Wondering if I need to reconsider my prospective schools

Chance Me / Match Me!
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<p>I'm not sure if I should reconsider the colleges I'm looking at right now or not. Right now, I have my dream schools being UPenn, Johns Hopkins, Duke, Rice and Georgia Tech. My good fit schools are Illinois, Vanderbilt, Cornell, and Northwestern. Then, my safety schools are Purdue, Texas-Austin, Michigan, and Wisconsin-Madison. </p>

<p>My stats:
Unweighted gpa: 3.6 out of 4.0
weighted: 4.0 out of 5
Both gpa are on the rise.</p>

<p>Taken Act once, no prep at the beginning of soph. year and got a 32, I expect to get a 34-35 area score this year as a junior.</p>

<p>Planned major: biomedical engineering or physics (later to pursue healthcare physics)</p>

<p>Heavy courseload, with AP Chemistry (5) and AP US history (4) as a sophomore. Junior year I will take AP Biology, AP calculus, AP economics, and possibly an AP English course. </p>

<p>SAT subject test: 800 on Chemistry subject test.</p>

<p>Race: white</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:
Latin club</p>

<p>Northwestern CTD member</p>

<p>Brothers keeper (raise money for Crow Creek reservation)</p>

<p>Swimming (both club and high school, will be 3 year varsity by graduation due to injury all of freshmen year)</p>

<p>Water Polo (high school only, will be 2x varsity member) </p>

<p>3 friends and I are starting a club to promote unity in the student body</p>

<p>I have coached a local swim team as a volunteer for over 125 hours.</p>

<p>I have played drums for the past 7 years with multiple bands, will be 9 years by graduation. </p>

<p>I do plan to swim in college depending on which college I end up at.</p>

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<p>Also, I am part of the PLTW engineering program and FIRST FTC robotics team.</p>

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<p>I am sure some other folks will add to this – but an unweighted 3.6 and a 32 ACT moves a number of your match and safety schools into the reach category. Not sure where your home state is, but your flagship is likely to be your safety/match. Other parents will remind you that your safety has to be both an academic and financial safety – you can get in and you can afford to go (and you want to go). </p>

<p>If you are out of state at Michigan, you are a reach with those stats. If you are out of state at Wisconsin, it is probably a match. Illinois, if you are out of state and applying to engineering (at Illinois, you apply directly to a particular College), although my kid was a liberal arts kid so we did not look at engineering stats much – my guess is those stats make Illinois a reach. </p>

<p>Northwestern, Vanderbilt and Cornell are just as much reach schools as UPenn, Rice etc. </p>

<p>After watching the roadkill that was this past year’s admissions process at my son’s high school, which routinely sends kids to ivies and top 20 universities – no one can consider any school in the top 20 as a match, let alone a safety. Adcoms are building a class of diverse experience and background and they just might not need another kid with your stats and ECs. </p>

<p>If you are a recruited athlete and have been in touch with coaches at particular schools, that can change the picture. Still, from the kids we know, most recruited athletes in non-revenue sports (like swimming), have been advised by the coach at their prospective schools to apply ED to their school. </p>

<p>Spend some time on the school websites reading the Common Data Sets for admission information for the schools you are interested in (a simple search on the school website will turn it up). The Common Data set shows the percentage of admitted kids with different unweighted gpas, test scores, class ranks etc. </p>

<p>Good luck, it is an exciting, challenging year.</p>

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<p>You need to rework your list; your 3.6 UW GPA makes your choices predominantly reaches. The closest schools that could be considered safeties are Purdue and Wisconsin and frankly I’d consider them to be Matches. Michigan Engineering is most definitely a reach (the average admit stats were a 3.9/35 ACT).</p>

<p>With a 3.6/32 my assessment is:</p>

<p>Reach</p>

<p>Penn
Duke
Rice
Northwestern
Vanderbilt
Michigan Engineering
Hopkins
Rice
Cornell</p>

<p>Match</p>

<p>Texas (limited number of OOS spots)
Wisconsin
Purdue
Georgia Tech
Illinois</p>

<p>Possible match/safety to consider</p>

<p>Case Western
Michigan State
RPI</p>

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<p>UT is also a reach due to 8% rule</p>

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<p>northwestern, cornell, and vanderbilt are defintely not matches for you… they should be reach schools.</p>

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<p>Yeah, I thought I was going to have to reconsider some of them, I’m going into junior year, so I do have some time to raise my gpa, which I am pretty sure will be between 4.1 and 4.2 weighted following this junior year (this is assuming I get A’s in classes I normally would get A’s in and B’s in classes I expect to get a B in). Also, I still have another year or so to raise my act. I am in Illinois, so thats why I put it more in the safety category. Also, I had only seen Michigan’s whole university stats, not engineering specific, but those stats do make it seem like more of a reach than it did before. My issue with RPI is just that the girl to guy ratio is so swayed (even worse than at GT). For some of the schools I have potential to be recruited and some I don’t. I say potential just because they can’t do much as far as recruiting goes until I’m a junior.</p>

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<p>That is good that you have another year ahead of you to prepare. Keep in mind that schools look at the unweighted gpa, and then look at the course rigor. What they will see is the 3.6-3.7. </p>

<p>If you are thinking the College of Engineering at UIUC, take a look at their specific admission stats. Illinois releases admission decisions in two waves, the first sometime in Dec, I think, and the second in late Feb. If you look at the fall 2012 decisions on the UIUC message board at those times, students identify what school they were admitted to and what were their stats – that can help give you a sense of what Engineering at UIUC requires. Students can be rejected for engineering but admitted to another (easier admit school). </p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

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<p>What is your class rank or estimated percentile?</p>

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<p>My class rank percentile is right around top 10%</p>