We’re you rejected or was your application deferred to the regular applicant pool?
Sorry for the disappointing news from Rice.
Where else have you applied, and what applications might you still add? It doesn’t sound as if you have a clear favorite for ED2. Plenty of schools that you have considered have this option (WashU, Vandy, Emory… also Northeastern if you looked into it and thought it might be a fit), but if there’s not an obvious first choice at this point, then it’s probably better to stick with RD. As I said up-thread, a lot of the qualities you describe liking in a school sound more like public flagship universities rather than elite privates. Are you applying to some of these?
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So sorry to hear that, @Selena2 . But don’t ED2 unless you are sure you want to go.
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Rejected…
I have submitted my application to
EA: U Wisconsin-Madison
RD: U Washington Seattle (honors), BU (Honors+scholarship), USC (IYA academy)
UCs (UCLA, UCSB, UCSD, UCD, UCI)
On my RD’s list, I also have Northwestern, BC, NYU, Wesleyan, UNC, and Haverford.
My counselor wants me to EDII because she wants me to get off as soon as possible, considering my school didn’t have a good ED round compared to last year (this year no one got into Vandy out of 8 applied, and one got into Rice out of 5 applied, noted all of them has an average gpa of 4.1/4.3 and tons of great activities and leadership roles…) This year is so competitive, it seems like many top 30 colleges are preferring students coming from smaller cities rather than metropolis. She recommended me to EDII liberal arts college that I have on my RD list, which I love, (I like Wes better. This year a student who was accepted to Wes has a much weaker stats than mine, so I might feel I should aim higher… ) but I might still want to go to an university or wait for the UCs or USC. My parents want me to go to a liberal art college. I know great liberal arts schools have equal reputation as the public institutions, but I am afraid I might loose some opportunities to get involve… I don’t really know.
Emory hasn’t been admitted people at EDII round for the past five years, and people who were accepted to WashU or Vandy has a really high GPA (who were qualified to apply to JHU or Ivies), according to my counselor. So I don’t think I am that competitive…
Hard to decide.
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I don’t see your stats anywhere, but this list is reachy. Are you in-state for any?
Don’t apply EDII if you don’t have a clear first choice, with that said being full pay and applying EDII can increase odds over RD. Wes will have a single digit acceptance rate in RD for unhooked students (not sure about EDII), not sure I understand the aim higher comment.
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I am an international student. Just briefly list my stats:
GPA unweighted 4.11/4.3 about top 20%-30% in an elite international school
No class ranking (grade 10-12); spent 9th grade in a US private high school
TOEFL 111/120
Most classes are APs ( all predicted score 5s, last year’s AP exams were cancelled due to covid…)
Test Optional, not applying for financial aid
Major: sociology minors: business/ stats/ arts…
Activities: many are leadership roles of clubs, many accumulated hours in community service and volunteering, conduct independent research on child abuse and gender-based violence, have an art& design portfolio, designed an communication device for gender-based violence…
UW Seattle’s honors is separate to the regular admission, and BU’s scholarship I didn’t really expect anything.
I’ll suggest University of Rochester (NY). It’s a fabulous school with great resources and excellent faculty. It has a high number of international students (25%), which might help you in this highly competitive environment. UR has an open curriculum with only 1 required course (writing) in 4 years. Interdepartmental majors are encouraged as are double and even triple majors.
Rochester has an international airport and is easy to travel into and out of.
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Thank you.
What is your unweighted GPA, core courses only (Eng, Math, SS, Sci, foreign language), on a 4 point scale where A=4, B=3 and so on? If your school doesn’t calculate that you can calculate it yourself.
What are your UC GPAs? GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub
Most of your schools are reaches, I will leave @gumbymom to categorize the UCs for you in sociology once you provide UC GPAs.
Do you have safety/highly likely schools in your home country?
