Where to Look??

<p>Hey, i'm a going to be a junior next year and my mom/GC are trying to
get me to make a list of colleges i want vist ect. next year. So do you
guyz have ne suggestions for my stats/interests.</p>

<p>I'm a hispanic male from a single parent family with an income of about
35k. Mom didn't go to college and my dad is a high school dropout. I
want a school that probly is in the northeast, small to medium with
some good financial aid b/c my mom has to put me and my twin brother
through college at the same time.</p>

<p>GPA: uw 95 w 101 (i think the conversion is 3.9 or 4.0, i'm not sure)
Rank: top 3 out of about 700
PSAT:2030 (96% for juniors and 98% for soph) 680M 650CR 700W
I'll have 8 APs by the end of high school.</p>

<p>ECs:
Science Fair (went to Intel won a 4th award and national JSHS)
Debate captain (LD Debate State champs)
Science Club President for 2 years
Volunteer at the hospital for a few hours/week
Future Problem Solving
Mock Trial Lawyer
Student Council Representative
Science League
Science Research Inten this summer and last summer
Program for nanotech at cornell this summer
A few more little things</p>

<p>Possible Majors: Biochem or something in public health, def want to goto grad school</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

<p>I strongly suggest you consider U Rochester and Brandeis. Both are very strong in the sciences, and getting money should not be too hard.</p>

<p>Reaches:
MIT, Princeton (known for goot merit aid), Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Hopkins, Cornell
(Take your pick. Id say 6 reaches)</p>

<p>Matches:
Georgetown, Brandeis, NYU, Carnegie Mellon, Tufts</p>

<p>Safeties:
Rochester, Rutgers, Lehigh, Michigan</p>

<p>start from there.</p>

<p>Princeton doesn't give merit aid. You have a lot of options, need more info on what you want in a college.</p>

<p>Or should I say that it is just plain generous with aid. none of the ivies give merit aid. my bad.</p>

<p>You look like a great candidate for any of the top schools (Ivies, Stanford, Duke, NU) because of your background, apply to the ones that look good as reaches are definetely possible for you</p>

<p>Apply to the best of the best(Harvard, Yale, Princeton)</p>

<p>Then apply to other top 25 schools: Vanderbilt,UCLA,U of Chicago.</p>

<p>Thanks, wat should I do to improve my chances for top 25 schools, ivies ect.</p>

<p>If I were you, I'd start by practicing my writing. Few things can kill admission momentum like a sloppy essay. I realize you're probably using the online shorthand "wat," "guyz," and so on. I can see why people use such shorthand when text messaging, but I don't understand it on a board like this, where you're saving a tenth of a second. Why not use this board, and every other opportunity, to hone your spelling, grammar, and punctuation skills? For example, it's "etc." not "ect." With your background, people are going to be quick to dismiss you as an Affirmitive Action anomoly. Write perfectly, and you won't give them that opportunity.</p>

<p>I understand what your saying, I do know how to write properly, but it's just habitual when I'm typing. Any other suggestions?</p>

<p>Can you take classes at a local college? I'd recommend taking Introduction to Logic. It will put you a step ahead of a lot of your competition when it comes to thinking on your feet during interviews. Good luck. You seem like a sharp person that a lot of colleges will want.</p>

<p>You have a lot of great options for college. I also wouldn't worry about money, because if the 35k is the only source of income, and you have a twin going to college at the same time, you're sure to get a lot of need-based aid (as long as you fill out the fafsa and profile quickly). A lot of the top schools provide 100% of demonstrated financial need.</p>

<p>keep in mind that if your family's income is below 40-60k (depending on the school), then you have free tuition at many top schools in the country (Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Penn and possibly a few others)</p>

<p>Thatdude, as a first generation, low income, Hispanic with good scores and excellent grades you would be of interest to just about every college in America. There are no guarantees among the most selective, however, so please be sure that your list contains a good balance of reaches, matches and safeties. </p>

<p>At this point you should be thinking more about what you might like (aside from strong sciences) in a college rather than where you could get in. Urban, rural? Sporty, nerdy, artsy? If you start by identifying one or two schools that sound like they’d be a good fit then you can find others with varying degrees of selectivity that fall into the same general character.</p>

<p>Most of the schools that have been recommended to you are medium to large so I’ll concentrate on the smaller liberal arts colleges. All of these schools have good to excellent science departments and good track records for getting their students into graduate programs. All of them actively recruit diversity and need Hispanics. Many of them are very generous with aid. They are quite different in ambience, though, so once you let us know what you’re looking for we can narrow in a bit more.
Very selective: Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams
Medium selective: Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Middlebury, Hamilton, Haverford, Trinity
Less selective: Vassar, Skidmore, Conn College</p>

<p>Are you familiar with Questbridge? I think you’d be a good candidate for this program.
<a href="http://questbridge.org/index.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://questbridge.org/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>adding to momrath a bit, dartmouth and brown are sort of LAC-flavored ivies (Dartmouth is officially named Dartmouth College in contrast with others officially named University, reflecting the undergraduate focus)
i'm not sure how much this means to you, but take it or leave it :-)</p>

<p>Thanks, Brown was one of the schools that I was considering. I want a school that is close in proximity to a city. I would like a student population that is no larger than 15,000. I also want a school where there is an active socail life, but there is still a high emphasis on education, maybe greek life. What Ivies would you guys say fit this?</p>

<p>Because Brown and Dartmouth were the final two in my decision process, I know much more about them than others, and will leave it to someone more knowledgable to comment later. Brown is more in the city than Dartmouth. Brown and Providence coexist very well, and there are a few other colleges in the area including an arts school that sometimes offer classes to Brown students. On the other hand, Dartmouth pretty much IS Hanover, which is a small town. The college owns most of the city, and there really isn't much else in Hanover except some great hiking and canoeing grounds. Greek life, however is much more prevalent at Dartmouth than at Brown, though anyone can avoid it if they want.</p>