Anticipated Major - Computer Science or Undecided
GPA - 4.0 unweighted 4.97 weighted (with my school’s system)
Rank - Don’t think my school does this but I’m near the top (at least top 10%)
ACT - 34 first time 35 second time
PSAT - 204 (probably commended merit award)
SAT 1 - Never took
SAT 2 - 760 US History | 770 Math Level I
Course Rigor - Will graduate with 7 APs and pretty much all honors (besides Phys Ed etc)
AP Scores - US History, European History, Computer Science, Spanish : All 5s
Extra Curricular
FIRST Robotics Team (9th grade then program ended)
Television Studio (9th - 12th)
Technology Student Association (10th)
Chess Club (11th - 12th club started in 11th grade)
Tennis Team (9th - 12th not 10th due to injury)
Elementary School Tutoring (11th - 12th club started in 11th)
Spanish Exchange (11th grade)
Founded Film Club (12th grade president)
Founded Student Resource Center (12th grade president)
Loosely Involved in Computer Science Club and Stock Market Analysis Club
Other / Diversity
Member of Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
White Male from Philadelphia Area
Play Piano (kind of)
Work Experience - Babysitting, Full year at a tutoring company (Kumon), summer camp counselor at a tennis camp for inner city children (2x) and counselor at a quaker camp (2x)
Taught myself computer programming and web design, read books and listen to educational podcasts etc (probably irrelevant)
Only bad thing - School Disciplinary record for minor drinking incident during Spanish Exchange in Spain. Have a great letter from guidance counselor saying I was much more responsible than the other kids and how I told the truth about it etc. Will this be a serious problem?
Planning to Apply To (not finalized)
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Penn
Colombia
Cornell
Brown
Duke
U-Chicago
Wash-U
Carnegie Mellon
Vanderbilt
Johns Hopkins
UC Berkeley
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Northeastern
Northwestern
Boston University
University of Rochester
Case Western
Lafayette
Penn State / Honors
Temple
First of all is this too many schools? Second, what are the odds of getting into one or two (or more) of the top section of schools? Thanks for your time!
I think the number is reasonable, although others will likely disagree and pry on fit and location etc. Which you probably already considered. I think you have a decent chance of getting in one or two, but not a high chance for them individually since you don’t stand out especially from what you’ve wrote. Have you done anything exceptional with any of the activities? Like winning state, making popular app, …
Basically, bring life to each activity to make a commonplace list a unique one
If you can’t do the kind of research necessary to cut that list in half, you certainly aren’t going to produce the kind of applications that will get you into those top schools.
If you can afford to pay $55K/year for UC Berkeley not including travel costs, then leave it on the list You could probably get into several exceptional schools for alot less, so if you need to reduce your list, consider removing UCB.
I agree with @NickFlynn . Having gone through the application process myself I learned that you reallllllly need to invest time in applications for top schools like most of these. In my opinion you should choose 2 ivies , then like three that are low reach (Duke, UChicago…) and then five match (BU, MSU, Temple, Penn State etc)
Sorry that I missed that line about your intended major. For CS, you may apply to UMich LSA instead of CoE. That would give you a better chance. Anyway, your ACT score is good and slightly above the 75th percentile of UMich and your GPA is good too. Umich LSA should be a match to high match for OOS and CoE would be a high match.
I can’t speak about any of the colleges besides Vanderbilt, but I’d say you have a pretty good shot at getting in to Vandy. I got in last fall, i “only” had a 33 on the ACT (combined with a 4.0 GPA), but my essays and EC’s were top notch. Several of my friends with superior stats (35 ACT, 2300 SAT) were rejected. I think that at a certain point the stats are almost irrelevant. After you make the initial cut, you need to make sure that your essays and letters of recommendation are interesting and unique enough to help you.
Also let’s say the acceptance rate at a school is 15%. Would you say I have about a 20% chance in getting in? A 15% chance? A 10% chance? If my personal chance is about the same as the acceptance rate, I can apply to schools so the rates add up to like 100%.
@heytherecolleges That’s an extremely difficult question… Honestly, I’d say it depends how you present yourself in your essays. If they are mind-blowing, you probably will get in to at least a few. However, if they’re average (for top schools) you might get into 1, maybe 2. If you can write amazing essays, and you really want to go to a top university, I’d apply to 5-6 “reach” colleges.
It doesn’t really work like that because you aren’t talking about truly independent trials - after all, the core of your applications will be essentially the same, and they will largely be evaluated by the same sorts of people looking largely at the same factors, etc, etc…
Sure, you’ve got a better chance of hitting a single 15% chance the more of them you take, but not an N * 15% chance.
The real question you should ask yourself is if you are more likely to get an acceptance if you put together 6-8 well crafted and targeted applications, or you are better off just spamming the top 20 schools in the country.
It is not a lucky draw that more tickets may get you a higher chance, at least, not additive chance. It is more like linked events. A better way for this game is to have a few matches and at least one safety ready before you add whatever number of reach schools that you can handle (financially and time) to the list. Note that the quality of essay matters and you do need time to polish your essays.
