Chance Me - Maryland sophomore aiming for MIT and UC Berkeley

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US Citizen
  • State/Location of residency: Bethesda, Maryland
  • Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Midsized public high school

Intended Major(s)

I’m not sure yet but I am thinking biomedical engineering, biotechnology, computational biology, data science, maybe even aerospace engineering, I also think astrobiology is cool

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 4
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.8
  • All honors classes and AP classes are weighted the same on a 5 pt scale, anything above 90 is an A
  • Class Rank: N/A, school doesn’t count rank
  • ACT/SAT Scores: N/A, aiming for 1550+

HS coursework

(Some of these are classes I am scheduled to take but haven’t taken yet)

  • English: H. English 9, H. English 10, AP Lit, AP Lang
  • Math: H. Alg II, H. Precalc, AP Calc BC, Linear Algebra
  • Science: H. Bio, H. Chem, AP Physics 1, AP Physics C Mechanics, AP Bio, AP Chem, Molecular Biology
  • History and social studies: H US History, AP Gov, AP World, AP Econ (Micro/Macro)
  • Language other than English: Spanish up to level 4
  • Visual or performing arts: 4 years of orchestra, two years in lower level, two years in upper level

Awards

Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

  • FRC Robotics - 3 years, Prog lead 2 years, field technician 1+ years, Prog pit lead 1+ years, outreach events, also all the typical robotics stuff
  • Varsity Wrestling - 2 years, 3rd tbd. Not very well awarded but well enough to make varsity. Not doing JR Year.
  • JHU APL Aspire Internship - 1 year, Data science and machine learning focus
  • Working on independent project for science fair
  • Nonprofit internship - Backend intern for nonprofit, 3 years
  • I want to try bio-olympiads
  • Violin - Been playing for 8 years so far, nothing super exceptional, one year in outside orchestra, four years in school orchestra, one year so far in theater program pit orchestra, might submit video as supplement
  • Club - Started a club at my school that focuses on research and research literacy. We are organizing a science fair for local elementary schools to be hosted at out school
  • Trying to start a GWC club at my school
  • Trying to start an FLL (FIRST LEGO League) team at one of the local elementary schools
  • Public Forum Debate - Been competing for 4 years but will switch to coaching middle school team for two years
  • Applied to be a volunteer for a local organization that does STEM outreach

Essays/LORs/Other
No essays yet, LOR from molbio teacher (who was also my honors bio teacher for a semester) and ap lang teacher

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if unsure, leave them unclassified)

  • Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability):
  • Extremely Likely: RIT
  • Likely: UW Madison, UC Davis
  • Toss-up: UMD, UCSD,
  • Lower Probability: UMich Ann Arbor, Tufts
  • Low Probability: MIT, Berkeley, UNC CH, Duke
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Do you need financial aid to attend college, or can your parents pay the full cost of attendance?

It will be much easier to chance you once you have standardized test scores and at least mid year grade 11 grades.

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My household income is high enough to not qualify for need based financial aid but my college fund is not large enough to support four years at a private institution so I may take loans.

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@icyjuice the CA Public universities you have listed will not give you much in financial aid as they don’t support out of state students. So…$75,000 a year or so…is that affordable for your family?

UMichigan does not guarantee to meet full need for out of state students, and that’s a pricey school too.

Look at the full costs to attend these colleges. Find out if your parents are willing to co-sign loans for you to attend undergrad school. if not, you might want to add some colleges where you would get decent merit aid.

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I am trying to figure out which of two points is the most important here:

First of all, loans can significantly constrain your options after graduating university. First jobs do not always pay particularly well. Sometimes a dream job (or internship or some other opportunity) comes up that pays badly, but which provides opportunities which can be a very, very good start at a career. I have seen this happen multiple times. For some students loans are just necessary. However, you should not take them on unless you have a very good reason. If you do require loans for your education then you should make a strong effort to minimize how much you borrow.

Secondly, you have very, very good public universities in-state. UMD-CP is for example superb, and will be far more affordable for you compared to most of the schools that you have listed in your post.

You are not yet sure what your major might be. This is entirely normal and very healthy for a high school student. However, multiple of the things that you are considering involve some form of graduate school.

