<p>Okay, this is my first post, so bear with me. I hope I put this in the right forum!</p>
<p>I'm only a junior, but I really want to start thinking about college choices. So I'd love some suggestions from you guys.</p>
<p>I currently have a 4.1 weighted GPA, 3.9 unweighted (1 B in precalc sophomore year, otherwise all As). I'm taking four AP classes this year, five next year. It looks like I'll get one more B this semester, unfortunately. I have yet to take the SAT, but according to my PSAT scores I am poised to score 2100+.</p>
<p>Extracurricular activities are pretty decent. I play cello in my school chamber and symphony orchestras and sit principle chair in both. I also play in a local youth orchestra, participate in a yearly honor orchestra, and do the Solo/Ensemble every year. I also went to music camp last summer. I'm severely lacking in the volunteering/job department though.</p>
<p>I want to be a doctor someday, so a college with a decent medical program would be great. I would also like a school orchestra and a nice campus. I definitely wouldn't mind if the college was selective academically. Preferably no religious affiliation.</p>
<p>I live in CA and would love to stay here for college, so CA suggestions are preferred, but I'm open to others! Stanford is actually my top choice (very original, I know), but it's so selective and I need to find some other options to start looking into.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance! Let me know if I left anything out!</p>
<p>Look into the Claremont schools: Pomona, Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, Scripps, & Harvey Mudd.
Pomona and Harvey Mudd would probably be best if you want to major in the sciences.</p>
<p>Thank you, I will look into those! Pomona has definitely been popping up a lot in my searches lately. </p>
<p>I’m not quite sure how much my parents are actually planning to assist me. My family probably falls somewhere in the lower middle class, if that helps. At the moment, I’m just looking into colleges that can potentially meet my above criteria. I’ll look into expenses and specifics more in depth once I’ve gotten a list started.</p>
<p>I mean you can never go wrong with a state school like UCLA, UC Berkley, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, or Loyola Marymount is very nice if you don’t mind the Jesuit part of it. You also have places like Scripps and Pepperdine but those are pretty much at the top with Stanford. I think if you would like larger schools with more greek life, more people, more social stuff to do state school. If you want a more strict, small, liberal arts school then definitely LMU, Occidental, or the Claremont schools those are very nice as well.</p>
<p>Your list of schools is going to depend very greatly on how much your parents are willing to or are able to pay. It’s all very well to apply to a school like Pomona, but it costs about $60,000 a year and if you don’t get any financial aid and you can’t afford to pay for it, then that’s a completely useless application.</p>
<p>I think the first thing you should do is talk to your parents about finances. Many people of my generation (I have kids in high school too) don’t realize how much college costs have gone up in the past couple of decades. And while many colleges provide some financial aid, it’s very common for families to find that the financial aid that’s offered isn’t enough to make the school affordable for them. If a $60,0000 school offers you $20,000 but you still can’t afford to pay the remaining $40,000, that’s no good to you.</p>
<p>However, you are fortunate in living in California, where we have excellent public schools that, while not dirt cheap, are pretty reasonable, and there are half a dozen options of varying levels of competitiveness – and they all have good biology programs (I assume you’ll want to major in bio if your goal is med school). With your stats I would say Cal and UCLA are reaches, UCSD and UC Davis are matches, UCSB and UCSC are safeties (though I hesitate to use the word “safety” since every year more and more California kids are flocking to the UCs and they’re becoming more and more competitive).</p>
<p>If I were you I would go visit some campuses over spring break this year. That will help you narrow down your search.</p>
<p>Wander on over to the Pre-Med forum and read up. You don’t need a college that has a medical program. You need a college which will provide the needed classes to get into medical school. </p>
<p>As part of your search, run the net price calculator so you will know the cost. Mid low income does not pay full price at Pomona. You do not need a college with a med school, you aren’t going to med school yet!</p>
<p>If your family is lower middle class, colleges like Pomona may actually be cheaper than the UC’s - so run the net price calculators on each college’s website (the colleges EACH calculate … and the numbers will be very different!)
Look into Questbridge to see if you might qualify (it depends on how much your parents make, then they select students based on achievements). But overall, California is a good state to be - lots of world-class universities, decent state support (with Calgrants, etc.)
You may also want to get a Fiske Guide or an Insider’s Guide or a Princeton Review’s Best Colleges at your schook or public library, then start reading, to get an idea of what you want in a college.
There’s a world of difference between Scripps (women’s college, part of the Claremont Consortium) and Pepperdine (evangelical conservative university with strict creed and behavior requirements), between UCI and UCSC, etc. </p>
<p>NOT in California (about as far as you can think of), but when I think premed/strong sciences + strong music/orchestra, I think “St Olaf”. It’s in Minnesota but both science and music opportunities are terrific (Christmas festival ranked top 10 in the country by USAToday and touring orchestra, summer internships at the Mayo Clinic…)</p>
but both science and music opportunities are terrific (Christmas festival ranked top 10 in the country by USAToday and touring orchestra, summer internships at the Mayo Clinic…)</p>