<p>If you are a parent of a senior/rising senior post the list of schools and stats. Helpful advice and commentary appreciated.</p>
<p>D #2 announced The List today:
Dreams: MIT, Notre Dame, Stanford</p>
<p>Better than safeties: Macalester, Middlebury</p>
<p>Safeties: Santa Clara, University of Washington (will apply honors)</p>
<p>GPA: 3.99 UW, APs: Physics and Calc: 4, Spanish and US History: 5
SATs: M 670, V 760, M IIc: 700, USHistory 760, Physics: 700</p>
<p>ECs: Varsity sports captain (12), Newspaper editor (12), link crew, peer mediator, varsity track, teen court lead, student rep to school board (1 senior in the district per year gets this position--school board member), math tutor, NHS</p>
<p>Where is Writing, or is that an old SAT? Do y'all have rank or do the GC's approximate decile? </p>
<p>First thought would be to try to get that math up above 700 to have a fair shot at the reaches. That seems to be the weakest link. </p>
<p>I'm not comfortable with Midd and Mac being other than reaches at this point. Certainly less reachy than the top 3 but still...I'd add some true matches but I am the most conservative person on this board I think.</p>
<p>Sure, I'll bite.</p>
<p>Reach: Rice</p>
<p>Financial Aid Reaches (Admission Matches): USoCal, UMiami, UFlorida, Florida State, Arizona State, Clempson, GaTech</p>
<p>Safeties: UT-Austin, Texas A&M (automatic admits, in-state tuition)(she would be perfectly happy going to UT-Austin, so that is a true safety)</p>
<p>Her screen was Biomedical Engineering, sunbelt location, and Div. 1 football, and not a UCal or Cal State or in Louisiana or Mississippi.</p>
<p>Yeah I know I misspelled Clemson. In the south that is how it is pronounced, according to GaTech people I know.</p>
<p>Stats: rank 9/560 at affluent suburban public, SAT scores V610 M670 after two tries, Gold Girl Scout, Drill Team officer, usual honor societies and trivial stuff</p>
<p>Cur--the thing is she'd be pretty happy with UW, and it is such a good value as it is in state public that her strategy is reaches or UW. Why bother applying to a bunch of schools in the middle when it would just be more expensive for not that big a difference in quality?</p>
<p>for enginerring and computer sciences Univ of Washington is a top 15 in the nation school. It is better than most of the privates/Ivys in those fields. A great number one choice as long as the large size is not a problem.</p>
<p>Santa Clara is also an excellent enginerring/science school choice.</p>
<p>For me it is hard to recommend school without an idea on Major areas they want to study, Even though most kids will change their mind at least once. I tend to look at departments and individual programs and not a college as a whole.</p>
<p>Agree with curm re: Middlebury based on my nephew's experience this past year ..waitlisted with great stats, it should almost always be considered a reach...but Mombot I see your point re: UW. In the end it will be what you are most comfortable with. My son is going to NEU in the fall and his roommate applied to (1) school...NEU...good thing he got in...lol.</p>
<p>I am another who agrees that middlebury & Mac should be bumped up to the reach category because unless she is looking to get recruited ,while your kid is smart she's a BWRK, so she would have to postion herself to really stand apart from the crowd.</p>
<p>How about a test of predicting skills for class of '10? See how you do.</p>
<p>Reach: MIT, Stanford
Stretch: Vasser, Cornell
Match: Carnegie Mellon, RPI
Safety: BU, UW</p>
<p>SAT 1's 2200+, SAT II's 2100+ UWGPA 3.99 </p>
<p>Where was she accepted- no fair looking at my prior posts!</p>
<p>The list so far is Yale (SCEA), Harvard, Princeton, Penn, maybe Stanford, Berkeley (the reaches), Tufts and Georgetown (the matches) and no safeties. Having a lot of trouble coming up with safeties because right now they all seem like a big let down. Wants to major in Classical Civilizations/Latin and has visited the first four listed schools (and Tufts), met with a Classics professor at each and sat in on classes.</p>
<p>Stats: 2310 SAT (first sitting) -- 800 CR, 740 M, 770 W (12 essay)
SAT IIs -- 770 Latin, 760 Bio, 740 Math II, 730 USH (ouch)
GPA -- 4.5 weighted, 3.9 unweighted
Class standing -- they don't specify, but probably top 3%. School is top prep school in the area sending one third of its seniors to Ivy League, Stanford, MIT and Berkeley.
