Chance/Match Me - Senior, Rural GA, 4.0 GPA, 1580 SAT, Mid ECs, Electrical Engineering [<$20k from parents]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US Citizen
  • State/Location of residency: Georgia
  • Type of high school: Public Non-Competitive High School w/ Graduating Class of ~250(?)
  • Other special factors: where I live and go to school is rural, though one of my parents is a college professor at so that might cancel that out

Cost Constraints / Budget
Family income is around 100k for 5 people; my parents would be willing to pay for about ~20k/year MAX, and I will get a part-time job in the spring/summer and apply to scholarships

Intended Major(s) Electrical Engineering, though for some schools I may apply to Mechanical Engineering or Materials Science

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

My high school utilizes a 100-point scale.

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 99.64
  • Weighted HS GPA: 102.43; honors and AP classes get a 5% boost.
  • Class Rank: 1/~250
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1580 SAT; 780 RW; 800 Math; only time taking it

List your HS coursework

(Indicate advanced level, such as AP, IB, AICE, A-level, or college, courses as well as specifics in each subject)

  • English: Honors 9th & 10th ELA; AP Lang; college ELA class
  • Math: (Honors) Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2; AP Pre-Calculus, Calculus 1, 2, 3 dual enrolled at college
  • Science: Honors BIology, Chemistry, Physics; College chem 1, physics 1 and 2 (calculus based)
  • History and social studies: Honors World History, AP Gov, APUSH, basic intro economics class at college
  • Language other than English: Chinese 3 (regular class taken online)
  • Visual or performing arts: Band all 4 years (though I might end up not being able to take it senior year)

I’ve gotten 5s on all 5 AP exams, if that is worth anything, and my high school only offers 5 in-person APs. We also have the opportunity to take 2 free online classes per year but I only took language classes online. The school allows dual enrollment at the local college; (it’s free for 30 credit hours for basically all Georgia high school juniors and seniors).

Awards

I’m pretty lacking here, with no huge awards:

  • 4x Science Olympiad state medals in various events (10th and 11th), along with many regional and invitational awards
  • 2x FBLA state medals in various events (10th), along with many district awards
  • 4th place in a state writing competition
  • the basic college board awards like rural and small town recognition, PSAT awards, etc.
  • highest GPA awards (school-level)
  • this small Chinese writing award

Extracurriculars
STEM Club - Captain; I’m a captain and part of the officer team in my school STEM Club. I do a lot of stuff with organizing invitationals, doing workshops, mentoring kids, fundraising, social media, etc. This is also where I compete in Science Olympiad. I really enjoy it!

Personal Wildlife Project; I don’t want to be too specific because it’s kind of niche but it’s basically a sort of wildlife monitoring project that combines biology and technology that I’ve been working on since early junior year. It has mainly been independent and I’ve learned a lot from it, but recently I did ask an assistant professor of biology for some advice and he actually said that he saw potential in maybe turning this into a sort of research project and helping me with statistics and cool weather-monitioring tools and stuff. For the context of college applications, though, I suppose data stuff takes time and I won’t have a presentable thing in time before January 1 but I’ll have something presentable possibly in April.

Related Wildlife Hobby; this connects a lot to the project above. I’ve been interested in this hobby since I was like 10 and I’ve done volunteering stuff, citizen science, etc. for it. and it’s something I really love doing.

Cross Country; I’ve run cross country throughout high school and middle school and I do enjoy doing it; I’ve competed at state a couple times but I’m nowhere near recruiting-good. It’s definitely been a place of personal growth and teamwork though!

Track: Same type of thing as XC. These sports do take up a good chunk of my free time, and I run year-round.

FBLA: I was an officer for 2 years and competed at state and districts; I also did some volunteering initiatives like food bank drives for this.

Band: I’ve played the clarinet for years and I am 1st chair of the symphonic band, as of last year. I’m only part of the concert band and not marching band.

Car Repair: I like helping repair our older family car with my dad. I’ve done a lot of replacements like the struts, control arms, cleaning spark plugs, etc. Some weeks it takes up a huge amount of my time.

BETA Club: just a service club I’m part of.

Student Council: I do stuff for prom, hoco, school fundraisers, etc.

other stuff I do is like tutoring, babysitting, baking, girls who code, etc; I don’t do anything big.

Essays/LORs/Other
I’m having some writer’s block with my essays. But I think I’ll be able to write something ranging from mediocre to good.

