Hey Parents, Some Advice

Parents Forum
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<p>Posts: 32 Views And No Responses?? Please!!! Just List Schools! </p>

<p>Not chances, Just List Some Schools, thats all!!! </p>

<p>1520? 3.88UW? URM? Where to go??? </p>

<p>Just like the title says, with stats like these, just at first glance, where should someone like that aim for. It’s very general, but what schools pop into your mind right away as 1)safety 2)match 3)reach.</p>

<p>I know many other factors important, I just want to know gut reactions to stats like these regardless of ECs etc…JUST SAY WHAT COMES TO MIND RIGHT AWAY</p>

<p>Oh, also at least in top 5 of class of 400. 720 CR 800 M 700 W, so that’s 1520/2220, AP scholar with distinction, if that helps</p>

<p>Thanks!!</p>

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<p>I think there are at least 500 schools you can get into. What do you want to major in and where in the world do you want to go?</p>

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<p>Okay, let’s just say no LACs, no south or west, but just name specific schools that come to mind that a person with these stats applies to, including safety match and reach</p>

<p>Major is totally undecided</p>

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<p>All the Ivys, MIT, Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, NYU, Georgetown, University of Virginia, University of Michigan</p>

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<p>Well, some schools require SATs and some don’t. Do you want big? sports? engineering? what about finaid?</p>

<p>You just don’t give enough info for us to help. Nor have you said what you’ve researched.</p>

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<p>ok, some more info SAT II 740 MathII 730 Spaniish 620 Lit 580 Chem,</p>

<p>no tech schools, no LACs, not too many big schools</p>

<p>A few 5s, a few 4s, a few 3s on AP tests</p>

<p>But once again, this isn’t a chance thread, just go by gut reactions to stats like these
oh and no fin aid needed</p>

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<p>Not a game I want to play. Why on earth should we waste our time listing schools for you, when we have no idea what you are looking for? Gut reaction to stats? Well, my reaction is that they are decent stats. They can get you in at a lot of schools. Go to Collegeboard and you can page through the schools yourself and see which ones you are in the range for.</p>

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<p>Buy a book like Fiske’s Guide and look through it yourself.</p>

<p>On the basis of the question you asked, I’d say very few want to take a student who doesn’t bother to do his own research for himself.</p>

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<p>Another factor you need to be thinking about when composing a list is your family’s financial situation.</p>

<p>Will you be needing a great deal of financial aid? Are you opposed to the idea of borrowing money to pay for college?</p>

<p>If either of those things is true, you may want to focus your search on colleges where you have a good chance of getting a merit scholarship. This will yield an entirely different list than if you just use your interests, your stats, and your geographical preferences to choose colleges.</p>

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<p>as said above in my post, no fin aid needed. Also, I already have a full merit scholarship at my state U. Now for interests so I can be more clear, sorry chedva and anxiousmom. Probably premed, major in math maybe, but also like journalism , economics, spanish, and international studies. I have done research, a lot, but I am at a loss. I just want to know places parents or others would suggest, I already know about a lot of schools, but cannot visit due to family issues, can’t visit at all. So I need some advice.
If I must, schools I’ve looked at include Northwestern, cornell, UPenn, JHU
Thanks</p>

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<p>If you are only now thinking about schools in which to apply…you are VERY late. Most RD deadlines are January 1st. It takes time to fill out the appl, write a good essay or two, and complete supplemental appls. Also, your GC and teachers need time to complete their recommendation letters and forms.</p>

<p>A better question is which schools have late RD appl deadlines. You don’t have much time…Good Luck and let us know what you decide.</p>

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<p>Look, a URM with 1520 SATs and ranked in the top 1% of his or her high school class is competitive anywhere. At that level, there really aren’t any “match” schools – all your matches are reaches, and everything else is some degree of safety.</p>

<p>So, mid-sized, non-tech universities in the east and midwest where people like that are: All the Ivies, Georgetown, Chicago, Notre Dame, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Tufts, Brandeis, Carnegie-Mellon (but that may be a little tech-y). You might want to look at Virginia, too – small and snooty for a state university, and not so far south. And Michigan, a great large state university people love, and to which you would already have been admitted if you had applied earlier (but which gets a little harder as time goes on).</p>

<p>Schools that people like that would be clear safeties for you: The other colleges in DC (American, George Washington), Rochester, Syracuse, Northeastern, Boston University. Larger, but great, state universities: Wisconsin, Penn State, Vermont, UMass Amherst, U Maryland - College Park, Indiana.</p>

<p>And why no LAC’s?</p>

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<p>Wow. You can write your own ticket. I think Harvard if you like cities and Princeton if you like rural with those SATs gpa and URM. But you do need that certain something that says to the admission office that you’re way more interesting to be around than all the other URM applicants with high SAT and gpa.</p>