If you look at the students at highly ranked graduate programs, in the vast majority of cases you will find that they came from a very, very wide range of undergraduate colleges and universities. Certainly it is possible to attend UMD-CP and go on to very highly ranked graduate programs. I used to have a good friend who had done exactly that. Once you get to working at a career, you are quite likely to find UMD graduates working alongside graduates from MIT, Berkeley, UNC, Duke, Rutgers, U.Mass, and a huge range of other schools (many of which you might not have heard of) and no one will care where anyone got their bachelor’s degree. However, their bank accounts and loan balances may care.

Also if you get your bachelor’s degree loan-free, it can be easier to afford to attend a good graduate program.

I also agree that it will be easier to guess your chances at top schools after we get mid year grades from your junior year and after we get your SAT or ACT scores.

With regard to ECs, the longest list does not win. Instead, participate in activities that make sense for you. If you get into leadership roles, remember that being a “leader” means making the activity better for everyone who participates, requires listening, and is specifically not about getting your way.

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there’s a fantastic school that does bio-en about 40 miles up the BW Parkway. It offers tuition discounts uo to $200k income. Why not Hop?

Why Cal?

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OOS cost of attendance at the UCs, as well as at Michigan, is around $85k/year.

@icyjuice, you should ask your parents for a firm budget.

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Are you a rising sophomore or rising junior? Keep in mind too that some schools will want your LOR’s to be from a teacher who taught you in the past year or so (eg they tend to prefer a LOR from a teacher who had you in 11 or 12 grade). What year did you take the bio and ap lang?

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I agree that even if you are a rising junior, it is really too early to do a serious Chance Me.

In terms of possible Match Me ideas, I agree nailing down an actual budget with your parents is a necessary step. I also want to make sure that you have tried the Net Price Calculators at least at a couple places like, say, MIT, to make sure you will not qualify for any need aid.

Assuming you in fact don’t qualify for need aid but also only have a budget less than full pay private, I agree looking at very expensive OOS programs is not necessarily the best way to go. As an alternative, depending on your qualifications when actually applying, you might want to “chase merit”, apply to suitable colleges which might offer you merit, potentially a lot of merit.

And one specific idea along those lines is that I think people who are interested in the sort of academic mix found at MIT often also appreciate RPI. RPI in turn has the Rensselaer Medal program:

If this is of possible interest, you would want to ask your high school about the possibility of nominating you. If you are a rising junior, they would be doing this by May 1 of next year.

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It’s great that you are thinking about this now. First step is to get a budget number from your parents and, then, run the NPC at a few schools to see what your cost might be. A lot of people suggest using Princeton as a test (even if you aren’t interested in it) as they are the most generous with need-based aid. If it doesn’t look like you’d get need-based aid at Princeton, you probably won’t get it anywhere.. In terms of loans, as a student you are very limited in the amount of loans you can take - around $27k total for undergraduate so unless your parents are willing to take loans themselves, or co-sign for you, that would be the most you could borrow. Knowing your budget is critical for selecting schools to apply to as you don’t want to spend a lot of time and effort applying to places you cannot afford. Good luck!

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You can use the net price calculators now…for an estimate only. They are currently set for students starting college fall 2026, and that’s not you.

If you are starting college in 2028, the NPCs will use tax year info from 2026…and that’s only halfway done.

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Yes. The way I would suggest doing it, if you look at some NPCs and are seeing favorable results, that means you need to keep checking NPCs going forward through the process. But don’t just rely on those first results.

If you look at some generous NPCs and get no aid, you MIGHT be able to stop looking at them, assuming no major change in family financial circumstances.

That said, even then, you might want to play with some of the variables to figure out how far off you are. Sometimes it is clear that you aren’t even close, and that is fine. If you were close, however, then maybe make a point of checking again for your actual application cycle.

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Why UC Davis, UCSD and UC Berkeley?

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would need to know your test history for MIT to be chanced

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Starting January 2026, Hopkins offers not only tuition discount, but free tuition for families earning up to $200k. So there probably will still be some discount up to $300k. If OP can afford MIT, Duke, and Tufts on their list with some loan, then they can afford JHU with a similar loan. Thus, like you said, why not JHU, especially since OP has done an internship at JHU’s Applied Physics Lab.

