Chance/Match a rising senior who is losing hope [TN resident, 35 ACT, 3.9UW, 4.9 UW, intended Ethics Major]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US Citizen
  • Mid-South city
  • Private high school, smallish class
  • White male
  • Sibling Legacy to Duke

Intended Major(s)

  • PPE/Ethics if the school has it, if not then economics/finance or undecided

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.9/4
  • Weighted HS GPA (incl. weighting system): 4.93/6
  • Class Rank: Top 10%
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 35 ACT (33,32,34 -->35 superscore)

Coursework
(AP/IB/Dual Enrollment classes, AP/IB scores for high school; also include level of math and foreign language reached and any unusual academic electives; for transfers, describe your college courses and preparation for your intended major(s))
-9th: 1 HA, 5 Honors
-10th: 1 HA, 1 AP (5), 4 honors
-11th: 2 HA, 4 AP, 1 Honors (class usually meant for seniors, one of 3 juniors to take it)
-12th: 1 HA, 5 AP
Will finish with Calc BC, AP French Language, and all history/gov classes done by junior year.

Awards

  • President’s Volunteer Award Bronze
  • Random college book award
  • Top 10% GPA society inductee
  • A couple random Mock Trial Awards (stuff like Best Witness for x match)
  • Honor Societies
  • 2x Varsity Letters
  • ??Nomination for Morehead-Cain??

Extracurriculars

  • President of Service Club
  • Editor of Yearbook
  • Summer Internship @ Local Non profit
  • 2nd Summer Internship @ Different local Non profit
  • Started yard cleanup business
  • School Ambassador/Tour Guide
  • Host as local restaurant
  • Mock Trial
  • President of National High School Ethics Bowl Club
  • Secretary of French Club
  • John Locke Global Affairs Forum @GU
  • Disciplinary Council Junior Year
  • Varsity Wrestling 2 Years
  • Member of Debate Club, DECA club, History Club, Film Club

Essays/LORs/Other
(Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)

  • AP Lang Teacher: 7/10 (had her for 2 years and went on international school trip with her)
  • AP Euro Teacher: 8/10 (had great conversations in and out of class, joke around together)

Cost Constraints / Budget
(High school students: please get a budget from your parents and use the Net Price Calculators on the web sites of colleges of interest.)

  • Parents have made it clear cost is not an issue at all

Schools (its alot)
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below)

Safety (certain admission and affordability)

  • University of Tennessee (EA) (In-state Guaranteed Admission)

Match

  • SMU (RD) - apply into Cox School of Business
  • University of Richmond (RD)

Reach

  • Duke (prob ED) - apply into Trinity College, dont know what major yet.
  • Georgetown (don’t know to REA or RD) - apply into MSB
  • All Ivies except Brown
  • University of Michigan
  • University of Virginia
  • University of Georgia
  • University of Texas Austin
  • University of North Carolina (Morehead-Cain Nomination)
  • Tufts University

I don’t know whether to ED to Duke or REA to Georgetown. Any help would be appreciated.

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Why are you losing hope?

Or was that just click-bait? :unamused:

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You apply early to the one you want most to attend.

Demonstrated interest matters to Tufts. So, short of applying ED, show them a lot of interest.

You have a very strong profile, and bring geographical diversity. Shotgunning top schools may just work out for you.

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I think UGA is a match, even likely. SMU is highly likely and Richmond good odds.

If you are ok with UTK, SMU, UGA, and even Richmond, you are good. Doesn’t mean others aren’t possible.

Good luck

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If you are serious about PPE you might want to consider some other options or modifications.

Pitt Honors has a very good version (they are very good in Politics and Economics, and extremely good in Philosophy):

You can potentially direct admit into Honors but also can look to join later. Note although they call it Politics and Philosophy it definitely has an Economics component as well:

Ohio State has a very robust and well-known program:

https://ppe.osu.edu/about

They have some really cool concentrations you can choose from:

USC also has a good program with quite a bit of course flexibility:

https://catalogue.usc.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=16&poid=21813&returnto=6360

Since you are considering Richmond, among smaller colleges you might want to check out Rhodes (unless that is too close to home!):

And finally not close to home, Claremont McKenna, which offers PPE as one of its enrollment-limited tutorial majors:

I note on your current list, I believe Duke offers PPE as a certificate, actually in cooperation with UNC which offers it as a minor. It is a cool program, I just wanted to make sure you understood that.

