So I’m a junior right now in a Florida high school and I am skeptical by the results given by college calculators as I’m an Asian American male and people on this forum typically find us at a slight disadvantage.
I have a 5.1 UW GPA according to my school (I did not take any APs freshman or sophomore year but pretty much all honors classes with As so I don’t know what this means for me)
Class rank top 10% thats all I know
Im taking
AP English (Projecting that I end with an A- this year)
AP Physics (Projecting an B+)
AP Comp Sci (Projecting a A-)
Calc Honors (Projecting A+)
American history honors (Projecting A+)
French IV honors (Projecting A-)
Chem Honors (Projecting A+)
Looking to take 4-5 AP classes senior year
SAT Score 1450/1600 (took it last year, not sure if I want to take it again this year)
SAT subject test chem 740/800
SAT subject test world history 750/800
Not 1st Gen college student and can afford to pay full tuition.
Econ, Biomed, or liberal arts are all fine.
Assuming I have an average EC joining a few honor societies, and started a small business on the side nothing very notable but not exactly terrible in terms of ECs what kind of schools should I be looking at or striving for at this point in time.
Obviously, UF and FSU (with Honors College).
If you retake and score 1490 you’ll get an automatic scholarship (2/3 tuition I think) at UAlabama.
With that 1450 you have a good shot at Honors College and AES scholarship at UT Dallas.
You can also try the new UKentucky Honors College or Temple Honors or UMN Honors - these if you want cheaper OOS alternatives to UF and FSU.
If you just want an alternative to UF and can truly afford it, apply to Penn State Schreyer (top Honors College) as well as UWashington and UWisconsin; UVermont would be a good safety if you want snow.
Next, apply to private universities where you’re a URM:
Bates, Bowdoin, Davidson, Colby, Carleton, Vassar, Macalester, Grinnell, Kenyon, Colgate, Hamilton, Connecticut College, Denison, Middlebury, Dickinson, Lehigh, Lafayette. Their “vibe” is quite different so read about each of them in Fiske Guide or Princeton Review’s Best College and don’t forget to fill out the “request info form” to express interest and get more information.
Run the NPC on all of them and select those that seem a good fit and affordable.
Once all of that is done, apply to top 40 national universities that you like.
I’d include UMichigan, UVA, W&M, UNC-CH, if you wish, but I’d focus mostly on private universities since those would offer something substantially different from UF.
Sorry, maybe I was a little disorganized in my writing but I think I said that I could probably be able to afford four-year colleges without scholarships, so im looking at some school that might be good assuming I could pay the tuition. Your list is great however!
OP, what type of school are you looking for as you aren’t just studying there, you are living there for the next 4 years and potentially forging friendships that will last for many year.
With that in mind;
small or large or medium sized
urban or rural or suburban location
liberal or conservative or a balance
opportunity to take time to declare a major like at a LAC or a major related college system as at most universities
small team based classes and very accessible professors as found at most LAC’s or large lecture halls with TA’s as primary support as found at most universities
Everyone has different critical components that for best for them…
Great list, other than liberal arts colleges I was also thinking medium to large private universities, such as NYU etc, as well as maybe some UCs, could you maybe give an estimate of what kind of those schools I should be looking at?
OK, your interest in a possible career in medicine would not change much in terms of your college options ("Biomedical engineering," for example, would). Pre-med simply requires fairly standard courses across the sciences and a few other fields.
It appears your last SAT was taken as a sophomore. This is unusual, and should be superseded by a re-test that would reflect your current academic level.
Most colleges accept the majority of fully qualified students who apply, so even at a school such as the competitive NYU, I'd think your chances for admission would be fine (over 60%?). URochester and CWRU might be other schools along these lines.
The UCs like high classroom preparation, and would weight your GPA highly. Some could be likely admits for you, depending on the calculation they apply to your grades. You might also want to look into the Claremont Colleges.
Lists such as these can help you keep the universe of colleges in perspective in terms of difficulty of admission:
if you are not submitting your test scores, and have pretty unique/ good ec’s, do you know how much of a difference being a URM would make? Im chilean but idk if that helps. My uw gpa is a 3.97 and W is 4.1- we have very few aps at our school
Maybe some of the claremont colleges. They are pretty interesting, and you might like the vibe/ be a good fit.
Also, if you are a girl, you might want to try some all girls schools: barnard, smith, wellsley. May not be your scene, but barnard is attached to columbia, and at wellsley you can take classes at MIT.
