Chance me: NJ, Hispanic, 1480 SAT, 4.47 W [4.0 unweighted GPA], architecture, CO 2025

Chance Me / Match Me
, ,
1

Demographics
NJ, dual citizen
Small “prestigious” all-girls Catholic high school (many people refer to it as a “feeder” for ND, Villanova, BC as a lot of the grads go there)
Female, upper middle class, white, Hispanic, (family immigrated from South America when I was a child)
Bilingual

Intended major: Architecture- preferably BArch if the school is less prestigious/good and BS or BA Arch for a better more prestigious school in order to pursue a master’s.

UW GPA wasn’t given to me yet
W GPA: 9- 4.45, 10-4.41, 11-4.47 (4 scale for regular classes, 4.5 for honors, 5 for AP)
SAT: 1480 (710 math 770 english)

Took 2 APs junior year, none freshman or sophomore year because only APUSH was offered at the time. Other than that, took all honors courses when that was available. (10 so far)
AP Bio- 5
AP Lang- 5
Planning on taking AP 2D Design, AP Calc AB, AP Lit, AP Psych, AP Italian (as well as all other required courses like theology, fin lit, etc.)

Awards

  • AATI National Italian Exam Silver Medal x2
  • National Italian Honor Society
  • FIRST Robotics Competition team awards (9-11):
    Event Winners
    Event Finalists
    Excellence in Engineering
    GM Industrial Design
    Judges’ x2
    Rookie All-Star x2
    Highest Rookie Seed x2

ECs

  • FIRST Robotics Team (9-12): Tech, Scouting, and Marketing subteams as well as pit crew (coach-selected top 10 tech members for tech work during competitions). First all-female team in the state, emphasis on women in STEM. Worked 2-4h every day from January-March, including some weekends and breaks. Volunteered at robotics-sponsored events such as blood drive, etc. Attended every competition as a pit crew member (except for World Championships in TX).
  • Peer Leader (12): Selected by peers and faculty to mentor 7th and 9th graders
  • Babysitting (paid)
  • Robotics Day Camp Counselor (paid)
  • Parish Appalachia mission trip (~45 volunteer hours)
  • Diversity Club active member (11) exec board (12): coordinate events promoting cultural awareness (food tastings, coffeehouse, multilingual prayer services)
  • Leadership program for HS girls to build personal and professional skills thru monthly meetings.
  • Italian Club active member (11,12)
  • TEAMS TSA (11): Selected for engineering and essay challenge with a 4 person group. My group’s essay came 15th out of 101 in the state.
  • Student Ambassador (12) Selected by guidance department to represent student body. Host events and lead tours for prospective students and families.
  • Physics League active member (11)
  • Prom Committee active member (11)
  • Tennis (9-12)
  • Softball (11-12): founding member of rebooted team
  • Work occasionally for my mom’s interior design company reviewing client mail, copywriting, etc.

LORs I have no idea but I think they will be at least a 7/10 because I’m in good standing with all of the teachers+ counselor I requested them from.
Portfolio I think will also be about 7/10
Main essay not done yet but I think is also at about a 7/10 currently + creative
The “gap” in performance/ECs/rigor freshman and especially sophomore year was due to personal issues- I tried to compensate for this junior year.

Cost
For budget I know I will need a scholarship or aid for most if not all schools I’m applying to, as a result I probably will not apply ED anywhere or go anywhere in the west US.

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if a scholarship is necessary for affordability, indicate that you are aiming for a scholarship and use the scholarship chance to estimate it into the appropriate group below)

  • Safety/Likely: NJIT, Drexel (would need scholarship)
  • Match: Lehigh, Pitt, RPI, Syracuse
  • Reach: Tufts, Northeastern, UMich
    also please LMK if a school should belong in a different category or any other schools that are similar. Thank you!!!
2

Can you calculate it?

3

I looked the system for converting it up online and according to different sources I would have a 4.0 because I have all A and some A+ but I don’t know if that is trustworthy?

1 Like
4

If you have all As (A-, A, A+), that’s a 4.0 using the standard calculation. :smiley::smiley::smiley:

2 Likes
5

To the extent there is any sort of standard method at all, I think this one provided by the College Board is as close as it gets:

If all your grades are As and A+s, that would indeed normally mean each grade was a 4.0, and your unweighted GPA was a 4.0 (following this procedure: “To calculate your high school GPA, add together your grades on the 4.0 scale after converting them from letter grades, and divide the sum by the number of classes you are taking.”).

