Should be aware that many colleges’ economics majors require calculus and statistics, and graduate study in economics requires more advanced math. Political science can require statistics and quantitative methods used for analyzing things like polls and elections.
So doing as well as one can in high school math to be ready for calculus, statistics, and perhaps more will be helpful for a prospective economics or political science major.
how important is it for physics senior year I’m on the fence (all of the really bright students I know are struggling with Cs
also UMD is a school im interested in, was thinking of other ones first though
Competitive schools like to see all of bio, chem and physics. If you’re aiming high it’s recommended.
Also good preparation for college, which is a large part of why selective colleges might want to see it.
I’m aiming for prelaw, I am unsure as to what good schools I can go to
LSAT and law school will require skill at logic. The closest thing to that in high school subjects is math. Geometry with proofs may be the high school math course that covers that the most.
You can’t say - I want to go to Northwestern, BC or Michigan and then say - I don’t want that rigor. Well, you can say it, but they’ll say good luck elsewhere. Even UMD isn’t safe.
You said - you’re not looking at cost now - but unless your family can fund $100K a year now and another $300K for law school, you need to have a budget. In fact, building a list without a budget is silly. If you say the budget is $100K and they will pay for law at full pop too, then it’s fine.
Here’s the thing with law school - where you go is unlikely to be a hinderance. Your grades, your LSATs, your activities and post school work experience may be.
Look at Harvard - less than 600 kids in its first year class - 166 schools - schools like Christopher Newport, FIU, Miss State, Towson, and more are reprsented.
Penn - over 200 schools in its class - from Florida Gulf Coast to Marshall to Oklahoma to Western Washington.
Gtown - in its first year class -672 first year are represented by 222 schools. Imagine that.
All these top schools - UVA is another with 130+ - all these top schools have kids from colleges all over the map.
So - make sure the family is able to pay $700K. And is willing. If they can, great.
You can apply to a Northwestern as a Reach, a Syracuse as a match and a U Denver as a safety.
You can apply to Michigan as a reach, a UMD as a match and a Delaware as a safety.
Know what all six of those have in common - they’ll all get you to the same law school. Back to your quote - they are all good schools - as is Salisbury, as is UMBC, etc.
So have the chat with mom and dad. The one whose search is the worst says - i’m not concerned with cost now.
Then when they finally have the chat and get the concern, they find out 90% of their list doesn’t work and they wasted a lot of time, etc.
All of the schools you have listed are reaches. Do you have match and safety schools in mind as well? It is critical that you create a balanced application list.
I think there is reasonable evidence that for law school admissions purposes AND law school preparation purposes (not quite the same thing and the latter should be more of a focus than it often is), it would make sense for you to consider undergrad programs focused on high quality teaching, and specifically strong reading, discussing, and writing skill development. Then toss in a curriculum where you won’t be forced to take too many classes you aren’t very good at, and where you can do some exploration before picking a major.
There are different ways of approaching that, but one is to look at Liberal Arts and Sciences Colleges, aka LACs.
@NiceUnparticularMan is right about focusing on programs where you will read, write, analyze and discuss. This could be virtually anywhere, of course, but liberal arts programs - whether they are in a school within a larger university, or a small LAC school itself - tend to provide this type of preparation. Given the reaches you listed above - Northwestern, Michigan, NYU, BC - I’m guessing that you’re most interested geographically in the northeast and midwest. Some school ideas that may be less reachy, but still excellent. I’m including some midatlantic and southern schools too.
Midwest:
Macalester, Grinnell, Kenyon, Carleton, St. Olaf, Case Western, Oberlin, Wash U.(in St. Louis)
(St. Olaf is probably a safety, the rest are high targets/low to mid-level reaches. Wash U may be a higher reach, but not as reachy as Northwestern/NYU etc.).
Northeast:
Bates, Colby, Skidmore, Connecticut College, Fordham, Boston University, Colgate, Holy Cross, Vassar. Some of these are reachier than others, and some - Skidmore, Fordham, Connecticut College - are targets.
MidAtlantic:
You could also look at George Washington, American, William & Mary and University of Richmond. These schools may already be on your radar, and again, some of these are reachier.
Southern:
Wake Forest, Elon, Rhodes College, maybe even Davidson for a reachier option.
This is off the top of my head - definitely missing quite a few schools. But hopefully you get the idea that there are a lot of schools that will provide great preparation for law school and/or anything else if you change your mind. You just need to focus first on your safeties and targets that you really like and would be happy to attend. Then definitely apply to a few reaches as well, but this should be last on your list in importance.
