Agree with the poster above. You’re a very competent applicant AND these schools get more wow applicants than they have space for.
Odds are in your favor that something will work out, but you probably want to have a true safety in there. (Ideally one with an rolling admissions or an early response date.)
Some safeties I’m thinking of are:
Boston University, Lehigh, Lafayette, Gettysburg, Oxy, and Scripps. I need to do more research on Imperial. Do you have recommendations for liberal arts colleges with very strong physics and math programs?
None of these schools are safeties. A safety is essentially a guaranteed admission. Gettysburg would be the closest with a 56% acceptance rate but that would be an extremely likely/ not an assured.
Boston University has an acceptance rate of 11%. A reach/low probability for any student.
The others have acceptance rates in the high 20s to the high 30s. I’d put them in the likely to toss up category for you depending on the school because you have very strong stats but I’d still recommend having at least one assured school where you’d be happy to attend.
I have a follow up question regarding acceptance rates: I have heard that your acceptance rate depends on you stats and your program. For example, I have read in several sites that if you have a FULL IB DP and predictive IB score is above 41+, your acceptance rate at highly selective colleges are higher. If your predictive score is 42+ (dependent on TOK and EE), what should I assume is the acceptance rate?
There is no way to really answer that question. Certainly you are a stronger applicant the higher your stats, but if you look at the results for schools on your list you will see students with perfect stats getting rejected places. Some times it’s yield protection, some times it’s just how the school is building their class that year.
I joined this board primarily because a friend of my D’s was shut out everywhere and ended up at the safety the guidance counselor made him add. My D’s school val with perfect stats and test scores (and I mean perfect) was wait listed at Michigan (and a smattering of rejections elsewhere too, including schools outside the T20). You just never know! That’s why many adults here stress to students to have a well balanced list.
I think it’s totally fine for your list to have mostly selective schools but you need one assured admission where you’d be happy to attend. Bonus points if it has rolling admission so you know early in the cycle and can relax a bit while you wait for the rest of the decisions.
You might want to look at Pitt. Rolling admissions and a great school in a fun city. Thinking that if BU is appealing, this could be too, and you would have an answer early enough in the cycle to avoid lots of unnecessary safety applications.
Some of the smaller schools that have strong STEM to consider include WPI, RIT, RPI, Rose-Hulman, and Union. Pretty different from each other, but most would check the box. And there are others too.
As to a predicted score of 41 vs 42, I suspect it doesn’t really matter. Either indicates high achievement and mastery of material. My favorite analogy here is that the schools aren’t building an Olympic relay team where they need the 4 fastest runners (i.e. highest stats). It’s more like a soccer team – everyone, except the goalie, is going to have to be able to run fast and for a long time. But some need to shoot, some need to defend, some need to be left-footed, they all need to be self-less, etc. So after clearing the “runs fast enough” hurdle, the decision is made based on other things. And so it goes with schools as well.
True, the better your stats, the more likely you are to be admitted (except at schools that practice yield protection against “overqualified” applicants). Yes, at many schools, your intended major does make a difference in admission selectivity (and some schools have secondary admission to some majors after enrolling).
However, a true safety is one where admission is assured for you, affordability is assured for you, and your intended or possible majors are available and accessible to you. Early action or early rolling admission schools can become early safeties if they admit you early.
Usually, if you look in the school’s common data set section C7, consideration of “level of applicant’s interest” indicates the likelihood of yield protection. “Level of applicant’s interest” can be measured by colleges in various ways, such as having visits recorded, opening all emails from the college including loading the images and clicking through the links, writing good “why this college?” essays, etc.. Applying binding early decision is the strongest possible way of showing a high “level of applicant’s interest”, but can only be done with one school, and should only be for your clear no regrets top choice, if you have one.
Do you know about being a girl and intending to be a physics major and how that might improve the odds? I understand there are still only 20-25% physicists…
It may be a finger on the scale at some schools, but smart, accomplished girls who like STEM aren’t so much of a rarity that the most selective StEM schools don’t see plenty of them applying.
