your parents are divorced, own rental property, or a small business, you might get less aid than the calculators show. It is a good way to start discussions with your parents on what they are able to pay.
Generally public universities are going to give you no heed based aid at all, and likely little or no merit aid. There are some exceptions, though, and once you have test scores you should come back here and ask about them. The two you have picked sound like they are likely unaffordable. Study for your tests, and plan to take a couple of times in case you aren’t happy with your first scores. The higher your scores, the more choices you will have.
“apart” means to divide/separate; “a part” of means a portion of a whole, joining.
Please learn the difference because, believe it or not, admissions committees do look at grammar and vocabulary used in essays.
UPENN and UW will be enormously expensive. Is your father going to turn over more than half of his retirement pay for your schooling for 4 years? $60K is a LOT of money for a year.
Those choices are a bit overzealous considering the fact that you’re OOS and not in a large income bracket. But aside from that, admission chances will rest very heavily on scores. From what you have now, there isn’t much on the application that stands out. Add killer scores and you’re right back in it, though. Good luck!
Thank you everyone for your answers! I’ll definitely study up for those tests and consider other schools (such as private ones)
What is your home state? There may be good state university options there. Also there are often agreements in clusters of states that will provide reduced tuition for OOS students - for example WUE is a western states exchange that allows students to enroll at 1.5x in state tuition at many schools.
http://wue.wiche.edu/search_results.jsp?searchType=all
You should also look at this: depending on your test scores, there may be options among these:
http://automaticfulltuition.yolasite.com/ Temple or University of Alabama might be worth investigating.
You might also look into scholarship options for Hispanic students.
To me, your academic record looks very strong. With equally strong test scores you should have many options. For OOS, the costs of private schools can often come in less and if you are looking for a larger university setting, there are many to choose from. If you can tell us WHY UW-Seattle and Penn State are appealing to you (size, location, sports, specific academic programs, we can help you to find alternatives with similar qualities.
Her state is North Carolina, and there are some fantastic public school options there: UNC, NC State, UNCW, App State if OP prefers the mountains … But the OP likely is aware of these options and prefers to go OOS and/ or to a private U.
My intended major is nursing, so a lot of the schools in my state that are well-known for nursing are difficult to get into (Duke, Chapel Hill, Wake, etc). Other colleges I am applying to are: UNCW, UNCG, UNCC, Otterbein University, and College of Charleston! I’m not picky on size, I would however, prefer to go out of state but realistically I can only do that with scholarships.