APs -- 5's across the board in Latin Lit, Latin Poetry, English, US Hist., Biology, World Geography, Calc BC. Will take six APs in Senior year along with directed studies in Latin and Advanced Math Seminar.
ECs -- All involving Latin/Ancient Rome. Without getting overly specific, state and national awards for Latin, Roman History, Ancient Geography and Latin Literature. Major leadership within organization both at school and statewide, including lead state delegation at national convention. As an 8th grader, took a college course at UCLA over the summer in Roman History (got an A-). As a 9th grader, took a class in the Rassias method of teaching a foreign language at LMU and received continuing education credit (rest of class were teachers).</p>
<p>It's hard for these kids who feel like they've done everything they're supposed to -- nearly straight As in the toughest schedule (darn B+ in PreCalc Honors!), founding and leading a school organization to many competitions since 9th grade, taking leadership positions in a statewide organization, winning awards, etc. -- to have to lower their expectations of what schools should realistically be on their list. The other kids on my son's Certamen team, and his opponents over the past two years, have all gotten into Harvard -- so it's hard for him to look at schools well out of the top 25.</p>
<p>BurnThis: Why is Berkeley a reach for your son? My impression is (was?) that its admissions are fairly numbers-driven, and that a Cali kid with those numbers would be pretty much a no-brainer. And, at the same time, my sense is that Georgetown, while not as tough a ticket as Harvard, is in the category of "you never can tell," since its various qualities draw a very-well-qualified national applicant pool. "Georgetown and Tufts" doesn't describe a particular market level, as far as I can tell.</p>
<p>Safeties: A number of my kids' friends are very Latin/Greek-heavy. Some of them used McGill as a safety -- one of my daughter's best friends interviewed a number of undergrads, grad students, and profs in Classics, and really loved them. None of them have wound up going there, though. I have stories either way about McGill, but if you like the classes you're taking it's an undeniably cool place.</p>
<p>I think (and I bet you think) that Tufts is a safety for a kid from California with that profile. (Schools want to have Classics departments, but it's not easy to find the kids to fill them.) I know one has to bow to the conventional wisdom a bit, but if your son's school is the one I think of as the "top prep school in area", the track record would suggest that he would reasonably get into more than one of those schools.</p>
<p>JHS,</p>
<p>This is where it gets so frustrating and confusing. From this school (I think you can figure it out, since he's a he it's not Marlborough), with these statistics, he shouldn't really worry. Yet, between the Andison story and the few from this school who had to "settle" for Amherst and the like when their hearts were set elsewhere, I worry. He doesn't play a sport nor an instrument and he's not a Siemens/Intel person, so in a competitive year you don't know what can happen. You're probably right that Berkeley is not a total reach for an in state applicant since he has the GPA and SAT scores, but I don't want to assume anything at this point. Plus, he really wants to go away -- as in a different time zone -- for college, so I don't think NorCal stands much of a chance. He's been working with his college counselor to try and come up with some safeties, but I don't think he'll really be able to focus until after the SCEA decision -- that should snap him out of it.</p>
<p>BurnThis,
Suggest you look at U of Chicago as a match/ safety[?] for S. It has a great classics program, and the school is full of very smart kids who thrive on the intense academic experience. Don't consider Berkeley a match unless he is notified that he is in the top 4% of students [based on Cal calculations] at HIS school. The huge # of top students in Calif, as well as OOS students applying to Cal means that nowadays it is not a match for anyone. Another probable safety should be USC, and he would have a good chance for a nice big scholarship there too. Don't know about the Classics program though. Boston University would be a safety for him, and they have a great Classics/ Latin program, and