Chance Me/ Match Me: Need help with revising my college list [Junior, Business Major, NoVA resident, 3.91 unweighted, 1550 SAT, prefer <$50k]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics: Female, Northern Virginia resident, U.S. citizen, attending a public high school. No major legacies, though I do have an older sister who currently attends UVA.

Intended Major(s): Business

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores:
Weighted GPA: 4.52 (on a 5.0 scale)
Unweighted: 3.91
Class rank: Not reported, but in top 10%
SAT: 1550
Note: I’m ending junior year with 2 b’s - one in Calc AB and one in AP Chem

Coursework:
APs: 8 APs by end of junior year, planning 14 by graduation
Honors: 8 honors courses completed by senior year

Freshman Year: PE, Honors Algebra 2/Trig, Honors Biology, Honors World History, Spanish, Honors English, Computer Math
Sophomore: Intro Business, Honors English, AP World History, Honors Chemistry, AP Pre-calc, Honors Spanish, AP Biology
Junior: AP Chemistry, Marketing, AP Lang, AP U.S. History, AP Psychology, AP Calc AB, Spanish Honors
Middle School Courses (these are classes I did in middle school that go to HS credit): Spanish 1, Spanish 2, Algebra 1, and Geometry.

AP Scores:
AP Precalculus (5)
AP Biology (4)
AP World History (5)

Awards:
Seal of biliteracy (Spanish)
Local awards for policy debate
3x state winner for DECA
Top 7 ICDC for DECA
Community Volunteer Award for 250+ hours

Extracurriculars:
Policy debate- started in freshman year and have some local awards
DECA- (Freshman year) VP of finance, helped arrange fundraisers
Volunteer at local elementary schools- (Freshman Year) 85+ hours
Research- Wrote 2 research papers under the mentorship of Harvard alumni
Red Cross Youth Advocate- (Freshman Year) Started at another region, but eventually brought the club to my region as well; over 100+ volunteer hours
Spanish Club/Honor Society: Officer (Sophomore)
English Honor Society: Officer (Sophomore)
Mentorship Program: Mentored freshmen (Junior)
Business Workshops: Helped create & lead youth business lessons through a nonprofit, reached 150+ students (Sophomore)
Internship: Summer internship at local business (Junior)
Student Board: I’m the treasurer for my county’s student youth leadership. We organize different volunteering events so we can help give back to our community (we’ve impacted around 3,000 people). (Junior Year)

LoRs and Essays: I’m planning on getting a recommendation letter from my AP Lang teacher and my DECA advisor. As for my essays, I plan on writing about DECA and my community involvement, and how it has shaped me into being a better leader.

Cost Constraints: Perferrebly <$50k, but ultimately no strict cost constraints.

School List (Still being finalized):
Reaches: UPenn (Wharton), UVA (OOS for McIntire), NYU (Stern), Georgetown
Matches: UNC Chapel Hill (OOS), Boston University, UMD (Smith)
Safeties: Virginia Tech (Pamplin), JMU, George Mason
Note: This was my initial list, but I’m a bit concerned (also also very unsure) about how the two B’s this year might impact my chances, especially for reach and top match schools. Would appreciate any advice on refining this list or adding other good-fit business programs!

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Does your family qualify for need based aid? If not, please confirm with them that they’re ok paying up to $95k/year (which is what some of these schools will cost).

If that number is too high, get a firm budget from them. This may help eliminate some of the schools on your list.

Why is it OOS? Aren’t you a Virginia resident?

Your list looks fine to me (assuming they are all affordable). It’s a well balanced list IMO.

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Your stats are fine.

What is your actual, defined budget? Some of these schools will be around a $100k/year.

One thing to consider is direct admission into the business. I think UVA and UNC have competitive admissionss. There’s no guarantee that you will get into the business school. If not, are you ok majoring in something else?

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My long term goal is law school, so honestly I’m open to different majors. I’m just mostly focused on business for right now since those are what my ECs are catered towards.

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Thank you so much for the reply! When I was researching financial aid programs, I don’t seem to qualify for any of them. I went over the list with my family and they’re all colleges my parents would be fine sending me to (the <$50k is preference on my end). Additionally, I meant to write in-state for UVA but accidently wrote OOS.

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I agree you would benefit from really understanding what each of these colleges would actually cost and whether your parents would actually pay that. I can’t tell you the number of kids I have seen online who were excited to get some admission, only to find out their parents will not pay that much for that college.

