Chance me / match me: Rising senior, New England [MA resident], 4.0 UW, 1550 SAT, economics major - eventually law school

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Demographics
*US citizen, white male

  • State/Location of residency:MA
  • Type of high school: public

Cost Constraints / Budget
no budget constraints but merit aid if possible (understanding most selective schools don’t provide)

**Intended Major: economics, law school after undergrad

  • Unweighted HS GPA:4.0
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.3/4.5 (A+ 4.5 A 4.2, honors and AP max is 4.5, non honors/AP max 4.0)
  • Class Rank: N/A
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1550 SAT (760 english 790 math)

List your HS coursework
fresh: honors bio, english, math, spanish, CP history
soph: honors chem, english, spanish, history, math
junior (1st year APs available): APL chem, UShist, lang, honors spanish, physics
senior (planned): AP: econ, bio, calc-BC, lit, spanish, stats
symphony orchestra all 4 yrs HS

Awards
3 HS awards junior year

Extracurriculars
summer camp LIT, CIT, counselor (next summer)
church and local farm volunteer (many hours)
varsity cross country (junior/senior)
HS debate club - including national competition (NCFL chicago)
Nat’l Honor society
co-founded HS physics club
fencing (recreationally) - including teaching

Essays/LORs/Other
strong LORs

Schools

  • Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability):
  • Extremely Likely: bentley, UMass Amherst (hoping honors)
  • Likely: brandeis, holy cross, connecticut college, fairfield, fordham
  • Toss-up: northeastern
  • Lower Probability: boston college, boston univ, wash-U
  • Low Probability: princeton, harvard, U-chicago, bowdoin
2

I agree through Likely.

I think Holy Cross is likely - but it’s more a toss up if RD - a safety ED.

I think NU and down are all reaches - but it doesn’t mean you won’t get into one.

One thing about Law School - which has another expense - where you go undergraduate likely matters little - given that Harvard Law has 146 colleges represented in its first year class - in the As alone - Arizona State, Auburn, Augustana..

Penn class of 2027 is represented by 119 schools and overall has more than 200 schools represented in the entire class.

UVA is similar.

So the point is - find the right school for you and if all these are great in your mind, then it’s outstanding - and then ensure you have law school costs covered as well when you budget.

You’re obviously a great test taker - so you’ll do well at the LSAT hopefully - and that and your GPA, plus what you do during college and for many today, in the year or two afterward, will get you in.

Best of luck. You certainly have acceptances on your list.

1 Like
3

I would add Babson to your list where you would be a very strong candidate and which offers very strong preparation for law school and in economics. It’s a special place.

I’d be surprised if you’re not accepted for Honors at UMass.

Union College in Schenectady has a lot to like about it’s Poli-Sci major with internship opportunities at the state capital and a term in Washington which includes a 30 hour per week internship.

Otherwise, I like your list. :slightly_smiling_face:

4 Likes
4

Based on the inclusion of Bentley, would you prefer more business-flavored economics or economics with a liberal arts and theory focus?

Also, you may want to consider how math-intensive the economics major at each school is relative to your preferences regarding math.

5

Congratulations on building a strong profile in high school! You are well-prepared to be successful at any college in the U.S.

Below are my guesses as to what your chances of admission are at the colleges on your list:

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • UMass - Amherst

Likely (60-79%)

  • Bentley
  • Fordham

Toss-Up (40-59%)

  • Brandeis (leaning likely)

  • Connecticut College (leaning likely)

  • College of the Holy Cross – the admission rate here has been plummeting the last several years, with it at 21% for the entering class of 2023

  • Fairfield – the admission rate here has also been plummeting. In fall of 2024, the overall admission rate was 33% (source)

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • Boston College
  • Boston U.
  • Northeastern – if you want to start at the Boston campus. If you don’t care whether you start at a different campus, then I’d call it a likely admit.

Low Probability (less than 20%)

  • Princeton
  • Harvard
  • U. of Chicago
  • Bowdoin
  • Washington U.

In terms of matching you to other schools, some other options you may want to consider include:

  • Binghamton (NY): About 14k undergrads and I’d call this a likely admit

  • Providence (RI): About 4200 undergrads and I’d call this a likely admit

  • Lafayette (PA ): About 2800 undergrads and I’d call this a toss-up

  • Trinity College (CT): About 2200 undergrads and I’d call this a toss-up

  • Johns Hopkins (MD): About 6100 undergrads at this low probability school

  • Swarthmore (PA ): About 1600 undergrads at this low probability school

I’ll second the recommendations of Union for you and Babson, too, if Bentley is of interest.

6

thank you all for the great feedback. i will look at the other schools that were mentioned. and great point about balancing undergrad cost and prestige with law school.

