Intended Major(s)
Finance/Business (for all schools with undergraduate business schools)
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) [all schools with the major, i.e. USC, Umich, Yale]
Political Science (All other non-CS specified schools)
GPA, Rank, and Test Scores
Note: Weighted Scale [
AP/DE: A+ is 5 – A is 4.7
H: A+ is 4.5 – A is 4.2
CP: A+ is 4 – A is 3.7
]
I took college classes (outside school) so I will specify both:
Without College: 3.70/4.03
With College: 3.75/4.13
UC GPA: 3.80 | Uncapped: 4.17 | Capped: 4.07
Rough Class Rank: Top 10% / 353 students
ACT: 34.25 (35M, 35S, 34E, 33R) → Retaking in Sept.
List your HS coursework
Took/Taking 8 APs, 14H, 6 DEs
2nd highest course rigor in grade
Awards
Top 50 Globally, Top 10 in NA - Harvard Crimson Global Case Competition (1,250+ teams)
2nd place, State Champion Runner Up - National Personal Finance Challenge ($500, 500+ students)
3rd place - Congressional App Challenge; granted opportunity to video pitch congress @ hackathon 6.0
4th place - National Economics Challenge: David Ricardo ($125, 300+ students)
3x Speech States (group discussion), 4x Tournament Finalist, 3x Honorable Mention, 4x Top Novice
Extracurriculars
Sole Proprietor
a. E-Commerce, Wholesaling & Reselling Businesses/proprietorships
b. Launched 5+ small businesses; earned $15,000 in revenue; got 250,000+ views and 1.5m product impressions, all through organic outreach.
Co-Founder
a. Nova - Smart DECA Studying (dba novadeca.com)
b. Built a DECA studying app; gained 150+ monthly active users, with 8+ states represented.
Founder & President
a. [REDACTED]
b. Created nonprofit site to connect students with internships; 2,500 listings, 3,000 matches, 100 monthly active users; built full website from scratch.
Founding Engineer; built the app from scratch
a. [REDACTED], subsidiary of the [REDACTED] Party (dba [REDACTED])
b. Built a political wiki app for the 9th largest political party worldwide; reached 5,000+ downloads on google play, ownership now transferred to the party.
Private Equity Intern
a. [REDACTED], Search Fund, Healthcare
b. Analyzed 125+ companies; built financial models to derive bid prices for companies; supported entrepreneur’s search to acquire a business worth ~10m.
Elected Senator Clerk & Defense Lawyer
a. Boys State Massachusetts
b. Chosen as state senator (2% selectivity) and clerk; qualified to primaries (through 2 elections) for Boys Nation; won 5 of 6 cases as public defender;
Co-founder & President
a. Finance & Consulting Club
b. TBD (12th grade)
Editor-in-Chief
a. [REDACTED], financial markets journal
b. Led a journal; managed 20+ undergraduate editors and 350+ members, helped create 85+ articles; won first place in stock pitch contest as an intern.
Student Senator
a. Student Senate
b. TBD (12th Grade)
STEM Mentor
a. [REDACTED], [REDACTED] Camp
2b Taught 300+ underserved students to build and code robots; led soldering and programming workshops; 180+ volunteer hours. Essays/LORs/Other
8/10 English Teacher → Good Relationship
9.5/10 Stats/CS Teacher → Show huge growth (Hated me soph. yr loved me junior yr)
Schools
Planning on Shotgunning:
Harvard University
Economics / Government
Columbia University
Business Management / Financial Economics / Economics-Political Science
Stanford University
0
REA: Yale University
Ethics, Politics and Economics / Computer Science & Economics
University of Pennsylvania
Business Undeclared (Wharton)
University of Chicago
Business Economics / Preparation for Business Careers
Duke University
Economics / Finance Minor / Philosophy, Politics & Economics Certificate
University of California at Berkeley
Unspecified Business
New York University
Business / Finance / Entrepreneurship
Cornell University
Business Administration
University of California at Los Angeles
Business Economics / Political Science
Northeastern University
Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, Finance, General
Northwestern University
Economics / Political Science
Carnegie Mellon University
Business Administration
Western University
Business Administration / Business Law
University of Michigan
Business Administration (Ross) / Computer Science (Eng)
ED2: Vanderbilt University
Human Organizational Development
University of Southern California
Business Administration (Marshall) / Philosophy, Politics, and Economics / Pre-Law
University of Texas at Austin
Unspecified Business (McCombs) / Computer Science / Economics (BS)
Boston University
Finance
Boston College
Finance / Pre-Legal
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Business Administration / Philosophy, Politics and Economics / Entrepreneurship
Georgetown University
Finance / Political Economy
Tulane University
Finance / Political Economy / Law, Economics, & Policy
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Computer Science / Business: Finance (Isenberg)
Georgia Tech
Business Administration / Public Policy
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Business Undeclared (Gies) / Economics
Indiana University at Bloomington
Business/Commerce, General
McGill University
Business & Economics
Binghamton University
Business Administration - Leadership and Consulting
So I assume you understand your grades are not as good as the grades of most of the successful applicants to many of those colleges. So, you are implicitly hoping they will make an exception to their normal standards in your case.
And they do make some exceptions, but they are observably rare. To be very blunt–and some of them are being increasingly blunt about this issue themselves–these days they are getting more and applications which they don’t think are really competitive, often from applicants who they see as more interested in just going to a famous college that they think will make them successful, as opposed to having really thoughtful reasons for choosing their college in particular for their application list. And so they are trying to quickly identify and reject such applicants, so they can focus their attention on the applicants they actually want to consider.
