US citizen aiming for school in the country, first-gen immigrant, public HS in Virginia, ~160K annual household income
Cost Constraints / Budget
Preferably <60k annually with generous aid, I’d hate to be dropping something like $150k for undergrad, but I know it should be expected with my family’s income. I’m open to all recommendations regardless.
Intended Major(s)
Goverment/Public Health (or Chemistry double major), prefer a school that allows dual accreditation, but not a must. If it isn’t possible, I would major in Gov and minor in Chemistry/Public Health since I love both studying the law and medicine.
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Unweighted HS GPA: 3.81
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Weighted HS GPA: 4.26 in the school’s info system? 4.33 if calculated using a +0.5 for Honors and +1 for AP
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My high school doesn’t do class rank.
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1490 SAT (760 Eng/730 Math), 1500 superscore
List your HS coursework
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Eng 9 and 10 HN, AP Lang, AP Lit
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Algebra 2 HN, AP Precalc BC, AP Calc BC, Multivariable and Linear Algebra DE
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Bio 1 HN, Chem 1 HN, AP Physics 1, AP Chem, AP Bio
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World Hist HN, AP World History, AP U.S. History, AP US Gov
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French 1-3, French 4 DE senior year
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Studio Art 1 and 3 (skipped level 2), AP Studio Art
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2 mandated PE courses, AP Psych, AP Macro/Micro Econ
Awards/Honors:
AP Scholar Award, 2nd place in a Debate Competition, plus a teacher-nominated award, and National Commended Merit Scholar
Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)
10th: Red Cross (1 yr), ESOL Peer tutoring (1 yr), National Honor Society
11th: National Honor Society + Weekly Peer Mentoring program at local ES (1 yr), Science NHS, Art NHS, French NHS, Math NHS, around 60 volunteer hours total
- Student Leadership Development Program (12/400 students that applied picked. Was mentored under the School Board Chair and with School Board members, created/presented my own local policy changes to SBM.)
- Student Intern for League of Women Voters (training right now, work starts in fall)
- Congressional Debate team
- Writing Center (strictly capped at 50 students out of my school’s 2000, must be nominated by teacher to apply)
Summer + 12th grade: Plan to continue all previous activities, but in addition…
- Executive Board for French NHS (director of membership) and Science NHS
- Taking Intro to Kinesiology 100 at a local Uni (3 cr.) + Intro to Med Assistant, recieved a B
- Paid tutor K-12, ranging from elementary school topics to SAT lower-level prep
- Weekly volunteer at Fire Dept. as an Administrative Member (~6 hours a week)
- Member of my county’s global leaders program, ran by a School Board member
LORs
- AP Chem teacher (hasn’t written it yet, might have to drop her)
- Counselor Rec Letter
- AP Lang teacher
Schools
As of right now, I’m at least trying to get all the schools I want to apply for Early Action 100% solidified. If I ED anywhere, it’ll probably be UVA or W&M since these are my absolute top 2 choices, but it’s highly unlikely to be anywhere else.
I’m pretty good on my likely schools and my safeties but it’s my hard targets and reaches I’m having trouble narrowing the schools down on, because I feel like I have a lot that seem similar initially, but I haven’t had the time/don’t know how to research them further (ex. choosing between applying to Gettysburg vs. Lafayette vs. Oberlin, or RIT vs. URochester). I don’t have access to financial aid info yet, and while I’m working to get it with my family ASAP, this has also severely hindered my college search.
Schools I’m 100% on:
- Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability): GMU, NOVA (for guaranteed admission track to UVA)
- Extremely Likely:
- Likely: Virginia Tech, UPitt
- Toss up: George Washington University, UMD,
- Reach: William and Mary, CWRU
- Lower Probability: UVA, UF
- Low Probability: Washington & Lee
Schools I’m unsure of and am trying to pick between:
There are a lot of schools with expensive sticker prices because I’ve yet to put their tuition through the NPC since I don’t have enough info as of right now.
I am NOT going to apply to even half of these, I just want thoughts on how likely acceptance is and how to find out more about them so I can narrow this down to 2-4 more schools. I’m having an especially hard time because at the 10-30% acceptance range, there seem to be TONS of good schools with good biomedical science and political science programs and similar prices, I just don’t know which ones would be most worthy of investing my time in. It also doesn’t help that I’m not picky about weather or location, as long as it isn’t in the middle of absolute nowhere.
- Likely: Purdue, Rutgers
- Toss-up: UIUC, URochester
- Lower Probability: Gettysburg, Lafayette, Oberlin
- Low Probability: Davidson, Williams, Georgetown, UNC Chapel Hill, WashU, Emory