2 Likes
7

I also like your list overall, but I do think Northeastern has become a bit of a problematic application, at least if you want Boston. The reputation in my circles is they are one of the colleges that will waitlist or even reject high numbers kids they think are very unlikely to yield.

I’m not sure this is actually a problem, though, because you have what I would consider to be a very thoughtful list of Likely colleges. All those schools I think would give you exactly what you want, a very good undergrad education and excellent preparation for law school, including if you major in Economics or perhaps other social sciences as you may explore.

That being said, there are other colleges I think you at least could consider. Like kids in my circles who like universities like WashU, Chicago, or Princeton might consider colleges like William & Mary and Rochester.

W&M is not an easy admit but also does not appear to be yield protecty (they are maybe more likely to consider such an applicant for the Monroe, which is sort of like a combination of honors and merit for OOS students). It is also a really unusual public in that it feels much more like a private, and as a public they are sort of automatically less expensive than full pay privates (the joke in my circles is everyone who goes to W&M gets a $25K/year merit scholarship, which is a reference to how it is seen as equivalent to other desirable privates).

Rochester is an excellent all-around university with a really nice curriculum structure, similar in some ways to WashU’s curriculum in fact. And they also have a pretty robust merit program.

And then people who were interested in LACs like Bowdoin or Connecticut College would also tend to consider LACs like Carleton, Grinnell, Richmond, and Macalester. None of these are super easy admits but they are not necessarily quite so flooded with applications as their Northeast peers, and the last three of those have merit (not Carleton).

But again, this is not necessarily something you have to consider. But I do think sometimes it can pay off to look outside of the Northeast/Boston for some less yield-protecty options.

2 Likes
8

I think W&M is not overly reachy for this student, as a male and OOS student (40% of the class is)

Other than U Chicago, it seems the list is highly focused in the NE, but W&M is a great school that fits the student’s list.

3 Likes
9

Yeah, the OP has great numbers, well-balanced course rigor, really solid mix of ECs, and is male . . . this is a somewhat common profile in my circles, and applicants like this still tend to do really well at a lot of very competitive colleges–as long as they are not yield-protecty. Obviously the Reaches-for-everyone are Reaches for everyone, but there are other colleges which can almost operate more like Targets for kids like this in that they might well get admitted to half or more of the ones to which they apply–if they apply to the right ones.

But that yield protection issue seems very real to me. Ironically an obviously highly competitive profile like the OP’s can become problematic when a college suspects that that applicant would likely prefer a bunch of other colleges, one or more of which is likely to give them an offer. But then some colleges respond to that problem not by giving up, but by admitting the kid and offering them merit. Which is obviously preferable!

Again, though, if the OP would strongly prefer to be in the Northeast, with only limited exceptions like Chicago and WashU, that is also fine as they already have a smart list for a kid like that.

1 Like
10

thanks again everyone for sharing your thoughts!

11

I think that you have a good mix of schools, and that you are doing very well.

If law school is likely, then you should budget for a full 7 years of university. Even lawyers do not make enough for it to be easy for them to pay off education loans. This of course implies that if you can it would be best to avoid debt for your bachelor’s degree, and if possible save some $$$ in a college fund to help with law school.

There are a variety of types of lawyers. Most of the lawyers that I know work for high tech companies and sometimes deal with patents. As far as I know all of them have a bachelor’s degree in engineering or computer science. However, there are also lots of lawyers who have a bachelor’s degree in economics. I have always assumed that they are involved in some sort of law that is related to economics. Thus you can major in almost anything and go on to law school, but what you major in as an undergraduate student appears to have some impact on what type of lawyer you end up being.

This is very good.

I was a math major. However, I took a few economics courses along the way, and quite liked them. The last economic course that I took was econometrics – basically quantitative economics. I liked this a lot. To me it seemed to take economics away from “my opinion, your opinion” to something that can be quantitatively verified. However, even as a math major econometrics had me spending a Saturday afternoon making sure that I had a solid foundation in linear algebra. I don’t recall whether multi-variate calculus was also needed but that was something I had used in so many other ways that it would have just come naturally. It looks to me like you are quite good at math and to me this looks like something that will be useful as an economics major, and also later as a law student.

I am wondering whether you would want to consider other LACs such as Williams College or Amherst College.

Mostly however to me it looks like you are doing very well.

1 Like
12

Economics major programs do vary in math (and statistics) intensity, so a student’s preference for the level of math intensity can make some economics major programs better or worse fits based on that.

13

This is not entirely true. Environmental law, patent law, and a few other specialties have a tie to an undergrad degree. But litigators come from every discipline. Personal injury, immigration, even banking and securities- no prior background required. And trying to put the thumb on the scale by majoring in something “law school related” is often a mistake. Law schools don’t care what you major in. So major in something you love and are good at.

2 Likes
14

You seem to be categorizing these fairly well IMO. ED or not may sway things a bit around the edges.