I note the fact that A+s are not treated differently, but all other + and - grades are, is a very strange anomaly, and yet it is what it is.

2 Likes
6

Your guidance counselor will be the best one to chance you for the schools on your list, particularly the Catholic ones.

If a school requires a portfolio for admittance to the architecture program, then nobody can chance you for those programs on this thread. Any chancing comments here would be based on no portfolio being needed.

Has your family run the Net Price Calculators (NPCs) at the schools on your list? That should give a general idea of what your family would be expected to pay. Is that amount affordable? If not, you should eliminate the school if it doesn’t offer merit aid. Tufts does not offer merit aid, and UMich offers very little. Out-of-state public schools (apart from UVA and UNC) generally do not provide any need-based aid to nonresidents, outside of federally funded amounts (Pell grant and a loan).

What is the budget? This is important in chancing for schools like Tufts and Northeastern that say they meet the need of all accepted students, but that are not need-blind (and if they don’t say they’re need-blind, they’re not). The more financial need a student has, the harder it can be to be accepted, although it’s not impossible. But it would affect the chancing.

2 Likes
7

Thank you! Yes, my family ran the cost calculators already. I’m not sure the exact amount, I can check later. But are you saying that schools do choose to admit or reject you based off higher financial need?

8

Schools may admit or reject you based on the degree of need. Schools have budgets that they need to meet, and they only have a certain amount of money to provide for need-based aid. Once that pot of money is gone, it’s gone. Some schools may decide to go for the most exceptional candidates and give those students lots of money, but to a smaller number of students. Other schools may try and distribute money to more students, but then it’s a lesser amount of money.

To be a bit more concrete, let’s say that a school has $450,000 for need-based grants (most schools have much more, but I’m trying to give an example). That school could take 5 students who needed $90,000 each to attend the school. Or they could take 9 students who needed $50,000 each to attend the school. Or they could take 18 students who needed $25,000 each to attend the school. And no matter how they decide to divvy up the money, if they want to take 30 or 50 or however many kids that need more aid, they can’t go beyond the amount of money in their pot.

The article below goes into more depth about what happens in some admissions offices:

This aggregator provides some information on the percentage of students receiving need-based aid at a number of colleges: Need-Based Financial Aid – College Transitions

At Tufts, only 39% of students were determined to have financial need, meaning that 61% of the students have families that are full pay. Most families cannot pay $85-90k/year for college…so the fact that the majority of Tufts families pay full freight means that there is an advantage in the admissions process for them. The average need-based grant at Tufts is $53,264.

At Northeastern, 48% of students were determined to have financial need, meaning that 52% of students have families that are full pay. The average need-based grant at Northeastern is $40,623.

Thus, it appears that Tufts takes a position of offering more aid to fewer students while Northeastern offers less aid but to more students.

So it’s definitely not impossible to get into a school that says it meets full need if one needs a lot of money. But money is a factor at play in the admissions process. If there were two similar students and one family could pay $5k and the other family could pay $50k, the student whose family could pay more would likely get the advantage. But I strongly suspect that all of these schools have some students who are getting an extremely significant aid package, but it’s not a huge number of students getting them.

That’s why it’s important for chancing to know the budget when chancing for schools that say they meet 100% of need but do not say that they are need blind.

3 Likes
9

More important is whether the net price number from each college’s net price calculator is something affordable to you and your parents (note that you can only take $5.5k loans first year).

10

Go to the NAAB website and look up accredited BArch schools. There’s about 50 of them, varying in size, geography, selectivity, cost, etc.

Realize that almost every single one of them is more selective and has a lower admit rate than the broader school.

About 30-40% of them require a portfolio and how they view that portfolio will go a long way towards strengthening (or not) the application. For example your stats and a little bit of demonstrated interest would make you almost a certain admit at Syracuse in most any other program. Your portfolio would determine if you get into BArch or not. If you have no intention of putting together a portfolio you can cross any of those off your prospective list. The BArch degree track does really help narrow down options on where you’ll apply to.

If you choose to go the BA/BS Arch route and then MArch I would be looking at what prospective MArch programs (on the same NAAB listing) you might be targeting and do some research to see where those programs predominantly pull their graduate students from.

2 Likes
11

Ok this makes a lot more sense thank you!

1 Like
12

To the extent that you remain open to a pre-professional bachelor of arts degree in architecture, look into Hobart and William Smith.

13

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. If you’d like to reply, please flag the thread for moderator attention.