Hi I was just wondering if you guys think I could get into Northeastern which is my top choice. Also wondering if I should early action or early decision, I’m also undecided but definitely in STEM.
Below are my stats and details:
Academic:
4.0 unweighted GPA
4.70 Weighted GPA on a 4 scale
Class rank: 2/187
SAT Score: 1440 (waiting on score for Oct 5)
Awards: Yale Book Award for Academic Excellence, AP Scholar with Distinction
APs: 9 (4s and 5s on all)
Honors: 17
Extracurricular:
Part Time Sales Associate at Best Buy
Unpaid Worker at my dad’s store helping out
JV Soccer (3 years)
Varsity Tennis (3 years)
Class of 2025 Secretary (2 years)
Video Editing Club (9th and 10th grade)
Part Time Town Youth basketball Referee
College Essay:
About how my trip to my home country when I was an adult had a huge influence on the way I look at life, being more grateful and realizing that others have it way worse than me. (gist of it)
Profile:
Immigrant now a U.S. Citizen
First-gen
Massachusetts
Other colleges I am applying to:
Boston University
Tufts University
Boston College
UMass Amherst
^^ all of these doing regular except amherst
Costs:
Family will pay for it, don’t want to pay more than 40k a year though.
Some students who apply to the Boston Northeastern campus can actually get accepted to one of the other less competitive NU locations. Would you want to do that?
I would run the net price calculator or rather have your family do so. I linked below.
If it comes up $40k or less, ED. If not, EA.
This way you protect your budget.
On your list, only UMASS is safe. You can spend $40k with many schools but you need to do the NPC on Tufts ( no merit aid), BC, ahd BU. Your list, if you don’t have need, they don’t equal your budget and you’d want to find other schools.
Good luck.
Ps - if you like Northeastern, look at Drexel, and maybe Cincinnati (check them for co op opportunities). It if $40k is the goal, SUNY schools are close by.
I know people attending Northeastern Boston campus in stem major currently with lower stats than you. She is currently paying full price close to $100K a year. So you have a decent chance to get accepted there paying full price. For $40K/year budget, you should look into state college, especially for stem major. With your stats, look into state college giving out merit, such as Ohio state or low tuition schools such as Purdue or Georgia Tech. Good Luck.
You would have a strong chance of being admitted to Northeastern Boston ED, but not guaranteed. Apply for financial aid. You would also have a chance for merit aid which maxes out at about $30,000/year.
Does this mean your family’s income comes from a small business they own?
Be aware that the Net Price Calculator’s aren’t always accurate for business owners. You may need a phone call with a Northeastern financial aid officer (not the student who answers the phone) to clarify if Northeastern is going to be affordable for you.
Oof. Be careful with this topic. It sounds like an example of one of the most clichéd and disliked essay topics cited by admissions officers. Other people and their condition are not devices for awareness of your relative comfort and privilege. If you witnessed other people’s hardships as you travelled somewhere, and all it made you do was appreciate what you have as you flew home, well, that’s not going to go over well. Classic, classic college essay mistake.
If your family owns a small business and your budget is 40K I would not recommend that you ED anywhere unless your family can afford the full COA excluding any guaranteed merit
Here are some stats for this past admission cycle (copied and pasted from toptieradmission), so take this for what it’s worth. It seems to be known that NEU prioritizes yield. If you are a great candidate if you apply regular admission, Early Acton, or Early Decision 1 or 2. However, the stats below do not lie. If you apply ED1 or 2, since NEU is yield conscious (presumably), you have a much greater chance of acceptance. If you apply EA you have an increased chance. However, you run the risk that they could believe you could reject them and therefore they might reject you or accept you NUin sending you abroad the first semester which does not count to their yield admission stats. If you want to go to NEU Boston, it’s your number one choice, you love their coop program and need to be in Boston, and cost does not matter, then why not apply ED1 or 2? Its not guaranteed, but you give yourself a better chance and they know NEU is your number one choice in college, helping their yield and padding their stats. However, if you don’t want to pay more than $40K including room and board and scholarships are not guaranteed, then, you should not apply ED. Either you bite the bullet or not. You cannot have it both ways. What you could also do is contact the admissions and financial aid offices and somehow negotiate them, but I don’t know if that would be successful or not pre-application, and if it would at all negatively affect your chances at the school (if they are need aware or blind).
Northeastern prioritizes applicants who show that they prioritize the school: while only 3,000 of the 50,000 students who applied Early Action to the Northeastern Class of 2026 were accepted (a 6% admit rate), 875 of the 2,100 students who applied to the Class of 2026 ED1 — an impressive 32.41% — were accepted. Early Decision applications have also risen dramatically since 2015 — from 772 applications to last year’s 5,872, which itself was a 30% increase over the previous year alone!
Northeastern College Admissions Wrap Up
Class of 2028
Northeastern received a record 98,373 applications for fall 2024. Northeastern received 56,000 EA applications to the Class of 2028 and accepted 2,640 students, for a rate of 5 percent. In the Early Decision II round they accepted, 600 students, from the pool of 6,000, for a rate of 20 percent.
You will get in, but you should take umass amherst for the value. None of these schools is worth 200k more than umass. Hopefully you will get honors college, too.
I don’t want to be too quick to judge without seeing the whole thing, but that essay topic is really dangerous. Admissions officers want to see personal growth in some way, and just recognizing that you’re better off than other people does not hit the mark. I’m sure you have good intentions with it, but it can very easily come across as putting other people down when you talk about how your situation is better. I’m not saying you should completely scrap the idea, but try to find a way to incorporate personal growth and avoid anything that could possibly come across as degrading other people less fortunate than you. Tbh, the main message of most college essays are pretty cliche anyways, so that’s not necessarily a reason to avoid a topic, but you have to find a way to make it unique to you.
thanks i appreciate it, ill take the feedback. I was honestly planning on changing the topic anyways because my word choice and structure was just bad anyways. Thanks.
thanks i appreciate it, ill take the feedback. I was honestly planning on changing the topic anyways because my word choice and structure was just bad anyways. Thanks a lot.
I just decided to early action after talking with my parents. Because I am undecided and am not sure of the expenses, I want to compare my options later in February when I get back my admissions decisions.