What are my chances of getting into private or liberal arts/ advice on Selecting more colleges

Bio:Rising Senior. AP/IB
-Citizenship: Citizen
-State of residence California
-Class: Senior
-Race:Asian
-Gender: Male

School:Public,
Class 667, 4 go to ives maybe more depending on athletic scholarships
Academic Profile:
-Unweighted GPA:3.7
-Weighted GPA: 4
-AP’s: 14 including senior year
-ACT: 32 (Retake maybe going to get 34)
-SAT: 1480 SC 1500
-SAT II: 770 physics, 780 math
-Rank:120 last time i checked
-Course Rigor: very i guess. No one I know took more rigorous estimated wise.
Freshman took 7 classes
Sophmore took 7 classes
Junior took 7 classes
Senior will take 6 as school only allowed 6 if I take a college class.

EC (In order of importance/commitment):
Robotics/ Programming (Scratch, Java, VBS, C for arduino)

-Volunteering (700 hours to date)

-Played Golf
-Played Viola

Other Notables (College courses you’ve taken, papers published, created own website, TAing a class, ect):
-Taking Calc 3 and Linear Algebra at a College during senior year

  • conducting research for SCUR Conference this fall.

-I have learned how to make a website using wordpress

Honors:
AP testing Calc AB/BC 5, Physics 1 4.
In Science Olympiad won 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 6th in my events.
Working with Professor in robots this summer
Have always won or placed 2nd 7 years. Robotics Competition.
Won a local golf competition.
CSF
Key Club officer
President of Engineering Club
Vice President of a Charity club for school dances etc(threw a special ed prom)
Editor of School Newspaper and Online Editor also

Work:

-My parents making me do all the jobs around the house and watch my brother.

Schools I’m looking at:
Reach
Amherst
Brown University
CalTech
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke
Harvey Mudd
Harvard University
Pomona College
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of Chicago
University of Pennsylvania
Williams College
Yale University
Mit
Competitive
Case Western Reserve
Johns Hopkins
Vassar
Rice
Safety
Carleton College
Pitzer
University of rochester

Intended Major: Physics or engineering
Intended Minor: Math

Could you give me advice for the next four months and suggest any other school I add onto my list. Many thanks.

The advice I am giving you is to narrow your focus and figure out what you want in a school and then create a list based on those criteria. Right now your list is all over the place with the only commonality being, your chances are low at most of them. Rochester and Case are the only matches on your list. You have no true safeties, and everything else is a reach or a high reach.

Boy… that is quite a list you have going on! 24 schools!

I think you need to work on this list… You have almost all reach schools. Rochester and Case Western are probably matches (?) and I don’t know Pitzer. I don’t see any safety schools. Carleton needs to be added to the reach list.

What is your budget?

I don’t really have a budget but all the schools have good financial aid.

Carleton isn’t a safety, and your list is for one too big, and two too top heavy. Cut this down to 13-15 schools. 8 reaches, 4 matches, 2 safeties would be ideal.

They have financial aid… for those who qualify. Have you used the net price calculators? Will you have siblings in college at the same time? Have you discussed finances with your parents?

The first thing I would do is to sit down with your parents and this list. Use the NPC to get an estimate of cost, and ask your parents if the number sounds realistic to them.

Also… Cut the list. Narrow it to maybe 5 reaches, 5 matches, 3 safeties ( or something in that range).

Yeah my list is a bit top heavy. For NPC they are between 6-10 thousand. I will have myself, twin, and older sibling in college. Thanks.

The schools are between 6-10,000 with 3 students in school… What will it be with 2 in school, and will that be affordable when the time comes?

Your list is very top heavy. You have 22 reach schools, 2 matches, and 0 safeties.

IMHO I don’t think you qualify for Caltech, MIT or HYPS given your demographic, stats, and class rank. If you insist on applying to these maybe only choose 3 and really focus on writing a good app for each. Add USC,UCLA,Berkeley, and Georgia Tech to your list for some higher matches/lower reaches since they’re solid engineering schools that you’ve got a much better shot at. Keep 3 of the mid reaches like Dartmouth, Duke, Cornell, etc. Add some match/safety schools that have rigorous engineering programs as well like UCSD/UCD/UCSB/UCI.

Carleton isn’t a safety and if you need financial aid it’s a reach.

If you are at all interested at schools on the East Coast I would recommend WPI and RPI both are generous with merit as well. RPI is really well known for their stem. You could look into Lehigh, Villanova, Northeastern, Georgia tech, Virginia Tech, Boston College, and Boston University. I also feel like Johns Hopkins should be moved up to a reach. I think if you told us more what type of school you were interested in it would be helpful to round out your list of schools. Do you prefer urban or suburban? large or small? Tech school? Liberal arts, college with stem, state school?

@desperateplea I don’t really care about suburban or urban. I prefer the school to be east or west coast, smaller (student to faculty ratio smaller than 12), tech or not it doesn’t except it can’t be trash in STEM, and private. Price isn’t big except their financial aid needs to be good as there will be three students in my house either in or applying to college.

The financial aid calculation produces an EFC (Expected Family Contribution) amount than covers all students in college. In the best case (seldom achieved) if all students in the family attend schools that meet full need, and the first student uses up the entire EFC, the other students will have their fees covered in full by the schools. Schools that meet full need are few and popular, so competition is tough, but they make good targets for families with multiple talented students!