So I can finally do an update. Son has 33 ACT (34 superscore), UW GPA 3.61 up through Junior year, but about 3.7 including senior, and perhaps higher yet if Freshman year is dropped. His school rarely if ever has 4.0 students, and it has about 15% national merit scholars. He has interesting ECs relevent to his interest (IR/behavioral economics), and other EC’s related to his hobby.
Results:
Accepted: PItt (no merit, in state), American (merit, but not enough…), CMU (merit), Haverford, U Edinburgh (UK), St. Andrews (UK)
WL: GWU (he is going to decline weightlist).
Rejected: Princeton, Penn (legacy), Amherst, Wesleyan. UNC (OoS).
We are very relieved this part of our lives is over. For reference for readers: it may have looked like this was too many schools, but in fact the process is quite unpredictable, even using tools such as my son’s school’s Naviance. We are glad he applied to so many. There a few schools that were “late adds” to the list – ones we didn’t visit nor show interest in until the application was submitted. Those were: CMU, Wes, UNC. Of those, 2 out of 3 were outright rejects, but one offered the best merit package of any. He only showed moderate interest in Amherst and Princeton, and they were high reaches, so failure was a foregone conclusion. Penn he showed lots of interest, but for in particular the Huntsman program – which is very very high reach. I guess the one sort of suprising result was GW. This was unlikely to be his final choice anyway, so perhaps they sensed that.
No idea where he will end up…lots to consider.