smoogon

Are their any schools in the top twenty that i stand a chance at?

GPA 3.65 UW

4.37 W--------very rigorous course load
tough school .... School does not rank...

AP Biology-5
AP Calc BC--5
AP Chemistry--5
AP English Language-5
AP Gov-5

Sat 2170 and 1440 CR+M

790 math 2 740 bio m 760 chem

asian male applying for chemE/comp sci

national merit commended scholar

-president of:
math team
chem club
it club
math honor society --amc 10,12 math comp. princeton university math competiiton, harvard/mit math comps qualifier

-internship at nih studying cancer
-clinical shadowing on rotations

20more

With your GPA (unless you are top 5% or so) and SAT scores, top 20 colleges are reaches.

sheepster

Your stats are fine for many good schools, but your expectations may not be reasonable.
What if you stop "trophy shopping" and focus on schools that are the right fit for YOU?

ArtsyGirl13

I totally agree with sheepster. Stop focussing on admissions to the most prestigious school you can get into and instead focus on finding the school that is the perfect fit.

smoogon

i in no way am only applying to these schools: most of the schools I picked are good for me.
However i was told i should add a few reaches ? so which few out of these top schools do i stand a chance at? I was looking towards JHU and maybe cornell and vandy? Which ones are low reaches for me?

muckdogs07

I think you have a shot at some top school (I'm not smart enough to know if they are top 25 or not and refuse to believe USNWR rankings), including Wake Forest, Notre Dame, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown (depending on college chosen), NYU, the UC publics (if out of state), Oberlin, Grinnell, Kenyon, Davidson, Pitzer, and William & Mary to name just a few.

Your major issue in my view is not grades and SATs, but the lack of many ECs and not major achievement in the few you have. Nevertheless, the five 5's on the AP test is impressive (never understood why colleges don't factor this in more).

Of the schools you name, JHU puts the least emphasis on ECs and so probably gives you the best shot, but they are all reaches. If you really want JHU, apply early as their percentage of ED admits is much higher than regular admits, and unless your heart is set on it (if so, be honest) do not put down that you want to be a doctor or put down a scientific field for your area of interest.

sally305

I think you should look for the best programs for chemE or comp sci. I don't think most of the "top" schools are especially known for these things. Cornell and JHU, maybe. What state do you live in? Some of the better state flagships have great programs in both of these areas.

zephyr15

smoogon

With a 3.65 uw GPA -- most here would say that the top 20 schools are "reaches"

However, if your school has success with placing students in these colleges, you may be in a better situation. Only your Guidance/College Counsellor could tell you this. Otherwise, if you have Naviance, plug your stats into that, and you'll have a pretty good estimate.

This being said -- there's nothing wrong (and a lot right) with choosing one or two 'reach' schools to apply to, so long as you have a healthy number of "matches" and one or two true safeties.

Good luck!!

smoogon

Ok thank you all! I live in maryland I already have many good compsci/engineering schools lined up for me that are not as difficult to get into. I have my state school, college park which is good at comp sci and I have urbana champaign and few other ones similar to them.

I thought my EC's would help me more: I did not write about them in depth.

But i thought being president of 3 clubs

there are like 2 more that i attend such as science bowl team

math team is second in region, i made top 8 to go to harvard princeton mit and other big school math competitions, I qualified to second round of the maryland competition

i placed honors in first round of chemistry olympiad

-volunteer in an organization which helps children in poverty in the metropolitan area around maryland
-100 hours of regular community service
-400 hours of interning at National institue of health
-50 hours of shadowing doctors who are on clinical rotations of cancer patients

****Also: My comp sci/ math gpa is a 3.9 is there anyway for me to communicate these to colleges or do they simply not care?

once again thank you

smoogon

bump to my question about my comp sci math gpa which is 3.86 UW/ 4.62 W

smoogon

bump10char