<p>Ok, I’m a senior this year, and honestly, I didn’t work as hard as a I could have, so my grades don’t really reflect my true potential. I have a 3.3 gpa currently, and I am taking 2 AP classes this year.
I’m in the top quarter of my class.
I have taken the ACT and the SAT one time each, but I’m signed up to retake each of them. I got a 27 on the ACT and a 1860 on the SAT (Math: 540, CR: 680, Writing: 640). I am also undecided in regard to a major. </p>
<p>My extracurriculars aren’t great. I was on the JV Pom team soph. year, but I horseback ride regularly outside of school and I am soon to be signed up for flight classes. </p>
<p>Community Service includes being a Religious Ed. teacher aide for 4th grade during my junior year, and I volunteer at the Humane Society.</p>
<p>Basically, I have nothing that would “make a college want me.” I was planning on applying to the following: </p>
<p>-U of Michigan
-Michigan State
-Vanderbilt
-Univ. of Chicago
-Notre Dame</p>
<p>Honestly, I feel I would do well in all the colleges I’ve listed, but my grades don’t reflect that, and my extracurrics make me look like a hermit compared to most applicants. </p>
<p>I feel I’m being unrealistic. Any suggestions are welcome!</p>
<p>UM: reach
MSU: don’t know too much about msu, so i dont want to say lol
Vandy: reach
UChi: high reach
Notre Dame: don’t know too much about this one either</p>
<p>these are just my opinions though, and only based on what i’ve heard about their selectiveness. i wish you the best of luck in your applications though! do have any safties?</p>
<p>I’d advise you to attend a good state U. on the level of MSU (with luck somebody will suggest some others) and transfer if your grades are excellent there and you feel unchallenged.</p>
<p>yeah i dont know much about most of the schools but i know for vanderbilt you probably want a gpa of a 90 or higher at a really strong/well recognized school… if your school doesnt have that high of a reputation, you probably will want your gpa even higher… you also want about a 2050 SAT there or a 1350 old scoring… and as far as ACTs their middle range i think is 29-32. i dont know much about notre dame, id say univ of chicago may be your biggest reach. also, your schools all seem VERY different from each other… you may want to look into investigating that more… its hard to imagine that someone could love a huge state school in the north (umich) and also love a school of about 6,000 students in the south (vanderbilt). maybe do some more research to come up with a better list of schools that reflects 1 or 2 safeties, a few matches, and maybe 3 or 4 reaches… i could help you come up with schools that would be good fits for you but i dont really have a good sense of what you want in a school</p>
<p>Greennblue, I agree Ella08 looks good for MSU, but why transfer? If a school is a match, which MSU appears to be for her, why go in thinking it won’t be challenging or interesting for her? Sometimes I wonder about the pervasive college ‘prestige chase’ both on cc and among HSers in general. If you’re a very good but not elite student, why does attending an elite school, where everyone (theoretically) is better academically than you is the optimal situation? Plus, at a school like MSU, with so many opportunities to excel in competitive programs, why go in thinking transfer? </p>
<p>Having known many a student who has attempted to “transfer up” as you suggest, their college careers are usually broken in two and causes an often lonely, un-fun 4 years… So why do it?</p>