First I have a question that no one really knows an answer to as far as I could find on google, but I’ll ask anyway. How much does my URM actually help? I know that it really matters on what the school is looking for and such, but I found something that said URM (African Americans in my case) could be competitive at schools at the 25th percentile, is that true? On to my stats.
GPA pretty bad had a bad year w/ family members going to jail, dad starting kidney failure, and more I’d rather not post here but GPA is a 3.0 atm hopefully I’ll be able to get it to a 3.1 maybe 3.25 weighted.
ACT- 29
EC- football, captain senior year varsity 9,10,11,12. Over 200 hours volunteering at a hospital plus like 60 from other places. Leader of a kairos trip will be doing this coming up year, and I have a black belt from martial arts that I participated in for 10 years. Probably more that I can’t think of.
Hooks- URM (African American)
If someone could give me an idea of safeties, matches, and reaches that would be great! Thanks in advance.
Senior course load that actually matters- Honors physics, Honors/AP Calc (idk what the actual name its honors something ap/ab idk), AP Chem, and an English class that I’m taking through CCP so a college level course.
I think URM will be a boost. You might choose a few reaches, a few matches, and at least one safety to apply to. Make sure you like all the schools you apply to and could afford to attend without taking on too much debt. To find out if you’d like a school, research them – academics programs offered and style of curriculum, social vibe, campus environment/weather/city or rural, etc., to find out which ones fit your interests best. And to find out if you could afford to attend without taking out a ton of debt, run the Net Price Calculator on schools you’re interested in. That will tell you approximately how much you and your family would be expected to pay per year.
How can you estimate your admissions chances at a given school? It’s not a perfect science, but to get a ballpark estimate:
- Look at the overall acceptance rate of the school
- Look at the average GPA and test scores of those admitted
- Compare your GPA and test scores to the averages of those admitted to the school
- If your test scores and GPA are higher than the averages for the school, you may have an above-average chance of being admitted (higher than the admission rate); if they are lower, your chances are probably lower than the admission rate; and if they are about the same, you probably have about the same chances of being admitted as the published acceptance rate.
- Bump yourself up a bit for URM status: if you calculated a 25% chance at a given school, change it to 35%; if 5%, change it to 8%; so on and so forth.
Keep in mind that applying ED or EA (especially ED) tends to boost your chances, as does being a recruited athlete or, to a lesser extent, a legacy. Read up on Early Decision and Early Action admissions – what they are, which schools offer them, etc.
Also, when you apply to public schools, admissions are easier for in-state students than they are for out-of-state students.
Now, how do we define reaches, matches, safeties? Here’s my table:
High reaches: 1-5% chance of acceptance
Reaches: 5-15% chance
Low reaches: 15-25% chance
High matches: 25-40% chance
Matches: 40-60% chance
Low matches: 60-90% chance
Safeties: 90+% chance
Good luck!