Where should I apply?

College Search & Selection
1

Demographics: Mixed: White and Korean, military kid, middle class

Intended Major: Biology, hoping to go to Medical School

Residency- NC, 2nd Congressional District

Academics: Class Rank: 18 out of 281. Course load consisted of APs/Honors/Standard classes.Mixture of As and Bs, but got a C in AP Calculus AB. SAT(Redesigned): 1290 ( 630 Reading+Writing, 660 Math) ACT with Writing: 29 (Reading:29, Math:32, writing:29, science: 27, essay: 24) GPA: 3.6923 unweighted, 4.9321 weighted

Extracurricular: Captain of Quiz Bowl. Captain of Swim team, president of Tri-m honor society, reporter for technology student association,conducted fundraisers for the American Cancer Society, principal cellist of school and county orchestra and member of all-state orchestra, secretary of mu alpha theta, member of science Olympiad, member of international club, member of key club, Red-Cross Volunteer:, member of national honor society,Academy of Scholars, local museum volunteer, Church mission team member to Mexico,homeless-feeding through local church, worked at local church orchestra, writer for the NC Governor’s School Newspaper

Awards-- Regional Science Olympiad Champion,State Science Olympiad qualifier, Director’s Award Orchestra, Varsity Swim Letterman, All-Conference Swimming, Conference Swim Champions,Regional and State qualification for Swimming, Quiz Bowl Regional Champion, Quiz Bowl state finalist, Quiz Bowl national qualifier (NAQT-HSNCT), Technology Student Association State Finalist, Technology Student Association National Finalist, local university biomedical Science Camp- 1st Place Camp Written examination,AP Scholar,Junior Marshal, NC Governor’s School attendee

Where should I apply? Please list Safety,Match,and Reach Schools please

2

How much can you and your parents pay each year?

3

For match (possibly reach since you’d be out of state and they have a quota) I’d say University of VA. Great school and a lot of the people I know there are on the pre-med track and say it’s great. It is definitely a lot easier to get in as an in-state student, however, which is why I’m hesitant to label it as a match but your EC’s definitely do line up with bio/pre-med which would be a strength

4

My first two years of college are paid for thanks to the post-9/11 GI Bill,but otherwise probably going to need to get financial aid

5

UVA major reach for OOS student, IMO. Very selective.

Have you run the NPC’s for some of the schools your are considering? That should give you an idea of what you are looking at for tuition the last two years, and make sure it will be affordable.

If you read the threads on pre-Med students, the constant advice is to minimize debt for undergraduate education because of the enormous expense of Med School itself.

The second piece of advice that emerges is to make sure you have a back-up plan in case pre-Med does not work out. Many students start out thinking pre-Med, but do not end up in Medical school for a host of reasons, including academic rigor and difficulties scoring high enough on the MCAT’s. So make sure any school you are considering offers you other options.

Good luck!

6

Are you going to try and swim in college? If so, look to see where your times fit. That will make the list much shorter.
D3 like the NESCAC can give you a good mix of both academics and athletics.

7

Being in NC means you have excellent public universities to choose from at home! NCSU would be a match for you. UNC-Chapel Hill is a high match/low reach, and UNC-Ashevile and UNC-Wilmington are safeties for you. (So is UNC-Greensboro.)

Frankly, I don’t quite see the point of paying for UVa OOS when you have UNC-Chapel Hill (and NCSU) right in your own backyard at resident tuition rates.

What do you want in a college? Big, small, medium? Rural, urban, suburban? Weather? Vibe? What kind of activities do you want to do? You’re a good student and you’d be competitive at a lot of universities, so the next step is to decide what kind of place you want to be in.

8

^ This. Totally agree.

9

A decent list would look like this (without knowing too much about what you can afford):

UVA
Vandy
USC
UCLA
Emory
Georgia Tech
Northeastern University
UNC
NC State

This is a good mix of reach, target and safety schools.