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Here is some 2021 UC admit data based on the Capped Weighted UC GPA and not major specific. The UC’s do consider all three UC GPA’s in their admission review and are need blind and offer little to no merit or need based aid to International students. Expect to pay full fees at $67K/year.
| Campus | 4.20+ | 3.80-4.19 | 3.40-3.79 | 3.00-3.39 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Berkeley | 30% | 11% | 2% | 1% |
| Davis | 85% | 55% | 23% | 10% |
| Irvine | 60% | 31% | 14% | 1% |
| Los Angeles | 29% | 6% | 1% | 0% |
| Merced | 97% | 98% | 96% | 89% |
| Riverside | 97% | 92% | 62% | 23% |
| San Diego | 72% | 25% | 2% | 0% |
| Santa Barbara | 73% | 28% | 4% | 1% |
| Santa Cruz | 91% | 81% | 46% | 9% |
Overall International Admit Rates for 2022:
UCB: 5.5%
UCLA: 5.8%
UCI: 21%
UCSB: 19.7%
UCSD: 15.5%
UCD: 43%
UCSC: 55.4%
UCM: 68.3%
UCR: 81.7%
UC Davis seems the most likely admit from the UC’s that you have applied. The UC’s have capped the # of out of state and International enrolled students, so the competition will be tough.
Best of luck.
Have your parents wanted a liberal arts college all along, or are they just buying into your counselor’s advice at this ED2 decision point?
Personally, I like LAC’s as an undergrad experience. But your particular preferences seem to align better with bigger universities. I’m not seeing a level of enthusiasm, from you, about any particular LAC, that would justify an ED application. (Since you’re interested in CA schools, have you considered the Claremont Colleges? For your interests, maybe Claremont McKenna? It doesn’t have D1 sports, but you might still like the vibe, and it’s a great place to combine interdisciplinary liberal arts with an interest in business. And even though it’s a small LAC, the five colleges of the consortium are so fully integrated that in many ways, it’s really more like attending a mid-sized university - abt. 7000 undergrads across the consortium, plus graduate divisions. CMC has ED2, and gives a very significant ED bump. Still, I’d only consider this if you truly found you preferred the school to your other options. USC and UCLA are much more urban; Claremont is very suburban - you can get into the city of LA on public transit, but it takes close to an hour.)
Honestly… I’m looking for a nice way to say this… I feel as if this is a point at which your counselor’s self-interest may diverge from your best interests. Obviously you attend a school that highly values their placement record at well-known US universities. This person is no doubt strongly incentivized to place students at the most highly-ranked schools possible. And you are being pushed to attend the most competitive/highly-ranked school you can possibly get into. But, high rank and low acceptance rates are not a reliable proxy for the best education generally, much less the best fit for you in particular. Every state flagship university has top-notch students (many of whom could have gotten into top private universities, but who can’t or won’t pay double the what their home state’s flagship will cost them), and there can be many advantages to being a top student at such a school.
You also have USC on your list, which as you know doesn’t have an ED option, but it seems to really check the boxes for you - a very strong interdisciplinary focus with great access to programs across divisions (you could assemble a fantastic combination of social sciences, art/design, and business here!), school spirit, urban environment near a major international airport in a progressive state… seems like a very good fit. I wouldn’t preempt options like USC and your public U’s, just to nail down an ED2 acceptance at an “I guess it seems nice” LAC. To put it bluntly, you weren’t put on earth to enhance your school’s admissions portfolio, only to pay close to 400K USD for an undergraduate education when you might have been happier at Wisconsin-Madison for half the cost. (OTOH, if you genuinely love Wesleyan, feeling that you “should aim higher” is a terrible reason not to ED - it’s an excellent school and absolutely worthy of an ED2 app if you can truly see it as your top choice. Again, this is not some kind of video game where the goal is to optimize your score - but your school and counselor are going to treat it that way, so take their advice with a huge grain of salt.)
What are you thinking of as a “safety” plan? Even if you apply ED2, your options for adding safety schools will be more limited by the time you get a decision. I think it’s unlikely that you’d get shut out of your entire list in ED, but then again there’s no single school on your list that seems like a solid “slam-dunk.” You might want to take a look at a few more schools that have higher admit rates. U of Minnesota Twin Cities is a great urban flagship. You might love the U of Utah Honors College. Maybe Ohio State? If you like BC, how about Fordham? (Fordham is to BC as NYU is to BU, roughly.) I still think Northeastern would be a great add, too. (Their domestic admit rate is low, but I’m pretty sure it’s higher for full-pay international students - they accept a lot of internationals and rely heavily on those dollars. Same is true of URochester, which was already suggested.)
I think you’re probably in good shape even without adding safeties, but those are just a few ideas. Sorry again about Rice; it would have been wonderful to be done and happy with your choice. But don’t do ED2 arbitrarily, just in hopes of getting closure sooner. This will be stressful for a few more months, but you will end up in a good place!
