Hi! I’m a current senior in high school. I’m paranoid that every college I’m interested in is a reach for me because I’m worried my essay or extra-curriculars may not be good enough. I don’t know what my match/target schools are because my paranoia makes me believe EVERY school is a reach (I’m really scared)
List of basically my freaking commonapp below…
-GPA: 98.3/100 weighted (My school doesn’t report unweighted, but when I self-calculated it was around 96 halfway through junior year and I’m not updated lol)
-Class Rank: Kinda wish I knew but my school doesn’t report this either… everyone in my school is really smart and are pretty upfront about their grades, while I’m not as confident. Their paranoia scares me sometimes too…
-SAT: 1560/1600 (the new SAT). I took the SAT with Writing before and scored a 21/24 on the writing section.
-SAT Subject Tests: World History 700, and I’ve registered for the Math Level 2 and Physics tests (wish me luck, I kinda suck at both)
-All my classes that aren’t APs are Honors courses. My APs are: AP World History, AP US History, AP English Language, AP BC Calculus, AP Macroeconomics, and AP Physics Mechanics
-A majority of my extra-curricular activities focus on music. I won a competition a couple of times, been a chorus member in my school for four years, joined another choir outside of school for two years, and I am an officer for my school’s music honors society. I am also a student government officer, and I think there’s some other stuff too but I forgot lol
-Also, I have no idea how my rec letters will turn out, but I requested one from my choral teacher of four years so praying for the best but lowkey expecting slightly generic…
As for other stuff…
I’m undecided on majors but am highly considering computer science.
My family makes about $80-95k a year (if that’s something that would factor into what a match is for me)
As of right now my list is:
Tufts University (Arts and Sciences)
USC (Iovine and Young Academy)
Georgetown University
SUNY Binghamton
Wellesley College
maybe University of Pennsylvania?
I’m mainly interested in getting OUT of New York, but again, I feel like these are all reaches because I’m paranoid and I just don’t know… are any of these target/match schools and is there anything else I could consider?
SUNY Binghamton is a low match/safety
Wellesley high match/low reach
USC, Tufts, Georgetown Low/Mid Reach
Penn Mid/High Reach
You have a pretty nice balanced list with solid stats and ECs. I would bet you on getting into around 3 colleges as they are just so selective. If lucky, perhaps 4 or 5, as you do have a good chance for all of them, maybe even Penn. Try to make music your strongsuit in your application as it is now what looks like a spike in your application. You do not need to choose it as a major, but make sure you highlight a love for music in one or more of your essays. Some other colleges you could look at outside of NY are Amherst/Williams, Ivies, Rice, WUSTL, Vandy, Emory, CMU, UCs for more reaches (I suggest adding a few more). For matches you could look at BU, BC, Colgate, Wake, etc. (I suggest adding some more too)
Look carefully at the rec letter requirements for each school. Some schools are specific about wanting letters from core academic subject teachers, which choral is not. I agree with @happy1 – run the net price calculator on each school website.
Congratulations on your hard work and success! You’ll be competitive at those schools, but they are very competitive (the OOS schools) and reaches for everyone. Wellesley, though, is competitive but seems like more of a match for you. What about Mount Holyoke if your are considering Wellesley? Denison might be another one that would be accessible and a place where you’d probably get great merit aid. Like most of your choices (especially Wellesley), a beautiful campus.
You do want to make sure you are accepted at a school that you can afford. You would not want to be accepted to 2-3 of these schools and then find they are not affordable. It is a good idea to run the NPC for these schools. Pick a few that you’d be happy to attend and that would likely be affordable. Here’s a nice easy chart for Miami of Ohio that shows you could expect a lot of merit aid:
You can google colleges that meet full financial need. This is generally not guaranteed, and a school might disagree with what a family says it can pay, but maybe a couple of those would be nice to add to your list. Some that would probably be accessible include Wellesley, Colgate, Franklin and Marshall, Holy Cross, Connecticut College, Kenyon, Oberlin, University of Richmond, etc. All excellent schools, and more likely affordable. Good look with your list of schools and any you add.