In terms of your list, I think UNC OOS and BU are more Reaches than Targets. You’ve got a good list of what I would call Likelies, so this is not necessarily a huge problem. But I do wonder if there are more colleges outside of Virginia you would like to consider if you don’t get into any of those reachier options (edit: or UVA, which I now understand is in-state for you).

To that end, you may already know about this, but I personally really like Poets & Quants undergrad business program reviews:

The ranking itself is not so important to me, but the descriptions are unusually detailed for this sort of thing.

So like if I open up UNC Kenan-Flagler, I find out apparently they have around a 7% acceptance rate. Definitely a Reach. BU they have at 8%. Again, seems like a Reach to me.

OK, but then say Indiana (Kelley) is a really nice undergrad business program, and I believe you might actually be an automatic direct admit to Kelley:

So IF Kelley was affordable, would you then maybe want to consider them over your non-UVA options? Here is the P&Q description it if it helps:

Again, take this with a grain of salt, but they note:

Of the three methodological categories, Kelley was first out of 104 ranked programs in Academic Experience, judged solely on our alumni survey. The school also finished 16th in Career Outcomes and 40th in Admission Standards.

That is sort of the deal with Kelley in a nutshell–much better outcomes, and much MUCH better quality of experience, than you might expect given their admissions policies.

Anyway, just one example, but I would at least consider doing some more thinking about what I see as a gap between your Reaches and your in-state Likelies.

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Ah, that changes things considerably.

I would still suggest you can think about that gap between what I see as your Reaches and your Likelies, but now you certainly are not limited to just considering colleges with undergrad business programs. Which means there are even more colleges to explore.

I note for people interested in law school and also private universities, I like to suggest they at least consider some Jesuit colleges. The Jesuit philosophy toward undergraduate education is just a really good fit for being well-prepared for law school, and on top of that a lot of them are in excellent urban locations and also super networked into local business and legal communities.

Georgetown and BC are the most famous, but also the hardest admits. However, a college like Fordham would be an excellent choice for you–either in Business or not. If you want to stick in the Mid Atlantic, Loyola Maryland too. If you are willing to look elsewhere, Santa Clara and Loyola Marymount in California (Bay Area and LA respectively), or a bunch in the Upper Midwest like Marquette (in Milwaukee) and Loyola Chicago. And so on.

All this is again subject to affordability, although you might get some merit offers from some of these. Again, the more fundamental point is you might want to think about what sorts of options you would like to have in the event your Reaches don’t work out.

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Thank you so much for the advice! I’ll look into those schools. Kelley was for sure one of my top schools initially since I’ve heard a lot of great things about the programs from a few people I knew.

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I think a few things:

  1. Budget matters most - so if you will get no aid, the schools like Wharton, Stern and more that are double your budget make no sense.

  2. UVA is not direct admit. So you will not get admission to McIntire. That comes after you’ve enrolled at UVA. And odds are ok but not great. Same situation at UNC.

  3. I think you are reasonable for any school - not a 5% acceptance rate is a high reach for all. The B in Calc could hurt.

I say UNC and BU are reaches. UVA a match. You say you are a VA resident so confused by OOS. Bu you’d need to ED. UMD is likely.

So law school is another $300k plus and in that sense, where you go undergrad will likely matter little, if at all.

While you are 17/18 so you can’t predict the future, I will tell you all will equally work for law school - and for that matter so would Christopher Newport, Mary Washington and more.

Harvard, as an example, has 146 schools in its first year class of 560. Whether Arizona State, Grand Valley State, Oklahoma State, or Louisville, they’re there.

Penn has 213 colleges represented in their law school.

Cornell has 216 enrolled from 143 law schools. Now others will say - but they mainly come from elite colleges - and they would not be correct. 28 are from Cornell, 3 from Columbia and 2 from Penn. None of the NESACS or other Ivies are listed with two or more students. So that 143 schools is spread but there are at least two or more kids from Alabama, Nebraska, SUNY, CUNY schools, Gonzaga, St. Bonaventure, Kentucky, Kansas, UCF.

The point being - studs get into top law schools. The undergrad is unlikely to matter - but your GPA, your LSAT especially and what you do while at school - will matter. So you have every chance of success from any school on your list, including the safeties.

Best of luck.

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Your ECs do not need to have anything to do with your major. You can apply for whatever major you are interested in without being concerned about whether your ECs match your likely major. Changing major is also relatively common.