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<p>With such wide interests and no clear feeling about location (urban, suburban, rural?) or size (no LAC implies not too small), I’d just go stick my stats into the College Board calculator and apply to a variety at random - say four Ivys, four almost Ivys (maybe look at the Newsweek list of 25 New Ivys), and four safety/matches. Then do your homework and visit later. My son’s original list of safety/matches (slightly better stats than you, but not URM) were the following (I’ve subtracted the real techie schools): Michigan State, U of Michigan, Lehigh, U of PA, NC State U., Bucknell, Drexel, SUNY Binghampton. Boston U. </p>

<p>I have the feeling that you are the sort of person who could probably make their happiness anywhere. With no clear strong interests or preferences - it really is hard to know where to start. Have you visited anywhere yet? Even just colleges in your neighborhood may give you an idea as to what appeals to you. (Or maybe not my oldest liked Berkeley, Stanford and Caltech just fine and could see himself pretty much anywhere. Luckily his strong interest in Computer Science made the elimination process easier.)</p>

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<p>thank you all so much! My family is new to the process since they are immigrants and my school deals mostly with people going to community college or state u, so not much attention left for people like me, there is some attention, but not as much info as people like you guys. Thanks again!!</p>

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<p>What kind of URM are you? If you are not African AMerican (i.e. lacking parents born in Africa or the Caribbean), Mexican American , Native American or Puerto Rican, you may not be getting that much of a URM tip since the categories that I mentioned are the URMs most in demand.</p>

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<p>Hispanic, a small central american country, but only half, is that a problem, but both my parents are immigrants, the other is not considered a minority though(north africa)</p>

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<p>If it’s for this year, go into your Guidance Counselor on Monday morning, because there’s only a week of school left before Winter Break.</p>

<p>Ask her to prepare your transcript and see if she has a description page about the school to staple on top of it.</p>

<p>Tell her that tomorrow (Tuesday), you’ll bring in a list of schools with December deadlines and the envelopes to mail them. Stop at the post office and buy the stamps, with the notice on the envelope: please use these on our school envelopes and mail out before the Winter Break.</p>

<p>Have you asked your teachers for Letters of Recommendation, and are they ready to send those if you bring them the stamped envelopes to do so, before Winter Break?</p>

<p>Etc.</p>

<p>Please let me know if any of this advice is new to you, and if so, other parents will chime in so you can be considered this year.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, I’m thinking about places from JHS’ list that have some additional later deadlines, such as Brandeis U. </p>

<p>I like the idea from the poster who said to pull 4 Ivies, 4 universities etc. just very quickly from websites.</p>

<p>JHS has excellent advice, so if you simply need a list to jump onto websites tongiht, that’s a good one.</p>

<p>We’re concerned about you missing this year’s deadlines.</p>

<p>My own first thought was University of Chicago (urban), Cornell (rural, Ivy) and if I remember well, maybe a mid-January deadline (8 years ago that was so, please check their website now for accuracy), Brandeis U (eager to see more URM’s; has some second-deadline chances to apply; a small university outside of Boston; half the students are Jewish, mostly modern style Jewish while the other half are from a variety of other backgrounds and countries); UCLA just so there’s something warm-weather for you; Emory U in Atlanta (safety, interesting community for URM’s with so many AA’s); now I’m thinking about a good quality recommendation in FLorida/Texas/N.Mexico where you’d enjoy other Hispanic students around you but I dunno the territory; same idea for So.California (UCLA I guess). </p>

<p>If there’s time, an application to one or two of these: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, UPenn or Brown (I already mentioned Cornell above).</p>

<p>Johns Hopkins University is a very interesting thought, right in the middle of a fine neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland. Actually Baltimore lacks for local Hispanic people; it’s a real anomaly, although it’s got a large AA demographic. No PUerto Ricans, as in so many other Northeastern cities. I don’t know why, but it’s a difference. JHU might welcome the diversity from a South American applicant. </p>

<p>You haven’t identified your home state. Even if you get all of your tuition etc. paid for, there are travel expenses to home sometimes, but you’ll find your way. You’d probably work on campus at a job to get some spending money and that could be saved carefully for trips to home instead of Starbucks. You sound ready to travel anywhere in this country, but some of us are thinking how much it costs to get kids around by plane. If there’s a good bus or train route between your college and home, it might mean a lot to you, even once each year, to visit home.</p>

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<p>Harvard, because their new financial aid policy is so good, even for families who would not qualify for aid at most schools.</p>

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<p>With numbers like yours, it concerns me a little that you are asking other people on a message board to do your work for you. You can get some good college guides at the library and make your list. You can insist that your GC help you. If you aspire to top schools, you can figure this out. And then you can make much better use of this board by asked specific questions about specific schools.</p>

<p>Equally troubling is your tone, frankly: </p>

<p>Posts: 32 Views And No Responses?? Please!!! Just List Schools!
Not chances, Just List Some Schools, thats all!!!
JUST SAY WHAT COMES TO MIND RIGHT AWAY</p>