Given this, I think your best bet for persuading such a college to make you an exception is to carefully choose a small list of such colleges based on what you really want in a four-year college experience, academically and non-academically. And then make your best pitch to those specific colleges. It probably won’t work, but at least it might.
And I know a lot of kids feel like they should be able to apply to a long list of colleges that were not carefully chosen in this way, but then basically fool the colleges into thinking that each of them were carefully chosen. And maybe that works sometimes, but I strongly suspect in most cases it backfires, because the colleges do in fact figure out what is really happening, and such applicants get included among the ones they are quickly moving to the reject pile.
So personally, I would not take that risk, I would actually try to do what they really want their competitive applicants to do.
As others have said, your list is way, way too long. You are going to need to write essays that are specific to each application, and you just will not be able to do a good job on that many essays. You do not want your essays for any one specific selective school to sound like “generic essay with the name of the college added to fill in the blank”. Instead you want your essays for any specific school to sound like you understand what you like about the school, are aware of the schools strengths, and can explain why that specific school is a good fit for you. Cutting the list in half might be a good start.
By “Western University” I am assuming that you mean the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. I also see McGill on your list. At least in our experience applying to universities in Canada is much, much easier compared to filling out the applications for universities in the US. Also Western as far as I know is quite good for your intended major. I would be tempted to leave Western and McGill on the list partly because the applications are easy to do and they are very good schools. Also, studying abroad for a full 4 years will provide an interesting experience for you. However I agree that McGill is a reach with your GPA, and McGill will care a lot about your grades for the most recent 2 years of high school (this can be either sophomore and junior year, or junior and senior year, but can in some cases result in late admissions if second semester senior year grades are needed in borderline cases – or at least that was true many years ago when some friends from my high school were applying). In cases where a student’s grades are way above the threshold for admissions McGill can in some cases send an acceptance very quickly, but I would not expect this in your case.
My next issue is to pick out your safeties from this long list. I am thinking that the U. of Connecticut and U.Mass might be your intended safeties, and maybe Binghamton. Is this correct? Does your guidance counselor agree that these are safeties?
Leaving these five on your list, otherwise you might want to pick out the five remaining schools where you think that your chances are the best, plus the five remaining schools that you would most want to attend, and cut the rest of the list.
I think that “shotgunning” reduces the overall quality of your application - less time to spend on additional essays and other fine details that articulate “fit.” How about Babson College? It could be a good option given your interest in business and entrepreneurship. That would still be a reach school.
My main thing is that my GPA was fine until sophomore year (3.85F, 3.45S, 3.95J), in which I kinda had extenuating circumstances in a really messy divorce with my parents, chronic back problems, and a cancer diagnosis for my father.
I’m, honestly hoping they might be able to in unison with the fact that my course rigor is high and that I have taken classes in college, forgive that year in a sense
Honestly, I was thinking, Binghamton, Amherst, Western, UIUC, McGill, UF, Uconn, IU Kelley, Northeastern, and then like target or so being BU and those type schools
You’ve overestimated your chances at some of these. Amherst, UIUC, UF, Northeastern, and BU would all be reaches for business. IU Kelley would be a target.
As I stated earlier, finding your sure thing admit that you would love to attend is the most important school in your list. That’s the one you will likely end up at. It’s fine to shotgun after you have that safety figured out.
I’m not sure if its a my school thing but even my GPA and ACT are in the top 75% for admits at amherst, uf, northeaster, bu, and IU.
Looking at the past 6 years of admissions from my school, one thing is though we do have like fairly large grade deflation (i.e. i have a 3.7 UW and the 3rd highest gpa of all ppl applying business)
Your stats being in the top 75% for a particular school does not make it a safety. Look at the admission rates for these schools. Amherst, for example, has a 7% admit rate. It is a big reach. Northeastern is even lower. Your list needs a lot of work.
ETA: if you are talking about UMass Amherst, that might work. If you are talking about the private LAC Amherst, it’s a reach as I indicated.
McGill publishes cutoff scores that vary widely among the faculties. Desautells is the most selective, Last I looked Desautels’ minimum was 3.7 unweighted. They recalculate any weighted GPA to the standard 4.0 = A scale.
This is tough. I hope that you father is doing well. Cancer can of course go multiple different ways, and sometimes it feels like luck which way it goes.
Physical therapy can be very helpful for a bad back, but again this can go different ways depending upon details.
How was your junior year of high school?
McGill has rolling admissions. At least way back when I was in high school, which was in a suburb of Montreal, there were a few (very few) other students in my high school who got into McGill based on strong junior and senior years of high school. They got their acceptances very late, after they had already put down a deposit somewhere else. I do not recall whether they stayed with where they had put down a deposit or switched to attend McGill. Most of us who were accepted to McGill at the time was based on our sophomore and junior years of high school, which meant that acceptances came earlier. I think that there were also a couple of students for whom McGill asked for their mid term grades senior year and then admitted them. I think that their business school is a reach with your overall GPA, but how this comes out might depend on your GPA for specific years.
BU and such are reaches. With gpa being one the if not the most important, an entire year is not going to be overlooked, especially with most applicants having strong gpa’s for three years with high rigor and extenuating circumstances. And that’s okay, there are many amazing colleges to target with your stats.