You can major in almost anything and go to law school. Given that your undergraduate GPA is important for law school admissions it might make sense to major in something that you are good at. I know several lawyers, and most of them had a major that was related to engineering, computer science, or math. However, most of them work in patent law which might have something to do with this.

When deciding on your budget, remember to take the cost of law school into consideration. Even lawyers are better off if they keep their education debt down to a reasonable number.

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Just curious why W&M isn’t on the list? Seems like a great option for a future lawyer.

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I feel compelled to briefly note the empirical evidence does not in fact support this claim.

Like if you look at admissions data for the most selective law schools, it is true a long list of colleges might have between, say, 0-2 students going on to that law school in any given year. And because it is sometimes 1 or 2 instead of 0, it is true that means it is not impossible to go from that college to that law school.

Meanwhile, though, there are other colleges which regularly place many more students in such law schools. So suppose you were looking at a college that regularly places something in the range of 10-20 students versus 0-2 in that same law school. Does that really show both these colleges “will equally work”? And what if that college with 10-20 placements is actually much smaller too?

And then there is the issue of preparation for law school. Just getting admitted to a selective law school is only the beginning. Generally people who do better in law school, particularly up front, will have more opportunities for whatever comes next, which in some cases can lead to different careers. And so thinking carefully about what college experience will not only help you get admitted but actually help you succeed in law school is very important.

I don’t want to suggest that means you should obviously choose one of the colleges with a lot of students going to the most selective law schools, and not just a very small number. Instead, I just think this is an incredibly complicated situation where you have to be very cautious about the assumptions you make.

And if you would like more nuanced advice on that subject, feel free to ask.

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In fact in order to qualify for the patent bar, you usually need either a degree, or in some cases a certain number of undergraduate semester hours, in one of a range of scientific or technical fields (there are a couple other routes but are similarly restrictive, like passing the FE test).

You can actually do a variety of IP work without being a member of the patent bar, though. Still, those requirements tend to lead to lawyers with a patent practice having that sort of background.

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But is it the undergraduate college which made the difference for acceptance to law school?

Or is it the fact that some colleges are so selective in the first place and so loaded with high achievers, excellent test takers, and students with high aspirations that it’s the caliber of student regardless of where they attend? Some colleges just have lots more of those kinds of students.

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A business school which incorporates a lot of liberal arts into its program and therefore offers a good combination of what you are looking for is Babson College. They are in a consortium with Wellesley College just across town with accessible by shuttle, so that offers even more access to a plethora of liberal arts options.

Babson offers merit & they are interested in attracting more women, so there might be a way to bring the cost down.

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I really don’t know. We don’t have the data to really investigate.

I do believe the observed LSAT/SAT correlation alone is not enough to explain all the observed differences. But there are other factors, including what I would generally call self-selection, and also possible family-related effects, that are likely playing a role.

So you are raising a good question to which I do not know the answer. But to my knowledge, there is not sufficient data available to support the claim we know there is no effect. We just don’t know.

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Another good combination of business and pre-law liberal arts can be found in your home state, at U of Richmond. Business majors are among the most popular there, but they also have a PPEL program - Philosophy, Politics, Economics & Law - which is fantastic aspiring lawyers.

As others have said, there is no need whatsoever to major in business, just because your EC’s have skewed that way. You can “package” yourself as an aspiring business major if you like, but my sense is that a more flexible liberal arts environment, with a business major available as one option, might fit better than a university where you’d be direct-admitted to a specialized business school.

Re: the excellent suggestion of Jesuit colleges… if you’re intending to continue strengthening your language skills in Spanish, St. Louis University, with its satellite campus in Madrid, might appeal. SLU Madrid offers both business majors and liberal arts majors; and an even wider range of majors is available via a 2+2 plan - first two years in Madrid and last two years in STL. Fluency in Spanish can be a great asset in a law career, depending on specialty.

The secondary-admission scenario at UVA, for business, can be a deterrent to many students as the ability to pursue a business major isn’t assured and direct-admit offers elsewhere are safer for those who are “business or bust.” But UVA’s approach might actually be perfect for you, as you can express your interest in studying business when applying to the university, but figure out later whether to go through with applying to McIntire, or major in something else.

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Yeah, UVA is a bit problematic for someone who knows they want an undergrad business degree, and potentially a great choice for someone who is flexible and currently thinking about law school.

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