What Colleges Can I Get Into?

College Search & Selection
1

Here’s what I have for my application:

SAT: 1470 (June scores were supposed to be better but I think everyone knows what happened with those)
GPA: 3.68 unweighted, 4.06 weighted
Extras:
President of French club
Varsity Quiz Bowl
Brought together a team for our state science club
Volunteer at library, animal shelter
Started a small organization with my friend to teach English to newly arrived immigrants

AP Scholar with distinction. I’ve taken 5 AP exams so far, 5s in 3 of them and 4s in the other two. Senior year I’m taking 3 more APs. My total number of AP classes and exams for all of high school would be 8. I also finished french a year early for my grade level.

I think I have a somewhat ok application but I’m worried about 2 of my grades in particular. This year in honors math (junior year) I was hoping to end with a B but things got messed up due to some reasons and it came down to a 78. Freshman year honors physics was worse (72) because I had no idea how high school worked because I moved from a different country. I didn’t have many friends either, and it took me until mid sophomore year to understand what college applications were like. In my country, they only look at this one important test score and not much else matters. I found out later that the test I was waiting for didn’t exist here, and that colleges look for a wholesome application with extracurriculars and volunteering and stuff.

However I don’t think I will end up explaining these grades to colleges since they would only look like excuses. Besides, my school is extremely competitive and is also notorious for its hard required freshman physics program. I also plan on taking the ACT in hopes of getting a 36 since June was a disaster.

I just want to know examples of what would be reaches, targets, and safeties for me.

2

What is your home state? How much can your family afford?

3

New jersey. I don’t think cost will be a huge issue, so expensive colleges are fine too

4

There are a gazillion colleges that you could get into with your stats, especially if there aren’t significant cost constraints. If you want helpful suggestions, say something about what you hope to study, possible career goals, what kind of campus life you would enjoy, what part of the country, etc. etc. Big or small school… urban/suburban/rural… Greek life? Big spectator sports? “Life-of-the-mind” vs. pre-professional? Etc. etc. - we can’t read your mind :slight_smile:

5

Biology related majors. Northeastern states and California are the regions but I’m willing to expand the search area if I really love the college. I’m not athletic. Don’t care about Greek life. College towns would be ideal, but urban and rural are really fine too.

What is the lowest acceptance rate college I can apply to? I mean as an approximate cutoff. For example, don’t apply to colleges with acceptance rates lower than 70 percent as reaches.

I obviously know Harvard, MIT, etc. are too far away to even see.

6

You have to consider both acceptance rate and stat ranges. For example, say your stats are in the second quartile for a school - below median, but still in the middle 25-75 range. If that school has an 80% acceptance rate, you’ll still probably get in. If it has a 50% acceptance rate, then it’s more questionable. On the other hand, if you’re in the top quartile then the school could have a 50% acceptance rate and you’d still be relatively safe.

The odds calculator that Prepscholar has for each school can give some perspective, although the results still have to be taken in context and with a big grain of salt, because they don’t consider any demographic factors like gender and race, nor differences in admit rates among programs/majors.

Are you interest in health professions with the bio major? Clarkson in way-upstate NY might be worth a look. They have PT, OT, and PA grad programs so they’re strong in undergrad pre-health. Their undergrad bio major has lots of options in terms of concentrations and minors. http://internal.clarkson.edu/biology/undergraduate/curriculum.html UVM could be a nice option too - great college town, students from all over (majority OOS) and great life sciences and environmental stuff. If a more urban campus appeals, then check out Pitt - you’d qualify for the Honors College there, and it’s a great school for life sciences, and a nice small city for students.

LAC-wise… Hobart & Wm Smith, Trinity (CT), Bennington (VT), Denison (OH), Allegheny (far-northern corner of PA)… I feel like, for holistic-admissions LAC’s that care a lot about EC’s, you’re going to fare better if you’re above their median stat-wise, because you have a few nice EC’s but probably not anything big enough to balance out being below-median on stats. Maybe Holy Cross would set a good benchmark for being realistically-reachy - you’re above median for SAT but below median on GPA, and they accept 37%, so it could go either way but you wouldn’t be out of the running.

The CA public system is very stat-focused, which isn’t a help in your situation… but on the other hand, if your budget permits paying OOS prices for a UC education, this would have the advantage of not counting your freshman grades. See what you get when you put your 10th and 11th grade numbers into this calculator: https://rogerhub.com/gpa-calculator-uc/ It also “caps” the weighting, so that only 8 semesters of “grade bump” are counted for AP’s. The capped-weighted number is what you’ll need to be “chanced” for UC’s.

If “California” can be expanded to “West Coast,” you might like some of the Pacific Northwest LAC’s like Lewis and Clark, Willamette, U of Puget Sound, and Whitman.

7

Also, if you’re female, Mount Holyoke could be another worthy reach - a little higher-stats than Holy Cross, but with a higher admit rate (50%ish). Would be a great school for a life-sciences major and would give you access to the whole five-college consortium. UMass Amherst could be worth looking at too.