White male, NY Resident, average public school (class of about 300)
LGBTQ
Stats:
Valedictorian (1/300 ish)
GPA: 102.3 UW 100 W
1520 SAT no superscore, 770 math, 750 English
12 AP Courses with all 5s on the exams taken
Extracurriculars:
Summer Research Internship at a lab (50 hours/week for 12 weeks, summer before senior year)
School District Orchestra: Concertmaster of Chamber Orchestra, Symphony, and District Club (10 hours/week, 4 years)
Summer Research internship at a lab (summer before junior year, 30 hours/week, 8 weeks)
Director of a team at a nonprofit, published over 50 works (3 hours a week, all year, from 10th grade to present)
Founder and President of a school science club- volunteer at clinic + host library workshops + fundraiser for orgs etc (2 hours a week, 11th grade to present)
Varsity athlete
research journal author- authored 2 academic papers that have been published
Hospital volunteer, play violin in pediatric emergency department (2 years, 3 hours / week all year)
global health leaders conference - selected member, speaker on AIDS (3 hours a week / 8 weeks during the summer)
Honors:
Valedictorian
scholarship semifinalist
National writing award
Regional science fair award
AP Scholar With Distinction, National merit commended scholar
2 LOR (bio, lang) are great
LOR from research mentor at lab from this past summer— very very good
Essays: very well written
Decisions received:
Brown ED: rejected
UMich EA: accepted (oos)
Villanova EA: accepted + honors + semifinalist for full ride merit scholarship
UNC EA: waitlisted
UChicago EA: deferred
Stony Brook EA: accepted + full ride + honors college
Waiting on:
Harvard University
Stanford University
Yale University
Columbia University
University of Chicago
University of Pennyslvania
Duke University
Vanderbilt Universiry
Dartmouth College
Northwestern University
Johns Hopkins University
Cornell University
University of California-Los Angeles
Tufts University
Georgetown University
Notre Dame
Boston University
University of California-Berkely
Washington University in St. Louis
Interviews: had interviews for Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Duke, Dartmouth, Georgetown (Yale and Duke pre screen)
Of course he has a chance, but the schools on your list are reaches for all unhooked candidates – but I doubt you really need anyone here to tell you that.
He for sure has a chance! Unfortunately, they are all reaches, but fortunately he has two great offers from a couple of great schools. Who knows, he may get into 1, 2, or a few more…
Congratulations! This is a very good university. There will be lots of opportunities at Stony Brook.
Other than saying congratulations and wondering about budget, my other reaction to your post is that there are a lot of reaches on this list, and they are not all the same. U Michigan is huge. My one visit there was in the middle of a cold spell (it did not get up to zero F the entire time I was in Ann Arbor) so we did not get out much. Columbia is big and in the middle of a city. Dartmouth is small and in a small town in the middle of very little. I like the area around Tufts quite a bit and it is a very good university, but is not inexpensive. UC Berkeley is a long way to go to be full pay as an out of state student.
Of course the answer is yes. I think that there is quite a good chance that he will get in somewhere, in addition to the very good schools that have already accepted him.
However, admissions to “top 20” universities in the US is very hard to predict. For any particular university, I think that a student’s chances are significantly better if they have a personal and authentic answer to “why is this university a good fit for you”, and to me it is hard to know how one single student could come up with a good answer to every school on your list.
I think that you just have to wait and see what happens. However, given a very affordable admissions in hand to a very good Stony Brook, your son will have a very good university to attend in September regardless of how this works out.
By the way, one daughter is currently studying for a PhD in a biomedical field at a school that is either on your list or very much at the same level, and the other students in the same program got their bachelor’s degrees at a very wide range of universities. Definitely some of them got their bachelor’s degree at a college or university that is ranked lower than Stony Brook. They had however done very well as undergraduate students and had very good research experience. Given how well your son has done up to now, I think that he is likely to similarly do very well wherever he ends up.
Yes I totally get that. Many of these schools are different environments but my son doesn’t have much of a preference. He has done a LOT of research for each of these schools and is well informed of their programs and what draws him to each school specifically
I think he will get into 3 of the 19 remaining schools. I think the current acceptances and defferals are putting him into a band where some of the T20s will come through. I think Wash U, Boston U and Tufts.
Congratulations on his achievements! Sounds like a great kid!