Help with college list for high stat student [CA resident, 4.0 UW, 1420 SAT, pre-med]

Applying to College
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You mention that UCLA and UCB are her dream schools. If that is the case, I would prioritize the UC application. She should write, refine, evaluate, re-write and re-refine her PIQ and Activities & Awards sections. Make sure that every word in her PIQ and every character in her A&A is used wisely. She should not take Common App essays and modify them for the UC application.

The title of this thread asks for help with her college list. If UCLA and UCB are really her dream and you want help with the UC Application, you might look in the UC General forum.

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This 100%

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Perhaps @AustenNut can give their opinion on your chances of acceptance at the colleges you listed in your first post.

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You didn’t mention sophomore year. The UCs and SDSU look at grades in courses taken in 10th & 11th grade. Can you please calculate her three UC GPAs using this calculator? GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub

Also, please make sure that her honors courses were weighted by the UCs. Some HS honors courses are not given extra weight by the UCs. You can check which honors courses at her HS are UC weighted by looking them up here. University of California A-G Course List

You don’t live in the Central Valley do you? Are you familiar with UC ELC?

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I may have overlooked it, but I haven’t seen budget discussed yet. Will she be eligible for need based aid? Who will pay for UG and medical school?

I’m retired now, but I used to discuss current perceptions of careers with all of my healthcare provider patients, including vet med docs. Debt was a common complaint. One of my patients made his last loan payment at age 62. I retired at age 61.

No more questions on budget unless you ask.

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Great!

Another poster mentioned Whitman and St Olaf. These are great LACs, academicky, strong in STEM, robust merit programs, I would definitely second those nominations for schools you should check out.

Oberlin is probably most famous for their conservatory, but they are another very strong STEM LAC with merit. They are also not far outside Cleveland so lots of local experience opportunities.

Kalamazoo is another really cool LAC with a special curriculum structure called the K Plan. Very strong Bio and STEM in general, and they are located in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is a decent-sized smaller city, also the home of Western Michigan and its med school, and is a bit of a Life Sciences hub. It is also about halfway between Detroit and Chicago, with trains to each.

Hendrix is another strong LAC for these purposes, in Conway, Arkansas, which is about half an hour from Little Rock. They start with a relatively modest cost of attendance and then add a robust merit program.

Rhodes is in Memphis, and a very popular LAC for premeds with robust merit, and what looks like a beautiful campus (I have never been, but I would like to!).

Finally, Ursinus is about 45 minutes outside of Philly, again strong related departments and robust merit.

This is really just a sampling, there are so many LACs that might be suitable, and obviously you don’t need to apply to a gazillion of these, just your favorites. But I do think taking some shots at any LACs that feel good and have a lot of merit could produce some strong offers.

Edit: Oh, and I meant to second the recommendation to check out women’s colleges if that is at all of interest. Again they tend to hit all the big points of strong in premed-related departments and strong prehealth advising, and some have possible merit as well.

Vassar, a former women’s college now coed, is also great, but no merit unfortunately. Still, it is such a great college it might be worth taking a look.

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I do not see a mention of an Intended major especially for the UC’s and SDSU.

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Since the California publics are their own special beast, and most of them admit by major (which we don’t know yet), I have left those schools off of this list. But below are my guesses as to what your daughter’s chances might be at the schools on your current list.

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • U. of Oregon

Likely (60-79%)

  • Rutgers

Toss-Up (40-59%)

  • Purdue

  • U. of Washington - and your family should be aware that almost any major related to biology, psychology, neuroscience, anything with bio as the first three letters is capacity-constrained here. That means that even if you meet the requirements for entry into the major, you still have to compete against peers to be accepted into the major.

Lower Probability (20-39%)

Low Probability (less than 20%)

  • Cornell

  • UPenn

  • Johns Hopkins

  • Stanford

  • WashU

  • USC (if U. of Southern California)

  • BU

  • Pomona

  • U. of Michigan

  • UNC – Chapel Hill

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As your daughter works on her college list, I would urge her and your family to think about how she does with rejection. Some people can get rejection after rejection and it just fuels them to be even more brilliant wherever they land. For others, it can be really hard mentally and emotionally. In reading the thread of parents of seniors, the spring can often be a very brutal time for kids who had reach-heavy lists. I typically find that most people do better when most of their results are acceptances rather than rejections or waitlists. I don’t know your daughter, but I think that taking into account her individual makeup with respect to rejections is an important consideration in creating an application list.