I think my LORs are going to be fine; both of them seem to like me and think I’m a good student; one of the teachers is a mentor for a club I’m really involved in so I think that might help.

Schools
I’m mainly making this chance me post because of something one of my favorite-er teachers said—she basically said that I didn’t have much of point to apply at prestigious colleges given my “stats”… but anyways! I wanted to see some outsider opinions! plus some of these super prestigious schools my parents really want me to apply to..

Princeton (EA?? It’s a bit of a dream school to me.)

Georgia Tech (EA, in-state)

Everything else is RD:

Cornell

Rice

Northwestern

Duke

JHU

CMU

Columbia (I have a non-income related fee waiver here; so why not?)

Brown??? (I also have a special fee waiver here)

MIT

Harvey Mudd

Stanford

(I love nature but also love the idea of being close to a big city !! So I’m a bit conflicted on what I really want. So if there are schools I should take out or other schools to apply to pls recommend too!)

Thank y’all so much and lmk if there is any other info I should provide!

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You are just the type of student Georgia Tech wants/needs. I hope you get a full ride there! You will do well no matter where you end up.

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Thanks! Unfortunately the only caveat is that while Georgia Tech is a great school, I really want to go to a college with a more well-rounded environment! Something like Rice, even though their engineering program technically is not as strong, is really appealing to me because of them also having liberal arts and having that smaller residential college environment.

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You are a strong student and, in my opinion, you have the potential to get accepted to some places on your list. I think you already know it is a very top heavy list with schools that have very low acceptance rates.

Do you have a sure thing for admission, that is affordable, that you would be happy to attend?

Does your college professor parent have any tuition benefits from where they work?

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If you apply to Rice, Id strongly suggest you express your interest in humanities. You could potentially have a much higher chance of being admitted.

IMO, Rice favors strong stats and awards and they also want more humanities majors (or students interested in humanities).

I think you have a good shot at Rice (obviously no guarantees) and they have a very vibrant Asian student population.

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OP - have you run any net price calculators or rather has your family. You may or may not get enough aid to meet your costs - because it’s not just based on income. So make sure your family runs for each school on your list.

I laugh here because I don’t think awards matter that much. It’s what you do that does. You don’t get an award for walking dogs at the shelter or moving carts in from the parking lot, but they’re great activities.

But after you say they’re lacking - you say:

I don’t know about you, but those seem pretty substantive to me.

Why would your teacher say your don’t have a need of applying to top schools? You look like you can get into any school in the country - but the question is - can you afford to go. Hence the need to fill out the NPCs on each. If they’re more than you can afford with loan and work - say $30K a year, eliminate them.

Apply to Ga Tech - it’s more rounded than you think - strong in business and social science.

Apply to UGA.

Here’s others to consider because you have the reach of all reaches but you need the assured and affordable. U of Alabama because you’ll be about $20K a year with auto merit. If you don’t like Bama, there’s UAH and Mississippi State.

These are the most important schools on your list. Why? You need a home if one that you mentioned and those were easy to pick doesn’t happen. In other words, apply to all those - but you need an affordable and assured and these schools are loaded with kids.

And les you think - they’re not good enough - my son, in Utah at trivia night, was comparing his salary to a Columbia grad - they were at neighboring companies. My son was surprised to learn he was making more.

Engineering is not necessarily prestige driven, short of a few schools - and yes, they’re on your list.

So here’s an example in comparison.

Bama, with 93.9% of students reporting, showed 72% employed, 24% in school and 4% still seeking with an $86.6K salary for electrical engineering.

Ga Tech lays out differently - They show 71.5% of people who want jobs have them. They don’t show an in school but that means 28.5% were still seeking - at whenever the snap shot was. Specially, they say - ¹ The Placement Rate is calculated as the percentage of respondents who are employed or self-employed, divided by the total number of respondents who are either employed, self-employed, or actively seeking employment.

So likely higher unemployed although again, we don’t know the snapshot in time it was taken - but they show a median (not average) of $91,500 - so more money - although Ga Tech only captures about 1/3 of all students - don’t know within the major.

The point is - you may end up at a place you don’t love on paper - UGA, Bama, etc. but make sure they are on your list - because you’re amazing, but even amazing can get rejected.

And before you apply - have the family fill out each and every school’s NPC…if they own a business or have land or other assets, it could distort the amount you need to pay and thus make them unaffordable.

Best of luck.

