I was wondering if these schools are far reaches for me or if they are worth applying to. The schools are: Michigan, Georgia Tech, Rensselaer Polytechnic, Illinois Urbana-Champaign, UVA, and Williams College.
I want to major in physics and I am a PA resident.
Here are my stats:
UWGPA: 3.985
WGPA: 4.55
SAT: 1460/1600
9 AP classes, the rest honors classes
Award for Excellence in English
Captain of the Ultimate Frisbee Team
Bronze Presidential Service Award
Bronze Congressional Award
Varsity Golf
Varsity Volleyball
National Honors Society
Key Club Member
Anti Drug and Alcohol Club
NSLC Engineering
RPI would be a match.
Williams is a reach
The publics would be low reaches due to being out of state.
Can you afford these schools? Run the NPC’s for each.
UMich is a low to mid reach for you from OOS. Higher SAT would help.
^^^ I would think the same for UVA (mid reach or tougher). It’s just that difficult for anyone. If you can play D1 Volleyball or Golf…that would change things.
To play golf at UVA, you need to be very near scratch or better. Here’s something I just clipped from the golf page for one of the seniors:
Had the exact same line (slightly lower stroke avg but 4th) the year before. Pretty strong.
Edit…there is no mens Volleyball at UVA.
Agree with the above. Out of state and without a hook, Michigan and UVA would be low reaches. Williams would be a reach. You’re obviously highly qualified with very impressive numbers. It’s just that the process has gotten crazy competitive.
Williams is a reach for all, but it does accept around 20% of applicants. It’s not single digits. For Williams, however, you have to have a hook. Male? from North Dakota? recruited athlete? URM? under-subscribed major?
@preppedparent Their acceptance last year was around 15% overall and 13.5% for RD. OP probably wants to ED unless he wants to bank on being accepted RD(the acceptance rate probably gonna drop even further)
your point? I stated around 20%. Agree it is not single digits.
Yes every school’s a reach… :-/
@preppedparent Would you really call being a male and applying to Williams a hook???
Most LACs do have significantly more females than males in their applicant pools, and so the acceptance rates can be noticeably higher for males. Middlebury, for example, had 35.5% more female applicants for Fall 2016. The acceptance rates were 14.1% for females vs. 18.9% for males.
Williams, though similar to Middlebury in many respects, is less affected by this issue. Williams had only 10.8% more female applicants for Fall 2016. So there was less difference in the acceptance rates: 17.1% for females vs. 18.1% for males.
So no, being male at Williams should probably not be regarded as a “hook”.
@Carwood Yes. For all the LACs admit rates are higher for men. For Pomona overall admit rate is 8 % but it is something like 12% for men and 5% for women.
Not all LACs. Colby, for one, has had more maLe applicants than female.
Most, yes, but not all. For example:
Bucknell acceptance rates, Fall 2016:
28.7% Men
31.3% Women
Lafayette acceptance rates, Fall 2016:
24.4% Men
32.5% Women
Colgate acceptance rates, Fall 2016:
26.9% Men
30.3% Women
Not as of Fall 2016. College Navigator shows 4,445 male and 5,388 female applicants at Colby, with acceptance rates of 19% and 18% respectively.
There are LACs with more male applicants than female, as noted in the previous post, but Colby does not appear to be one of them.
If you are interested in smaller schools like RPI, take a look at other of the [url="<a href=“http://theaitu.org%22%5DAITU%5B/url”>http://theaitu.org"]AITU[/url] schools. Your academics would make you a match for a lot of them and you might qualify for significant merit aid at several. The ones with PhD programs in physics will also provide you with on campus research opportunities in case you want to go to graduate school.
If you are out of state, it makes it a reach for you. That’s the general rule of thumb.