Not knowing your budget or more about what your D wants out of her college experience, this list below is quite broad. But these are all schools that would prepare her well for medical school, and I think the majority would try to entice her to attend by presenting her with a merit aid package. The less likely the odds of admittance, the less likely there would be merit aid. The schools are sorted by my guesses as to what her chances for admission might be.

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • Agnes Scott (GA): About 1k undergrads at this women’s college that’s part of the Atlanta consortium where students can take classes at other area schools like Emory, Georgia Tech, and Spelman

  • Gustavus Adolphus (MN): About 2100 undergrads

  • Hope (MI): About 3300 undergrads

  • Lewis & Clark (OR): About 2200 undergrads

  • Kalamazoo (MI): About 1200 undergrads

  • Pacific Lutheran (OR): About 2300 undergrads

  • U. of Puget Sound (WA): About 1700 undergrads

  • Willamette (OR): About 1400 undergrads

Likely (60-79%)

  • College of Wooster (OH): About 2k undergrads

  • St. Olaf (MN): About 3k undergrads

Toss-Up (40-59%)

  • Mount Holyoke (MA): About 2200 undergrads at this women’s college in the 5 colleges consortium with Amherst, UMass, Smith, and Hampshire

  • Occidental (CA): About 1900 undergrads

  • Rhodes (TN): About 2k undergrads

  • Whitman (WA): About 1500 undergrads

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • Bryn Mawr (PA ): About 1400 undergrads at this women’s college in a consortium with Haverford and Swarthmore

  • Denison (OH): About 2400 undergrads

  • Kenyon (OH): About 1900 undergrads

  • Macalester (MN): About 2200 undergrads

  • Oberlin (OH): About 3k undergrads

  • Scripps (CA): About 1100 undergrads at this women’s college in the Claremont Consortium

Low Probability (less than 20%)

  • Smith (MA): About 2500 undergrads at this women’s college in the 5 colleges consortium with Amherst, UMass, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire
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D23 was accepted at UC Berkeley/STEM major with a (reported) 3 in AP Bio so…it does happen.

IMHO OP’s daughter is a strong contender for the UC’s - including UCB and UCLA. Agree with above comments that much attention should be given to PIQ’s, they will be the key.

I wish her all the best!

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It certainly does, and it’s largely based on how schools teach. Those who teach to the test usually produce high scores. Those who don’t, but who emphasize mastery for progression in college, can have students who get 3s on the AP exam, but do very well in college.

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The issue is not doing well in college. The issue is a reach heavy list!

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This student, as a resident of test free CA, is in a bit of an unknown zone. They have a high GPA, rigor and test scores. She’s a strong applicant in that paradigm. CA is always competitive though simply due to the sheer number of applicants. @Gumbymom had the most important question in that regard…major.

Otherwise, there are multiple schools that she will likely get into. I’m pretty much in line with @AustenNut. This isn’t a “chance me for all Ivy’s and T20s” post.

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Cal Poly Humboldt would be a real safety for this student and is strong in Biology-related subjects.
A difficulty with the list is that bio-related majors are among the most competitive at UCs.

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I’m sure there are multiple schools the D will get into (and thrive at). Is it worth throwing applications in to Cornell, JHU, Stanford, Penn given the odds there… and given the other fine schools on the list? That’s for the D to decide of course. But we can provide a reality check in describing the applicant pool at the “non-California publics”, where test scores are an important (not the only, but an important) part of the application. And scores well below the median often have a “story” behind them. I don’t think Yo Yo Ma (or musicians of his caliber) needed to worry about his SAT scores. But most of our kids- as special and hard-working and incredible as they are-- are not Yo Yo Ma.

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Intended major is biology or Human Biology
Yes understand it’s an extremely competitive major.
We are still looking into specific majors that might put her on the pre med path.

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Any major works for a prospective medical school applicant. All they need to do is make sure to take all the pre-requisite courses (and do well in them). I’ve got friends that were undergraduate English or History majors who went on to attend medical school.

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I agree UNC-Chapel Hill is super high reach for OOS because of NC mandates. NC State has better STEM that UNC-CH. University of Wisconsin is a top notch STEM/BioSci school. Georgetown has an excellent post-bac/med school bridging program (which I graduated from 25+ years ago). I think her personal experiences will also resonate with them. UCSD is top 5 nationally in Biosci but not on your list (my undergrad). I agree with posters who have said that undergraduate reputation is not material for medical school (the way it might for business).

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Forgot to add- we are also in CA. S23 is attending Clemson and S25 is applying now with similar stats to the OP, but definitely not applying to all of those reaches (based on older brother’s experiences)

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Thank you. UCSD is very much in the list. We will be applying to all UCs.
Thank you for the other recommendations.