Chance me as a junior and provide ANY advice/feedback (be blunt) (unique circumstances) [4.0 GPA in 3+ high schools, 1500 SAT, math, biology, or engineering]

Two things immediately come to mind.

The first is related to finances. Do you know what you can afford to spend for university? Do you know what you can afford to spend without taking on debt?

Students with divorced parents can sometimes be in a difficult situation with regard to paying for university. Sometimes the parents get along, but sometimes they do not. Sometimes they agree to support their child, sometimes a non-custodial parent does not. Also, the way that universities calculate “need” apparently is often an issue for divorced parents. I have not been in this situation and am not sure whether this is because of the cost of maintaining two households, or because of a non-cooperative non-custodial parent, or because of step-parent income, or for some other reason.

The other thing that I wonder about is what state if any will consider you to be in-state for the purpose of paying tuition at in-state public universities. All of New York, Virginia, and Massachusetts have very good in-state public universities, and these universities are very good for math, biology, and various forms of engineering. Being in-state somewhere is likely to help with finances as long as one of these three states considers you to be an in-state student. Strictly speaking I suppose that it might be possible that two of them might think that you are in-state if your two parents live in two different states.

Regardless your chances of attending Cornell will depend upon both your ability to get accepted and your ability to afford the cost of attendance. You are competitive for admissions, but so are most of the other applicants (and you can check the acceptance rate).

A few students graduate from medical school with no debt. A few graduate with a small debt. Most students graduate from medical school with a huge debt. How much debt your mother already has will of course have an impact on what she can afford to spend for your education. If she has not yet gotten her MD, then she is likely to have multiple years of residency still to come, and residents are not paid particularly well.

One piece of good news is that there are quite a few people who regularly reply on this web site who have gone through this already. Some of us went through it ourselves years or even decades ago and have more recently then gone through the process again with our children. Hopefully we can help, although you are also likely to get asked questions and you should remember that many of us are just parents or students who are responding based largely on our own experiences.

Another piece of good news is that of course you are a very strong student.

Usually it is not a good idea to even have a dream college. I think that you will want to figure out what your budget is and what Cornell is likely to cost you before you either apply there ED or get too invested in it as a dream college.

I think that you are very likely to get into several very good universities. Whether one of them will be Cornell is very difficult to predict at this point.

I might add that maintaining a 4.0 unweighted GPA, carrying a very challenging course load, and getting a 1500 SAT is very difficult for any student, and is even tougher for a student who has to switch high schools more than once.

And pretty much all of mathematics (my major), biology (my younger daughter’s major), and engineering are fields in which there are a lot of very good universities, and the “prestige” of where you get your bachelor’s degree really does not matter.

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