<p>Right, I have a really long list of colleges I want to go to. I need to cut it down to 12. Here are my stats</p>
<p>GPA: 3.095
SAT Reading: 630; 85%
SAT Math: 690; 93%
SAT Writing: 510; 56%
Intended Major: Computer Engineering</p>
<p>And the list</p>
<p>MIT
Princeton University
Columbia University
University of Washington
Syracuse Universty
RIT
University of Pittsburgh
NJIT
Drexel
University of Delaware
Carnegie Mellon
Case Western
Rutgets University
Arcadia University
Daniel Webster College
Dickinson College
Elizabethtown College
Haverford College
Goshen
Hofstra University
MSOE
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
Northeastern University
Northland College
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rice University
Seton Hall University
State University of New York at Oswego
Texas A&M University
The College of New Jersey
George Washinton University
Johns Hopkins University
The University of Virginia's College at Wise
UMBC
Union College
University of Hartford
University of New Haven
University of Puget Sound
Virginia State University
VTech
Washington & Jefferson College
Wilberforce University
York College of Pennsylvania </p>
<p>So what should I take off? How should I decide what to take off</p>
<p>This list is way too long. The only way however to know what to take off the list is to research every single school. Get a book and also go to the school websites. Visit some colleges, even if they are near where you live and not where you will apply to find out if you like a large school, a small school, a mediium sized school. Do you want to be in a or near a city? Do you want a campus? Do you want a university or a small liberal arts college. Do they offer areas you might be interested in studying. Look at the SAT score ranges for each school. You should eventually narrow that list to about 10 schools. At least five of the schools should be ones in which your SAT scores fall in the middle, ie 50% range of those they accept. These should be your match schools. You should have at least two schools where your SAT scores are in the top 75% or higher of those they accept. These should be your safety schools. The three others may be schools in which you are in the bottom 25% of those who apply and these would be your reach schools.
Reach schools could also be those schools in which you are in the middle to upper range in your SATs of students who are accepted, however the school is very hard to get into, and very competitive, and therefore it would also be considered a reach</p>
<p>If you are serious…which I sort of doubt, go to collegeboard.com go to any one of these colleges plug in your stats in the “How Do I stack Up?” section…scroll to the bottom, it’s on the right. and it will tell you how far a reach it is. You are really reaching for some of these schools and you need to be much more realistic. Collegeboard.com will help you with that as well. Then research the schools on line via their web pages and via sites like Princeton review, petersons.com and collegedirt.com.</p>
<p>Take Columbia and Princeton off, for starters.</p>
<p>What do you want in a college experience? Rural, suburban, urban? How many students? Is a focus on undergrads important to you? What kind of social life do you want? What part of the country do you want to be in? Have you researched all of those schools in all those catergories as well as in academics?</p>
<p>Also, schools on your list including Princeton, MIT and Columbia would not be realistic schools for you to apply to. If one is an under represented minority at those schools, they may be accepted with lower SAT scores like yours. However, even those who are under represented minorities with SAT scores in the at least mid 600’s’ tend to have stellar academic averages which you dont have.
Also, you cannot be considered a candidate for the ivy league or other top tier schools, or schools in the top 28 unless you have taken a rigorous high
school curriculum.
This is a crazy list based on the information you provided. The schools are very different, and many you would not be contenders for.
If you have more information about the size of school, location, whether university or liberal arts school or what you want to studty including your extra curriculars, I am happy to come up with a list for you of about 20 schools to research, and you can narrow it down to 10</p>
<p>Here is what I suggest. Not sure what you mean by northwest, since many of the schools you suggested are in the northeast, but I think I get what you mean. Also who helped you with this list? It does not have any rhyme or reason to it. You say you want a large school, but you have a number of schools here that are so small that they have about 300 in the freshman class. Then you have some schools that have about 8,000 in a class. </p>
<p>Your list has some good possiblities for you.
Take off the following schools
Princeton
Columbia
John Hopkins
MIT
Rice
(You dont have the scores or grades for the above schools)
Take off
Arcadia
Daniel Webster
Elizabethtown
Norland
York College
Union College
Haverford
Dickinson
(These are too small if you want a large school)
I would also take off Wilberforce, Goshen and maybe others
Start researching what is left
Your sch</p>
<p>if you meant northeast, then rather than having H, P, Columbia, MIT or JHU as your reaches, aim for a slightly more realistic choice: Cornell. It’s big, has a lot of resources and has great engineering programs (please research this on you own, as that will be much more informative)</p>
<p>and your list does seem a little all over the place. so, as someone else said, RESEARCH!! go to websites and request pamphlets etc.
also, see if you school has admissions officers that come to speak from different schools, or college nights with brochures. these are great ways to find out about schools that fit your personal “requirements”.</p>
<p>Dude, stop being an ******* and putting Cornell down. Its just as much a reach as any of those other colleges for this particular applicant. I don’t know why everything seems to think that Cornell is inferior to every other top college. It’s not.</p>
<p>I think Hlover is right in saying that Cornell is ever so slightly more realistic for him, at least compared to Princeton, Columbia, and MIT, but it’s definitely still a huge crapshoot. I was rejected by Cornell with much better stats than the OP has. I’d save the application effort and money and not apply at all to schools that selective unless OP has some huge hook we don’t know about.</p>
<p>i was in no way putting cornell down, i was simply stating that it is a larger school, and the op listed this as a quality he/she wanted. and it is not inferior, it’s just bigger and thus has a larger acceptance rate of 25%, which seems worlds better than the 9-10% of H, P, MIT. (USNWR 2008)
i stated that cornell was “a slightly more realistic choice” - and i still stand by this, as you can see from the numbers. though SAT scores are not the deciding factor of an applicant, Harvard’s 75th%ile is 1590, whereas Cornell’s is 1490. This is a more realisitc reach for the OP, whose scores are in the first post.
And, i agree, maybe for this applicant it is still quite a reach, but it’s a better fit than some of the other schools on the list (northeast, big, engineering) and i was just trying to help.
I, myself would be thrilled to attend Cornell, as it is an amazing school - but the numbers don’t lie. (And I’m not saying they’re everything, but you can’t ignore them).</p>
<p>With a 3.0 or 3.1 GPA, and your SAT scores, remove the following schools from your list:</p>
<p>MIT
Princeton University
Columbia University
Carnegie Mellon
Case Western
Haverford College
Northeastern University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
RIT
Rice University
George Washinton University
Johns Hopkins University
Union College
VTech
Washington & Jefferson College</p>
<p>Also remove from your list any state schools except your instate public school. </p>
<p>Forget any Ivy, including Cornell.</p>
<p>Find schools in which your GPA and SATs are in the middle 50%. These are your match schools.</p>
<p>MIT
Carnegie Mellon
Rice University
Princeton University
Haverford College
Columbia University
George Washinton University
Johns Hopkins University
Texas A&M University
VTech</p>
<p>Might have a chance at these, but I don’t know enough about them to know:
University of Washington
Syracuse Universty
RIT
University of Pittsburgh
NJIT
Drexel
University of Delaware
Case Western
Rutgers University
Arcadia University
Daniel Webster College
Dickinson College
Elizabethtown College
Goshen
Hofstra University
MSOE
North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
Northeastern University
Northland College
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Seton Hall University
State University of New York at Oswego
The College of New Jersey
The University of Virginia’s College at Wise
UMBC
Union College
University of Hartford
University of New Haven
University of Puget Sound
Virginia State University
Washington & Jefferson College
Wilberforce University
York College of Pennsylvania</p>