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4.11/4.3 is the unweighted GPA my school calculated for me, we don’t have a weighted GPA. I used the calculator you provided (thanks!) to calculate my UC, but I don’t know which classes count as UC identified honors, so I just use the number of my AP classes. Capped GPA is about 4.63, unweighted 4.0.
I am applying a school in Canada as a safety.
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Thanks for the data! I can clearly see!
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Thank you so much for the honest words, it helped a lot really. CMC doesn’t have a sociology program, so CMC was not on my list from the beginning although I like it very much.
My parents have their ideas of me going to a liberal art college at the beginning, so they have that inclination before my counselor even said that. USC is definitely a good fit and top choice and my counselor admitted. But because the program I want to get in is so competitive, that lowers my acceptance rate a lot. I love all the universities I put on my list and am willing to attend them all, although there is an order of liking.
USC=Northwestern> UCLA> Wes=Vanderbilt= UW-M= UNC>UW Seattle=Haverford=BC= UBC( University of British Columbia, Canada) >NYU>BU> Other UCs
Sorry for my wording in my last post about “aiming higher”. I do love Wesleyan and I think it is a really great school. I said that because I heard a student who got accepted with weaker stats, which gives me the impression of I can definitely get in, and of course it is not true. I do like public universities, but I also like liberal arts college. Big classes, small classes, party scenes… all fine with me. Starting from middle school, my class size on average never exceed 25. I should say for the last six years, I have been getting used to the liberal arts college teaching format, small classes, discussion-based class, close-knit community. I can’t really imagine being in a 80-people-class is like, although I think I am perfectly fine being in big classes. I am not going in-depth of doing research, so research resources don’t need to be so much, any great college would satisfy. I just hope to experience different subjects and accumulate working experiences (LAC networking is great)
It is cruel that we don’t get to where we want to go, a lot of the times we need to look at the stats of the whole country and make strategies in choosing schools that we can get in rather than we want… This year, the application season is brutal than ever. A lot of people with great gpa and activities were deferred because of test optional, apparently, saying there is no negative impact of not submitting test policy is just not true, for international students. I see people with great stats in our school and other prestigious international schools got rejected to their normally “matching” school, and it just feels terrible. International student admission is much harder, I believe, especially in Asian countries.
For safeties, UC Davis and U Washington Seattle all have an admit rate around 40%, which I believe I am likely to be accepted… And UBC from Canada, since I am not applying to their commerce school, the admit rate is quite friendly. I think that is enough…? I don’t want to apply to schools where I don’t want to attend.
I think I still need to do some research on Wesleyan. If I am determined that I really love this school and will not regret, I will apply that as my EDII choice. Tough season, hang on 
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Sounds like you’re thinking this through in a very level-headed way; I’m sure you’ll make a good decision.
I’m not pushing CMC over your other choices, but the lack of an in-house sociology major shouldn’t be a reason to rule it out. At the 5C’s, if the major you want isn’t available at your own school, you can do an off-campus major in that subject very easily. (My daughter was a Scripps student whose primary major was in Environmental Analysis, through Pomona. The process for enrolling in this major was: pick an advisor in that department, schedule an appointment, have them sign a piece of paper… done! It was ridiculously easy, and everybody was helpful and welcoming.) Both Pomona and Pitzer have sociology majors, and you could combine an off-campus soci major with a CMC econ-accounting major. Likewise, there are wonderful art and design classes through the consortium. (My daughter took classes at all five colleges, including a number of art and design classes.) I don’t have personal experience with being based at CMC, but this would be a good topic to discuss with an AO if the possibility of a soci major would make you want to consider the school.
UBC seems like a good option; Canadian admission are usually more predictable, so if your counselor thinks this works as a safety, that’s probably reliable advice.
Good luck with your research and your ED2 decision! 
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Wow thanks for the new thoughts and encouragements!
I will ask my counselor about CMC and do more school researches on these schools! I will post my decisions here after I make up my mind!
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Hi Guys! Hope you all are having a great holiday!
I submitted my ED2 to Wes and all of my RD applications. Hopefully there will be great results! Thank you for all the answers and clarifications!
Happy New Year!
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Congratulations on making your decision. I live near Wesleyan and can answer any questions you might have.
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Yayyy that is so generous! I will!
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I’m sorry to hear about Rice. 
It’s interesting – my daughter is happy there, but a friend who is a senior this year at her high school toured last summer and didn’t like it at all. Same with our neighbor’s daughter. So go forward thinking that maybe it wasn’t the best fit for you, and fingers crossed that Wesleyan or another school is your perfect place!
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