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Welcome | Net Price Calculator

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If their income is $100k, they’ll probably get free tuition at some of their top choices. Rice will probably be tuition free and I think they have a pretty good shot if they demonstrate interest (obviously no guarantees).

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OP- an essay tying your auto repair skills (restoring old things) and wildlife preservation (maintaining old things) could be incredible and absolutely YOU. Just a thought. You sound like the kind of student every college would love to have on campus.

Best of luck to you!

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Congrats on your accomplishments! You could get anywhere – but the super-competitive schools must be considered reaches for any unhooked applicant.

I expect you will get into GATech (great option) but would add UGA to your EA list as a safety.

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Yes my point is they have no guarantees. They need a guarantee but it’s an amazing student.

But amazing does get rejected so you need an assured.

And yes they’ll likely get tuition but all those deals say based on normal assets.

So one should always validate - just in case. Some schools use a light asset # as normal.

Wishing OP luck.

One issue may be three years of language at some of these but it sounds like OP had to step out of school even to get the third year. The tippy top do like four but if it’s not possible, they won’t hold against.

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Understood, but think of your parents and your siblings. Travel to Houston (Boston, Durham etc) ain’t cheap. Georgia Tech full ride with money would be hard to beat. Atlanta is big enough that you get a broadening experience beyond your rural town (the good and the bad.) I know you probably crave something different and the unknown but sometimes the expected and obvious path is the right one. Good luck. You can’t go wrong.

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Hi, is there a reason you didn’t take Calculus first in high school? Your ECs and honors are actually solid. If you apply EA to Ga Tech and UGA, get admitted to both and can afford them, you wouldn’t need more safeties on your list. You can still apply to Princeton SCEA but you should remove some of the reaches and super-reaches on your list, probably, JHU, Duke, CMU, Harvey Mudd, Cornell, Northwestern, Brown and keep Columbia, so you have one college that could you give a fee waiver. I would then consider some target schools like WPI, Lehigh, RPI, Case Western or University of Rochester.

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That does make sense; if I had a full ride to Tech I’d totally go! I think they only give the Stamps President’s scholarship to like 25 Georgia residents each year, though?

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Thank you, and yes! The local college I dual enroll at is my safety. I don’t know if there’s any tuition benefits since it’s a public university.

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Thank you for the advice! I’m not really sure; I mentioned to my teacher about applying to an Princeton especially because their aid is amazing but she basically said that I didn’t have much of a shot at it, but it was kind of discouraging. I probably should have mentioned this in my initial post, but one thing that’s made me slightly wary of going to public universities is that they tend to be very large, and I want to go into academia one day (maybe become a professor) and do research. I was thinking it’d be cool to go to a smaller school so that there’d be more one-on-one opportunities with professors and stuff. I did run some net price calculators; for most schools there’s an average of about 15-20k. When my brother applied to college around 2-3 years ago he got average offers of having to pay 15k for the first year.

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I just wanted college credit for calculus in case I went in-state; the calculus class at my school is only offered for one block each year and is a regular non-honors class, so I decided to just dual enroll it for the prerequisites needed for calculus 2 and 3 anyway. I would like to go into academia and I value a well-rounded environment ( I probably should have mentioned that in my original post , sorry) and I think some schools with a smaller environment would be good for research opportunities! I’d probably be keeping some of those super reaches since they offer something different from Tech and other more tech-centered schools.

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ooo that’s a great idea, thank you!

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You are a very competitive candidate. I don’t know if you’ll win the scholarship, but I do think you’ll very likely get admitted to Georgia Tech. Your college list looks solid - you should definitely apply to “PHYSM” schools like MIT & Stanford. You could even drop a few, to ten applications, if you end up losing interest or just running out of time.

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Q: Did your teacher ever disclose why?

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I mean it’s a true statement, for all, but if not you then who ? You’re a stud.

That said and I don’t know why but at my son’s hs year, they ranked only the top 25. The person who went to P was not top 25.

So you never know.

But the assured and affordable school is most important. You’ve got the big hitters identified. But there’s a real chance you’ll end up at the assured affordable so make sure you pick it wisely.

This can be any school - but given your budget, a UAH could work. Or maybe Tennessee Tech as an affordable safety. But there is research and there are mentors if you seek them out anywhere - large or small.

You might find this interesting. PhD feeders - left side is total, right is per capita.

I hope you get into one of the big names you aspire to but focus on that final, afffordable and assured name. If you end up at it, you want it to be the school that gives you comfort.