Chance a junior planning college visits

Chance Me / Match Me
1

<p>As implied by the title, I’m a junior who is exploring colleges to look at over February/spring break. Rather than travel to schools that I have no chance at, I made a chance thread to get an idea of reasonable schools. Here we go…</p>

<p>Basic Info:

  • Upper-middle class white male
  • Competitive public school in NY that sends 10-15 kids to ivies, stanford, caltech, etc… every year
  • Potential majors: physics, computer science, or aero engineering (double major???)</p>

<p>Stats:

  • 3.95 UW gpa, school doesn’t weight
  • Rank: school doesn’t rank
  • SAT: 600 CR, 770 math, 650 writing, 2020 total (yuck)
  • ACT: 35 composite, 35 math, 35 english, 34 reading, 34 science, 7 essay
  • SAT II’s: haven’t taken yet, but planning on Math II, biology, and physics
  • AP’s: physics B (5) and world history (4) sophomore year; computer science, chemistry, biology, and us history junior year; probably calc bc, physics c (mechanics and E+M), government (comparative and us), and econ (macro and micro) senior year</p>

<p>EC’s:

  • business manager/writer for school newspaper
  • science olympiad
  • tutor 3-5 graders once a week
  • Helping club (3 day retreat sophomore year)
  • piano lessons
  • working on starting a FIRST robotics team
  • signed up to volunteer at local animal shelter over the summer</p>

<p>I don’t have very many EC’s and the ones I do have don’t date back very far because I had to deal with a major mental/physical health issue in 9th and 10th grades.</p>

<p>Schools:

  • Columbia
  • Cornell
  • Swarthmore
  • U of Chicago
  • U of Michigan
  • Georgia Tech
  • U of Rochester
  • U of Illinois - Urbana Champaign
  • U of Maryland - College Park
  • Ohio State
  • SUNY Stony Brook</p>
2

<p>Your SAT score is going to hurt for Columbia, Cornell, Swarthmore, and U Chicago. I would send your ACT scores which are much higher. Your ECs are good, not great. Nice GPA; I would just make sure you do well on SAT IIs. Then I think you stand a good chance at the aforementioned schools. The rest I’m not too worried about.</p>

3

<p>Anybody else? And I thought that I had to send the SAT along with the ACT. Can I really just send the ACT?</p>

4

<p>I think you’re grades are great but otherwise you’re weakened by your ECs. I would skip Columbia and Cornell because while they want your scores, they generally want over-achievers who do it all.</p>

5

<p>Like I said, my EC’s are weak because of the health issue I had. If I were to talk about the problem in an essay would that make up for the lack of EC’s? If it weren’t for the issue I would probably have 2-3 varsity sports to add to that list.</p>

6

<p>Bump Bump Bump</p>

7

<p>Holy cow, 6 replies!?!? This thread must be hoppin’!</p>

8

<p>Bump Bump Bump</p>