I think you are best off using LORs from core subject teachers. Colleges are interested n learning how you perform in an academic setting. As suggested above you should check the specific requirements of the colleges you apply to but I looked up Tufts and “require one letter from a teacher in a junior or senior year major academic course (math, natural science, social science, English, or a foreign language) and one letter from a guidance counselor for all applicants.”
If you use you choral teacher letter it probably should be as a supplemental recommendation.
I agree with @TTG in general but particularly with respect to affordability. Your grades are great. Your SAT scores are superb. You have a list of very selective schools but have a good chance to get into any of them, and SUNY looks to me like it is probably an in-state safety as well as being a very good school.
The biggest risk I would think is getting into multiple schools but only being able to afford the one in-state option. You should run the NPC for each of these schools and see whether they are likely to be affordable. I think that you probably should also think about whether there are other in-state public schools that are affordable and that you would want to consider.
I do not agree with the comment in post #1 about adding UC’s (assuming this means “universities of California”). They give very little financial aid to out of state students, and with your family income you don’t want to and probably couldn’t pay full price at an out of state school in the US. Thus you need to focus on schools that are either in-state, or will give you financial aid.
What’s your budget?
Have you run the NPC on all these colleges and brought the different results to your parents?
Based on your list, your safety is SUNY Bing. Since you want to go OOS, you should have an affordable safety oos - with your scores this should be possible (Temple Honors? College of Charleston Honors? UVermont Honors?) as well as more matches. Look into SUNY Geneseo, Buffalo, or Stony Brook for an additional instate possibility.
Since you are a very good musician, you should look at St Olaf. They’re a go-to school for Stem students who want to practice music at a high level. Do express interest now (fill out request information form) and plan to apply for the music scholarships by December 1st.
Just to follow up, I agree Binghamton seems a safety and my suggestions go to helping you meet your goal of finding a good, affordable school OOS. You can do very well, and I’d think most of those I suggested would be matches (no guarantees these days at competitive places). I agree that showing interest is helpful–sign up on admissions webpage, visit to the extent possible, try to find out if they are offering any info events/interviews in your area, be sure to go if they visit your school. Be positive and confident, you’ve accomplished a lot. Importantly, that positivity will be a great asset in your application. Schools want positive, they want confident. They want to know what you’ll bring to their community. A positive, confident attitude helps an applicant make their case in a strong way. Keep all of that in mind when you are working on your essays. Again, good luck!
For the music angle, I’d suggest my alma mater, Oberlin College, which has the Conservatory. I played oboe and piano but didn’t want to do music in college, but I really appreciated being at a school where music was such a part of the culture. I think it helped that I lived in a dorm near the Conservatory so it had lots of Con students - my first year roommate was a double degree student and my best friend sophomore year was in my dorm and was a violinist in the Conservatory. Senior year my apartment-mate was a voice student in the Con.
^ an issue with colleges with conservatories is that there’s a clear divide between students in the conservatory who live and breathe music, and others who aren’t in the conservatory. Oberlin is a great choice for students who want to major in music, because it offers conservatory quality music instruction within a LAC, but conservatory professors don’t work with ‘casual’ students. So the choice will depend on whether the students wants to major in music or in something else.
You are competitive for all of these schools. My suggestion is to expand your list if money for applications is not an issue.
Your ECs are a little lacking for a school like Penn, but the way you can make up for this is by writing an amazing essay. Make sure you have others read your essay and tell you what they think of it. Also, make sure you ED somewhere.
@MYOS1634 i wouldn’t recommend OP major in music at Oberlin. OP is thinking CS. But being at Oberlin offers music opportunities that may not be available at colleges without a conservatory or strong music program. I really enjoyed music in HS but didn’t want to major in it, and Oberlin offered me an environment where I could be very close to it and still play (lots of rehearsal rooms, piano in every dorm, etc.). One friend of mine was a Chem major but auditioned (and was accepted) to take lessons with a conservatory piano prof.