offer merit scholarships specifically for outstanding Latin students[ your S has to take a test in Dec to qualify and send in the application by Dec 1. FYI, This will NOT conflict with Stanford SCEA requirements because the Dec 1 deadline is required for scholarship consideration]. If you want to look specifically for other colleges with classics programs then get a copy of a Ruggs Reports, which is used extensively by college counselors, because it lists colleges by majors or programs, broken down by ranking [top rated programs in country, next best, etc.] In the back it lists all of the colleges mentioned in the book in alphabetical order and also details average SAT's scores of accepted students, and a listing of the schools recommended programs. We found this book to be invaluable when our hi Stat S was looking for schools offering 2 very diverse programs. I suggest you order this book online directly from the publisher, because it's hard to find in stores. Just Google Ruggs Reports. Ships out of S Calif.</p>
<p>menlo,</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestions. I've mentioned Chicago to him, but it's reputation as "the school where fun goes to die" precedes itself. Boston University sounds intriguing though -- after so many years of paying for a private school education, I cannot deny that a scholarship would be nice. But it comes back to the problem I mentioned in my first post -- would he feel let down if he ends up at BU after working so hard in HS?</p>
<p>And I'll look into Ruggs. I have a website that links to all the Classics Departments at the major universities, but it doesn't rank them.</p>
<p>BJ,
You might want to have your S visit Chicago. Also have him take a look at their admissions website and at this year's " uncommon application" essay prompts. My S visited twice and loved the campus, the intellectual atmosphere and students. The "fun goes to die" bit really is a canard. There's plenty of fun to be had , along with hard work, which is what he will find at all the top colleges. He will find himself surrounded with really smart kids at Chicago, including many ivy rejects. However, he does has an excellent chance of being accepted at Chicago[ and no one can say that with confidence these days at HYPS etc]. He would probably feel more out of place, except among the Honors students [fellow scholarship winners] at BU, but it has a lot to offer. Chicago does have a few[30 I think] full tuition merit scholarships, which they offer to students they really want, but otherwise the FA officeis really stingy. You may want to PM edad, whose S is a Chicago.</p>
<p>PS, the Ruggs Reports "ranking" of college re the programs offered is into 3 levels only- good, better, best reputation. It does not rank # 1, 2, 3 etc.</p>
<p>"I think (and I bet you think) that Tufts is a safety for a kid from California with that profile."</p>
<p>Tufts is not a safety for just about anyone. Your image of this university is distorted if you believe otherwise.</p>
<p>I can offer my list and stats if you're interested</p>
<p>Reaches: Yale (SCEA), Harvard, Williams, Pomona, Rice
Mathces: Haverford, Wesleyan, Davidson, Whitman
Safeties: St. Olaf, Hendrix, University of Washington</p>
<p>2130 SAT (720 cr, 700 m, 710 w), 33 ACT (35 s, 34 r, 32 e, 31 m, 30 e+w), 750 Lit SATII, 720 Latin, 690 USH (planning to take Math II in October to get a score above 700 to kick out the USH one)
3.9 UW GPA, not sure of class rank, probably top 10%
EC's: very involved in drama club (treasurer 11-12, lead in musical, acted and directed many one acts..), jazz choir, flute in the orchestra and also as a solo instrument for competitions, ocean sciences team, recreational basketball team, outdoors program, volunteering at the aquarium, nannying and hopefully a job at a tea house starting this fall (I'm crossing my fingers!)</p>
<p>drizzit--how is UW's math program? D has no idea what she wants to study. She excels at languages and math, but particularly enjoys math. She might actually like Comp Sci but has never been exposed to it. </p>
<p>She started with Spanish 1 in 9th grade, found high school language classes excruciating, went to an intensive language class last summer and went right into the AP Spanish class and got a 5 on the exam.</p>
<p>Mombot-off topic, but where was the intesive language program? in the us or overseas? who ran it?</p>