Georgetown SFS is basically a PPE (plus) program itself:

https://sfs.georgetown.edu/academics/undergraduate/curriculum/

Although you can also do Political Economy outside SFS:

Among the Ivies, Yale, and Penn are particularly known for this (and actually also Brown):

https://epe.yale.edu/

https://ppe.sas.upenn.edu/

I do not believe Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, or Harvard have quite such an undergrad program, although Econ undergrads at Princeton can do a Political Economy program, Columbia’s Economics department offers joint majors in either Philosophy or Political Science, Dartmouth allows you to “modify” their Government major with either Economics, Philosophy, or both, and Harvard has its Social Studies interdisciplinary program.

Michigan has a great program but again requires special admissions:

Virginia’s is more explicitly Law oriented, again with special admissions:

https://ppl.virginia.edu/about

To my knowledge, Georgia, Texas, and Tufts do not have such a program.

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Is Duke your clear #1 choice? If so, do you care whether you see the results from any other schools? If it’s your #1 and you don’t care about the results for the other schools, then feel free to ED. Otherwise, don’t.

With respect to Georgetown, I don’t think it’s one of the schools that gives a bump for applying early. The benefit of applying REA is that you find out sooner. Additionally, if you apply REA (at Georgetown or anywhere), it would let you be able to find out what other choices you’d have in the spring, should you not be 100% set on a school.

Most schools that want more than one teacher nomination want one from a STEM teacher and one from a humanities/social sciences teacher. Thus, you may want to reconsider one of those recs.

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Losing hope for the reach schools.

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Duke is probably my #1 school, but do you think I have a decent chance at getting in through ED? I just don’t want to ED to a school if I have no chance getting in. Also, is the 1 Stem and 1 Humanities rec letter thing real?? Because my counselor never said anything about it. Thanks.

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Correct, and even that doesn’t always work out, as they defer a fair number of high-stats REA applicants, to protect yield. I knew a student who was thinking of GTown as her first choice, but after a guidance counselor inquiry about her deferral yielded a directive to submit a LOCI declaring the school to be her absolute first choice, if she wanted to get in RD, she was turned off by the game-playing and decided to chase merit elsewhere.

If Duke is first choice and affordable, then ED to Duke. Applying ED does improve the odds.

I also wanted to plug an early application to Pitt - very strong philosophy department, rolling decisions, merit potential, Honors College potential - but if UNC is clearly preferred, then there may be no need. Claremont McKenna is definitely worth a look if west coast would work (although I suspect geography is why Stanford isn’t on the original list) - great place for a student with one foot in business/econ interests and the other in political philosophy.

But anyway, go ahead and ED to Duke. If it works out, you win; if not, your RD app to GTown is just as likely to yield an acceptance as an REA app would have been.

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You are a strong applicant and I think you have a legitimate chance at any college in the country for which you are eligible, including the most competitive for admissions.

That said, according to the Duke newspaper:

Duke admitted 1,984 high school seniors to the Class of 2028 through its Regular Decision admissions cycle, according to Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag.

There were a record 47,951 Regular Decision applicants, bringing the acceptance rate for Regular Decision to a record low 4.1%, down from 4.8% last year.

In December, Duke admitted 806 students to the Class of 2028 following a record number of 6,240 applications in its Early Decision round. The Early Decision acceptance rate was a record low 12.9%.

This brings the University’s overall acceptance rate this year to 5.1%, also a record low.

If you ended up applying ED, I would not be surprised if you were amongst that 12.9% of accepted students (which does include athletes, a group which is pre-screened for selection). But the vast majority of students who apply to Duke (or any of the other reach schools on your list) are well-qualified candidates. So the vast majority of strong applicants are going to be getting a waitlist or rejection. There’s no way of knowing in which category you will be unless you apply.

So, odds of admission are low. But Duke accepted nearly 2000 freshmen. You could be one of them. Every year Duke will be accepting a similar number of students. So the odds are not impossible, but they are low.

Probably #1 doesn’t sound like a good ED choice. It’s far and away my top choice and I have zero doubt about that is a good ED choice.

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Got it, Thanks.

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