Chance me! CO resident - few extracurriculars - 3.9 UW, Top 10%

Demographics

  • US domestic *
  • State/Location of residency: Colorado
  • Type of high school * Public
  • Other special factors: * 2nd gen college student, no legacy at specific school

Cost Constraints / Budget
Definitely will be applying for scholarships and/or financial aid

Intended Major(s): Political Science, History, Criminal Justice

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.9 (1 b freshman year)

  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.9

  • College GPA: (for transfer applicants)
    Class Rank: 29
    SAT: TBD But my PSAT was 1100 w/o studying

  • Coursework *

  • English: 9th grade- Honors English 1, 10th grade- Honors English 2, Junior year- Ap Literature

  • Math: * 9th grade: Alg 1, 10th grade: Geometry, 11th grade: IB Math Analysis (skipping algebra 2)

  • Science: 9th grade: Principals of Biomedical Science, 10th grade: Human body systems and Honors Chem, 11th grade: N/A

  • History and social studies: 9th grade: U.S History, 10th grade: Honors World History, 11th grade: IB History and AP US Gov

  • Language other than English: 9th grade: Spanish 1, 10th grade: N/A 11th grade: IB Spanish (skipping spanish 2)

  • Visual or performing arts: N/A

  • Other academic courses: Adv Speech & Debate freshman and sophmore year

College Coursework (Transfer Applicants)
Human body systems, princ of biomed, all my aps and ibs essentially. I also took a college health class freshman year. Last year I took Law and Justice through the local college, in which multiple sub classes were taken

  • Major preparation course work: All my history classes, law and justice, ap us gov, just any legal/history class I have

Awards

The Barney Iuppa Outstanding Attorney Award through mock trial
Placed at State for Speech and Debate
Many other lower level speech and debate awards
Voted MVP, And best attorney within my schools mock trial team

Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)
Fundraiser giving native american children school supplies, done via 3 elementary schools and funneled through the non profit One Nation Walking Together

Debate Captain in Speech and Debate

Mock trial varsity

NHS

NSHSS

Essays/LORs/Other
Good options for LORs, I am friendly with my coaches, & core class teachers. My essay I haven’t thought about since it’s junior year, though I know I need to be

Schools
UVA is my top choice
I’d also be happy with the University of Richmond

Aiming for a scholarship for sure.

This worries me. For anyone who is average or below in math this just wouldn’t work. For anyone who is good at math, they are likely to take more advanced math classes. Most “more advanced” math classes are going to depend a great deal on algebra 2. I was a math major in university. I have often used some relatively advanced math on the job. However, a lot of this depends a great deal on high school algebra.

I would not recommend skipping this. There is a very real risk that you will spend a year suffering in a math class that you are not ready to take, and then the following year will need to go back and take the math class that you skipped.

High school algebra is also something that is very helpful to help you do well in the math part of the SAT exam.

By the way, I have a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from MIT. I did not skip any high school math classes.

Again I think that this could be a bad idea unless you already speak Spanish pretty well.

Again I do not get it. UVA is likely to cost quite a bit more compared to your in-state options. You are also from a WUE state which means that other WUE schools are likely to be more affordable compared to UVA. Why do you want to go all the way out east to UVA?

Also, reading your post, to me it looks like you might be interested in some form of graduate school. Is this correct? What are you intending to do with a degree in “Political Science, History, Criminal Justice”? Is law school an option? Law school is expensive.

If you are considering law school as an option, then you should try to save money and avoid debt for your bachelor’s degree. If you could you would be better off to save as much as you can for law school, or for another graduate degree.

I think that you should look closely at your in-state public universities, and at your WUE options.

2 Likes

What year are you in high school? Are you a senior now?

Skipping foundational courses in math is a poor idea. This is a subject area where a string foundation it’s important.

What does this mean? How many students are in your class? If you are 29 out of 900 that’s very different than if you are 29 out of 100.

How much aid do you need to attend college? I hope you plan to include colleges that are affordable, perhaps in your home state.

If you are a senior, why haven’t you already taken the SAT? If you are a junior, the PSAT from this year is the one that matters for NM consideration.

I know you are getting a lot of feedback on your course selection, but if you are a junior (as it appears to me you might be), that is probably a higher priority right now than trying to refine your list. And I will just toss in I think it is suboptimal you appear to not have a plan to take Physics.

But assuming your are a junior, you can also be exploring colleges in parallel. Since you are looking for aid, the first thing you should get in the habit of doing is running the Net Price Calculator for any college of interest.

So, for example, you should run the NPC at Richmond and see what it says. UVA does in fact have need aid for OOS students, so you can run the NPC there as well. See what they say.

Once you report back to us on that, it will help us provide more options. But it would also help us to know why those two schools. Like, they are located relatively close to each other (and far from Colorado), but in other ways are very different schools. Like, UVA is way bigger than Richmond. So why those two?

Your list is missing a lot of info.

What is your weighting system - to go from a 3.9 to a 4.9?

You rank 29 - of how many.

Budget - you’re applying for scholarships - but do you have demonstrated need? Both UVA and Richmond meet need but that doesn’t mean they’ll determine you’ll have need.

Have your family fill out a net price calculator. I put Richmond’s below.

You’ll want to have a formal budget (not just I need aid) and you’ll need a list beyond these two schools.

Good luck.

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