Chance Me / Match Me: T20, 4.0UW, 1570, Women & Gender Studies

Chance Me / Match Me
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GPA -4.0UW, 4.95W
SAT 1570 (780V, 790M)
ACT 35
PSAT 1480 (National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist – Awaiting finalist decision)
AP Courses – 10 completed (Seven 5s, three 4s), 4 to be taken in senior year.
AP Capstone Diploma, AP Scholar with Distinction
National Honor Society
Academic Decathlon Team Captain
Academic Decathlon - Regional Champion, State runner-up, National Champion with several individual medals

Econ Challenge – State Champion

Trained Indian Classic Kathak Dancer – 11 years

Trained Pianist – 8 years

Participated Summer research program in the field of Women empowerment, gender and sexuality at Brown University and Carleton College

Intend to pursue major in Women, Gender and Sexuality

Volunteer with women’s shelter such as HOPE Shelter, She is the first, Feed my Starving Children

Canvassed door to door for Local congressman’s election campaign

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REA to Harvard and applying to all T20 Schools

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As long as you can pay, I could see you getting into 1 of them. It is obvious you are going for name as there are many better colleges for that major beyond the top 20.

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Yes. Not seeking financial aid. And, from personal knowledge among friend and family - if you want a good future, career and networking - Brand is more important than the education itself. Education, one can get even at Community colleges.

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Do you have a budget? You can go free or near free with your national merit status.

How do you define top 20? US News? Wall Street Journal? Forbes?

If US News, where do the LACs come into play?

Your major vs. the school - the top 20 Women and Gender Studies? One rank I saw shows Rutgers, Penn State, Michigan State, Arizona State and Minnesota in the top 20.

Top 20 is made up - it doesn’t exist. Someone wants to sell something, so they create a useless metric, and schools land where they land. The US News methodology is crap. At least WSJ uses career outcomes, etc.

The issue here is all schools aren’t the same. Columbia is in the city, Dartmouth not, etc. - wouldn’t you want to apply to schools that meet your need as you’ll be there four years, day after day?

And what’s your safety school - my daughter’s valedictorian had 10 or 11 APs, a 4.0, 36 ACT, solid ECs, applied to 16 of the US News Top 20 - and was shut out.

Not saying you’ll be but she was. She got into NYU full pay and attends UTK.

So yes, you need a safety - and perhaps that safety will be a Tulsa (free as a semi finalist, very good school) or one of the flagships like Alabama (which gives 5 years tuition, 4 years housing, and money - for finalists).

Or perhaps it will be somewhere else.

Best of luck to you.

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Major at this time is tentative and I hope to explore my options in first year. Do not have a budget. Dream schools are either Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Brown. May eventually go to law-school. I am not selecting schools from rankings based on majors - those don’t matter… I am simply going by top brand names. I did tour almost all the campuses and eliminated schools like Cornell/Dartmouth due to weather and Columbia due to extreme urban setting. My safety school is my State University whee the Honors prog. will give me guaranteed admision and its the best in the country.

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I would pick Harvard and pay tuition compared to a full-ride from say, State Univ. or even USC.

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OK - so you’re not applying to all of the top 20…or at least top 20 US News.

So if you apply to UGA (top Honors) - and get into Honors or you don’t, that’s what you need - that safety - just in case.

Good luck.

You have a solid plan - especially because you eliminated schools you don’t like.

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That’s fantastic and, in my opinion, would be hard to top. So apply where you want - you’ve got an ace in the hole.

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Are your parents or any other family alumni of any T20s?

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No.

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I think you have a reasonable shot at getting into a top school.

But please make sure you have safety school options. All T20 are essentially reaches for everyone.

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This makes ZERO sense. If that is what you doing you have not done you research beyond prestige. There is plenty of over lap, but ALL? No.

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And that’s it? Or do you have some sure things for admission on your application list too.

I’d pick a second sure thing…because if it comes to that, it’s nice to have choices.

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As others are suggesting, the US News National Universities ranking is not in fact a ranking of all US colleges by “brand name”.

I also note that the value of a brand name is almost always tied to a specific market, including factors like product market, geographic market, and so on.

This is no less true for colleges, so the brand name value of your college is going to depend on exactly what sort of next step opportunities you are looking for, where you are looking, and so on. These define your target markets, where the product will be you.

US professional-class families who have been sending their kids to selective colleges for multiple generations typically understand all that, so they carefully consider what paths their children might actually be interested in following, and then choose among the specific colleges that would be good for those paths.

And sometimes some of the US News T20 National Universities will be on such a list, but often not nearly all of them, and invariably there will be colleges on such a list that are not on that US News list.

If you are interested in approaching this like those families do, we can help out here. Including because many of us are in fact representatives of those families. So we can help you put together a college list that is more sophisticated and appropriate for you than just picking off the US News list.

But of course that is up to you.

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I’ll echo other posters in suggesting you approach your list a little more thoughtfully as opposed to shotgunning T20s. As an unhooked student, admission to these schools is very, very competitive and many top students (like yourself) are shut out. Presenting a strong narrative, to go along with your excellent background, that shows a good fit with each school is very important and I think that is tough if you are picking just on “prestige”. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t apply to as many reaches as you want - it does mean that the ones you target should have something more than a name that interests you, because a lack of legitimate interest (beyond prestige) is likely to come through in your essays.

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If you are majorly going to rely on rankings to determine your college list, you may benefit from viewing general rankings, which U.S. News does not provide. WalletHub offers one example of these:

A site such as this might introduce a school such as Swarthmore (#12) into consideration.

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OP has said that her family values prestige and name over the actual education they would be receiving. I think most of us agree that is really quite frankly a very uneducated and poor approach but I am guessing this outdated belief is strong and there will be no budging on that for OP. OP’s family will pay for a name because it is a cultural brag and no amount of telling them about the thousands of successful people who did not get into Ivies isn’t going to change their mind.

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Kinda of an uninformed commen there. As I said, I have a guaranteed admission at Honors college in State Univ. which is #1 in the country. So, I am not worried abotu fall back. So makes sense to try for Ivys. Yeah, its possible I may not get in, but I have no desire to spend $60-70K at GaTech or Tulane or any other medicre as such when I get guaranteed free education at best honors college as backup.

Having said that, prestige absolutely matters. Thats not an uneducated decision… thats a decision that comes from having parents with Doctorates from elite schools themselves. Being from an elite school vs. say Univ. of Utah or Rutgers … makes a difference between being a CEO or the President or being an executive secretary or a school teacher.

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I will make a comment here again… Brand name and prestige absolutely matters. Every see a community college graduate become a CEO or the President ? People do get good education at community colleges also and it barely costs anything there. They why even try to go to a college when education is the primary purpose. Education as a primary purpose makes sense only when you start with a defeatist stance that all I want is a degree and a comfortable life. If you want to touch the stars and make a difference and be somebody , then you have to reach for the stars.

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