<p>You know… I certainly wish you all the best.
But I’m tired of seeing people expecting to get into great schools with mediocre academic credentials, but looking for some leg up due to where they were born.</p>
<p>My son has a perfect GPA,decent EC’s, works twenty hours a week, and 34 ACT</p>
<p>And I have had to prepare him for the fact that inspite of his hard work… there will be people with far less academic success who will get in ahead of him, which is hard to take when you’ve worked your butt off.
I will watch your posts with interest- but will be extremely ticked if I see you made it into one of these schools (very similar list to my son’s) and we have to settle for a school below his potential and proven ability…none the less…good luck to you.</p>
<p>OP, are you a junior or a senior? If you are junior i would suggest maybe checking into some LACs that are looking for diversity candidates. Some of them are also test optional, i.e. Bowdoin, Bates. At other you can substitute 3 SATIIs for the regular SATs, Middlebury, Hamilton, Connecticut College. You may have better luck with the SATIIs since you are a strong student. If you are a senior it is very late to be refining the list.</p>
<p>markie59, this young lady does into really deserve your ire, just because she is not a great test taker. She also has excellent grades, impressive ECs and community service. From other posts, English is her third language, so I, and probably admissions officers, will find that impressive. Standardized test scores have been found to show little correllation to student success in college. GPA does, and she can hold her own in that respect. I certainly don’t want to get into the argument about race, test scores, etc. for the OPs sake, but I am glad to see that more colleges are going test optional, and they are not seeing decreases in retention rates by accepting unqualified candidates. </p>
<p>I agree that this young lady needs to look for some safeties, but she hardly needs to be made to feel as if she is taking something away from someone else.</p>
<p>A lot of the schools would be super high reaches for you. If you have to drop some because of time/money, I would drop from the top, e.g. Georgetown, Cornell, Penn, WashU, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern. </p>
<p>You may want to add some less selective schools to your list. There are some schools with deadlines later than 1/1. American U, Pitt, and Northeastern are 1/15, and are all reasonable high match schools for you, as your SAT scores are just above their 25th percentile.</p>
<p>What state do you live in? You may also want to add some additional instate publics from your state.</p>