If OP is considering adding JHU to their list, they should know (I suspect they do) that JHU’s biomedical engineering has a separate admissions process and is much harder to get into than the school itself which is already very hard.

Lastly, I would move UW–Madison from Likely to Toss-Up not because OP isn’t a strong applicant, but because they are from Bethesda — a very competitive area with tons of super accomplished high schoolers many of whom would be applying to UW–Madison.

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It sounds like you expect to be in the “donut hole” zone (don’t qualify for need based aid, but aren’t really able to pay 80k+ either). You will want to talk to your parents about just what your budget will be, but you will probably be looking for schools that are either low-cost, or offer merit scholarships. As it happens, we are also a “donut hole” family and my daughter applied for biomedical engineering this year… so I can make a few suggestions of schools that my daughter thought had a lot to offer for this major, and which offered her very good merit scholarships:

  • WPI in Mass, medium-sized private tech-focused school, very flexible curriculum, has some really cool facilities for BME. The UMass medical school is relatively close by, which can open up a bigger pool of potential research opportunities than you might expect from WPI’s size. They gave my daughter excellent merit which would have made the school affordable, and also have special scholarships for students who participated in high school robotics, up to full tuition! (check it out!)

  • CWRU in Cleveland, medium-sized private university known for giving lots of merit. This is a top tier school for BME with excellent outcomes for its graduates, and is also physically surrounded by hospitals and medical research facilities, which also makes it a very popular school for pre-medical students. If you are interested in continuing orchestra in college, CWRU has outstanding music opportunities for non-majors. Note that students applying to CWRU in EA should be sure to show them lots of demonstrated interest for the best chance of admission.

  • I see you already have RIT on your list. They also give merit and would have cost about the same as the above two schools for my daughter. Note that their biomedical engineering program is five years which includes a required co-op. This might be a plus or minus for you!

  • University of Pittsburgh, public university. Great for biomedical engineering and popular with premed students, it is located right next to CMU and you can take courses there. Pitt has rolling admission and if you apply early, you may be fortunate enough to have your admission quite early in the season. They do offer merit to OOS students (although it can be unpredictable), and the cost after merit would have been similar to the above private universities for my daughter.

  • UMass Amherst is another good public flagship for this major, offered my daughter very good merit and admission to their honors program, it would have cost the same as an in-state public.

  • University of Minnesota, another good public flagship! Once you have your junior year GPA and SAT/ACT in hand, you can go to their web site and run the NPC and it will include an estimate for merit scholarships (most schools don’t include merit in the NPC, but UMN does), which can help you to guess about affordability. They also have rolling admission early in the fall. It is very nice to have admission offers already in hand in October or November when you are applying to other colleges.

  • As you are in Maryland, you know all about UMD, which is also an excellent public flagship for this subject. It’s good that you already listed it as a toss-up, because admission to UMD seems to be very unpredictable for students from your area, even for extremely strong students. When you apply, be sure to apply in the early round.

Keep up the good work, enjoy high school, and come back during your junior year for a more accurate Chance Me / Match Me :slight_smile:

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Way too early for a chance me. It’s nice you hope to get a 1550 SAT but you don’t have one.

  1. Budget matters - get a firm figure - there’s no point applying to $80K schools if your budget is $40K.
  2. The UCs don’t look at test scores

Loans - why when, depending on your budget, they likely aren’t needed. Loans need to be paid back…..often, there are sub schools that put forth just as strong career outcomes at schools that are rated higher.

Come back after your first semester junior year and after you have a test score.

Keep up the great work otherwise. And don’t over stretch academically - i.e. don’t rush a math over summer to get to linear algebra….not saying you are but some do that and you are well ahead.

But MIT will be $100K when you start attending - so if you don’t qualify for aid and you can only borrow $27K total over 4 years, how would you attend? So this is the type of school, as great as it is, that you remove from your list - but an RPI might be a good sub and they come with aggressive aid - just as an example.

Keep up the great work and come back in January.

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