What colleges do I have a shot at?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

I’m an upcoming senior from San Jose, California looking for colleges, public or private. I’m interested in economics, finance, statistics and/or applied math (will likely double major with one of the most two + one of the last two majors). I would prefer a medium sized college with an undergraduate focus (and, if possible, a collaborative admosphere). While it doesn’t need to be the ivy league, I would like to go into finance and would like a college with relatively strong recruiting or a good career services program. I’m open to out of state or private, except I need the costs to be reasonable. I do not think I can get financial aid but my parents will not (or it would be hard for them) to pay full private tuition. Therefore, does anyone know of colleges with good scholars programs or that give good merit aid relative to their prestige? My stats:

Asian, not first generation

uwGPA: 4.0, wGPA: 4.55

APs: unfortunetely, only AP English Language and Calculus BC (plus 4 additional aps my senior year). Don’t know the scores yet. I’ve also taken 4 honors and 2 DE courses, but my transcript is definitely average for my highly competitive school.

Test Scores: SAT 1550, SAT Math 800, psat likely NMSF

ECs: DECA officer (6th at nationals, 1st at states for accounting and finance), Free the Children (officer, raises awareness and funds for education and child labor), founded pro-bono math program for underrepresented middle school students, founder and president of exchange program with refugees from Syria to help them practice English (I’m really proud of this one :slight_smile: ) . Summer teaching intern working at a nonprofit full-time (7-5 for 8 weeks) teaching math and personal finance to first-generation middle schoolers (program is called breakthrough)

I only do activities that I truly enjoy so hopefully I can write good essays. Based on my stats, does anyone have any suggestions for colleges. I don’t think I’m good enough for ivies but maybe mid-tier colleges?

2

Amazing profile! That’s the type of profile Stanford would like.

Are the LACs like Harvey Mudd too small for you?

3

Nope, LACs are completely fine! I’m not a hard-core STEM person though, so I wasn’t considering Harvey Mudd. I am applying to Claremont Mckenna, however! Do you suggest any other LACs?

Do you really think my profile gives me a chance for Stanford? I didn’t think I was anywhere close to the caliber of students Stanford/Ivies usually want.

4

I wouldn’t write you off as not close to Stanford or ivy caliber. Academically you’re pretty much the same to a lot of them. But ofc a lot of other applicants will have similar stats hence a big part of it comes down to how you do the conveying in the essays. The fact that you’ve mostly done activities that interest will only work in your favor b/c you’ll have decent content to work with in your essays. Just grind it out on the essays. Also, consider UCB if you’re interested in finance/econ. UCB Haas by far has the best undergrad business program on the west coast. The drawback to UCB is that you’d have to re-apply to Haas after your second year at UCB.

5

Stanford from what I can tell really values and loves something quirky or unique in your ECs that make you stand out from the rest. The Syria exchange thing that you did will really make you stand out. Everyone is going to be a 1550-1600 with a 4.0 there, so you’ve passed the basic hurdle.

As much as I love UCB, it’s a huuuuge population school and I sense that that’s a showstopper for you.

Don’t discount the schools based on their reputation. One of my kid’s friends is going to CMU - as a drama major! Hopefully her parents know this LOL. (We live near San Jose where everyone’s parents is a tech person).

6

Wherever you intend to go, easily the best way to improve your chances is to ED. Make sure you’re ready to submit come October 15 or November 1 (preferably well before the deadline dates). Essays, LORs, transcripts, portfolios if needed, etc.

7

@Ak1097 I will be applying to UCB, though I’m not sure if I’ll get in. I’ll spend some time on the essays too!
@ProfessorPlum168 I can apply EA but not ED because I can’t make that financial commitment to colleges without seeing my options.

8

And yes, I don’t like that UCB is a huge, rather competitive school, for the econ/finance, I’ll still apply. The main thing I’m worried about is my courseload since I chose to take slightly less rigorous courses (2 aps/ 2 honors my junior year instead of 3-4 aps that the top students take) my junior year, but my senior year courseload is definitely fine,. Will it make a significant difference?
I’m definitely going to use my exchange program for my common application. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to write about but I was thinking of kind of writing about the little things my student and I had in common (we like to cook, we are really interested in religion and languages, and spend a lot of time dicussing our cultural background) that contrasted some incredibly different environments that we live in. I think its really incredible that having come from as different places as you could possibly think of, we connected over these little things and became really good friends and it reminded me that people are far more similar than we tell ourselves.

9

@lovescookies have you been going to the various visits that colleges are making, either to your school and/or in the San Jose area at a hotel? A lot of the big names do make their way to San Jose (no pun intended). Unfortunately the end of the spring visits is upon us. Northwestern was tonight and Carnegie Mellon I believe is on Sunday. You certainly should be asking about financial costs and options along with academics. Also by visiting the hotels you do show some demonstrated interest which might be of some importance. (Campus visit is better though, applying ED is the best).

Unless you are applying to lower ranked universities, you should assume that whatever the sticker price is, is what you’ll be paying. USC and Vanderbilt are two ranked schools that have a decent amount of merit-based awards.

10

@ProfessorPlum168 I have not been to these hotel sessions, I was planning to start this summer- that’s a great point, thank you. I’ve visited some colleges in SoCal (Claremont colleges, etc) - I’ll try to start visiting colleges or going to these sessions from now on though!

11

The good news is that you don’t have to spend the summer going to SAT boot camp to try and get you SAT score up hahaha. But you do need to get cranking on the planning for campus visits which I feel is very important.

12

Okay, I definitely will, thank you!

13

You have superb academic and EC accomplishments. However, Stanford would still be a reach for you, unless you are a recruited athlete simply because your competitors will present similarly superb academic and EC achievements. If you are interested in CMC, then you should definitely consider Pitzer and Pomona College as well. You likely learned about the benefits of the Consortium model at Claremont (e.g. up to 40% of classes can be taken at a sister school within the Consortium).

Regarding your essay idea:

"I’m definitely going to use my exchange program for my common application. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to write about but I was thinking of kind of writing about the little things my student and I had in common (we like to cook, we are really interested in religion and languages, and spend a lot of time dicussing our cultural background) that contrasted some incredibly different environments that we live in. I think its really incredible that having come from as different places as you could possibly think of, we connected over these little things and became really good friends and it reminded me that people are far more similar than we tell ourselves. "

I encourage you to take a distinctly different approach to your essay, because the theme above is commonly used. Since the exchange program was so meaningful for you, do focus on it in your essay. But think deeply to discover a less common and less obvious theme. Since you founded this exchange program, you might think about sharing some of your struggles as the founder-leader. How did people at your school and community support or hinder your efforts? Was there any backlash about you wanting to help Syrian refugees? What did you find most surprising in founding the program? How easily scalable and sustainable is your program? Did any of Syrian refugees refuse or reject your well intentioned efforts to serve them? Can you create a model for your exchange program that can be replicated at other schools? Can you work on that during this summer?

14

@PeaceOfMind I see what you are saying. I wanted to write about my experiences founding the program but I wasn’t sure if I had something exceptionally unique to say about it. I come from a completely immigrant community, so we received quite a bit of support and there was no backlash. Il think one problem we had was that many of the students we worked with started to quit, and so we had difficulties with student retention. My challenges as a leader were similar to many other programs I could have done- funding, organization, making sure that our tutors were committed, etc. I founded the program with a nonprofit, who had scaled this program for adults, but we founded the program for high schoolers. They provided some English ELD resources and helped recruit students, and I managed the rest.

Is there a way I can position my idea to become more unique, or combine the more personal challenges I faced with my student with some leadership problems I wanted to write about own perceptions of Syria as I came in with this unconscious fear of what to expect. With some much going on in Syria, there was a little part of me that was worried if my student was going to be really different, or very religious conservative, even this tiny, really irrational fear of terrorism, which is kind of ironic because I think of myself as someone really open-minded. And then that view was challenged really quickly and I think I was forced to confront the fact that I had the very same stereotypes as the people I had silently judged for more openly conveying their views. I do think, however, that I am uniquely positioned to talk about just how different our childhoods were. The war in Syria has lasted 8 years, and my student has shown me pictures of his town marketplace after it was bombed, he has openly protested the dictator in Syria, someone who has killed 500,000 people, despite the danger, and his brothers made an incredibly dangerous journey through the Mediterranean sea to reach Germany. So you compare that with something so silly like snapchat or baking cakes in the very same conversation, and I think it teaches you that there’s something human that persists no matter what you’ve been through.

15

Pomona is the best of the 5C’s for need-based aid but doesn’t offer any merit. CMC is a better bet merit-wise. Access to most departments is fairly open across the consortium but CMC Econ is a notable exception. You must be a CMC student to take CMC Econ classes.

Are you considering USC? They give good NMF merit and have strong programs in your areas of interest.

You would have a shot at good merit at Vanderbilt. They don’t have a business school, but they have a minor in Financial Economics which would pair well with a math/stats or econ major: https://as.vanderbilt.edu/managerialstudies/minors/financial-economics/

There’s some merit aid at Rice, but not a lot. It might be worth applying, particularly if your family could swing the full-pay cost there, which runs about $15K less than other elite private U’s. https://economics.rice.edu/undergraduate-program/mathematical-economic-analysis-major

Lehigh University has a strong undergrad finance program https://cbe.lehigh.edu/academics/undergraduate/finance/undergraduate-curriculum and unlike most schools they consider Asian students to be URM. There’s a Diversity Weekend in the fall you could apply to. You’d have a good chance at merit there, I would think.

Tulane is another highly-regarded private U with good merit opportunities and an undergrad finance major: https://freeman.tulane.edu/programs/undergraduate/bsm-finance

Close to home, Santa Clara would have good merit potential. https://www.scu.edu/business/finance/
As would its Jesuit counterpart in NYC, Fordham: https://www.fordham.edu/info/20526/majors_and_minors/1859/finance/1

Brandeis is strong in math/econ, and has some good merit awards. They have a five-year BS/MAief program in which you could earn a bachelors in econ and an masters in international economics and finance.

I agree that Mudd isn’t a fit for you at all, but there are some other STEM schools that offer merit and have strong math and computation/modeling oriented econ programs - notably RPI http://www.economics.rpi.edu/pl/undergraduate-study and WPI https://www.wpi.edu/academics/study/economic-science-bs

Pitt has a great honors college, good merit opportunities, and undergrad majors in Finance, International Political Economy, Math-Econ, Actuarial Mathematics… great small-city location right next to CMU.

Other affordable OOS publics with top undergrad finance programs include Indiana University (Kelley School of Business), and Ohio State (Fisher College of Business). Both have Honors Programs - both university-wide Honors for entering students and Business-specific honors programs for continuing students - which offer particularly good opportunities. UGA is worth a look too (Terry College of Business, and Honors Program). Washington State University (Carson College of Business and WSU Honors College) are part of the Western Undergraduate Exchange (WUE) program, which means you could attend for 150% of in-state tuition. ASU (W.P. Carey School of Business and Barrett Honors) is also in this category and offers significant merit as well.

(Top OOS publics which would NOT be particularly affordable include UMichigan, UT Austin, UNC Chapel Hill, and UVA. Top UNaffordable privates include MIT, UPenn, NYU, Carnegie Mellon, and Boston College. All great schools that people are likely to suggest to you, but for your financial situation, not likely to come in at a manageable price point.)

And of course there are good options in the UC system, with Riverside as a safety with a strong undergrad finance program.

16

@aquapt you’re naming a bunch of safeties in the OP’s world. Refer to the title of the thread.

17

@aquapt Thank you!!
I’m open to some safeties/matches if I can get some merit aid!

18

@aquapt Thank you!!
I’m open to some safeties/matches if I can get some merit aid!

19

@ProfessorPlum168 OP seems to be stating that their family cannot pay their EFC at private Us’s that do not offer merit. Anyone can rattle off the most elite schools that OP could possibly get into; I’m trying to suggest excellent schools with significant merit opportunities. I took the thread title to mean, what colleges does OP have a shot at actually attending, given both their qualifications and their financial parameters.

20

If you want top colleges and merit aid then better look at USC and Rice as they have merit scholarships and mathematical economics and you can double major or minor in statistics or finance. Don’t ED, go RD or you may not get scholarships offers.