Final note. I just can’t help myself from saying this any time law school comes up. The absolute best thing you can do for yourself if you do stick with your plan to apply to law school is to not go straight through from college to law school. Take at least one, and preferably two years off in-between college and law school to get some work experience. The legal job market is absolutely brutal, and those that come to law school straight from college are increasingly at a pretty big disadvantage. Students that come in with solid work experience are immediately in a much better position to gain employment in a recruiting process that now starts the moment you walk in the door as a 1L, especially if you are interested in private sector law firms.
I will add to this very fine post- especially if you are interested in government! The general public is mostly unaware of how brutally competitive some of the government jobs can be. Right now is a historical blip (jobs as AUSA’s going begging, for example, and the DOGE cuts decimating several important Justice Department agencies and offices). But things will revert back by the time any current college student is ready for law school. I know students in real life who say things like “I want to go into Big Law after law school but if that doesn’t work, I’ll get a job as a prosecutor”.
At least at the federal level, those prosecutor jobs are MORE competitive than Big Law, not less. And for the most competitive parts of the country- the trend is to join government AFTER a year or two in Big Law.
The OP is looking at colleges right now. The focus on the job outlook for lawyers is a bit premature.
This is a fantastic post.
I’ll just toss in a general observation. Most of the Great Lakes/Midwest is less popular nationally as a possible college destination than the East Coast (with a sort of partial exception for Chicago). So too the Southeast, at least once you get out of the DC orbit.
What this means is colleges of comparable financial resources, academic department quality, and so on are usually a bit less selective when they are in those regions, as compared to their otherwise peers in the Northeast Coastal region. Not usually a lot less selective, and indeed often there is little or no difference in things like standardized test distributions. But, maybe not so crazy with the ECs, maybe a little more tolerant of some grade imperfections when everything else looks really good to them, maybe even some merit opportunities, that sort of thing.
For some kids, this observation makes them less desirable as well. They see going somewhere that more other kids want to go as inherently more desirable, more “prestigious” (which is basically a code word for impressing HS peers and family members and other people unlikely to actually matter to their educational and career progression).
However, I think a savvy young person thinking about grad or professional school can see these as opportunities to get admissions, and indeed sometimes merit offers, from undergrad programs that actually have excellent reputations among next-step educational gatekeepers. Including because those next-step gatekeepers tend to care a lot less about ECs (and certainly not in the way highly selective colleges did), or what you did in HS classes, and so on.
So, they are happy to take people who do really well academically in these colleges, and test well as relevant. Because they know those people are in fact well prepared to thrive in their own program.
That doesn’t mean you can’t apply to Northeast Coastal colleges. I’d just take seriously the possible benefits of having a robust list of colleges from the Midwest and/or Southeast as well.
Nice post. OP might (if they want suggestions) clarify what they are looking for - i.e. an LAC as they have BC, NU and U Michigan - so it might just be mid size and larger. And the three noted are urban/heavy suburban and many of these aren’t.
But lots of names for them to research, many of which they may be unfamiliar with but are strong but are also very small.
Just noting - if they come back looking for a list, they can note what they seek in a school so we can better provide names.
Just a note to @anonymous47
Yes, there is an admissions penalty for schools located in the northeast, both in terms of competitiveness for spots and availability of merit aid. If you are open to another area of the country outside of the northeast, then you can benefit from this. For example, schools like Grinnell, Macalester, Kenyon all offer merit aid. Comparable schools in the Northeast- Bates, Colby, Colgate, etc - do not offer any merit aid. Grad schools - including law schools - likely look upon all of these schools as academic peers, so a student that is flexible geographically may want to take advantage of this.
But many do - the Trinity, Connecticuts and I’d say NE (you might say mid atlantic) - Laf, F&M, Gettysburg, Dickinson -etc - more in line with the last two than Grinnell, which is of a higher ilk but yes, needs to buy kids to the middle of nowhere Iowa 
update finished with 6 A’s and a B in precalc
and I am taking physics next year
That is awesome! Congrats and thanks for the update. Getting 6 A’s and 1 B and having an UW GPA of 3.86 with lots of honors and AP classes is great. Your four reaches are still reaches becuase of their very low admit rates. BC is your most likely admit of the four, but it’s still a reach. If you ED it may be closer to a high target in the sense that your stats are in mid-range of students who are admitted there and their ED acceptance rate is 33%. (However, I know from my kids’ schools BC acceptance statistics differ pretty substantially from what one would normally predict based on overall stats…so maybe look at your school stats on these schools and see how you compare to recent admits).
You have a lot of other good suggestions in the prior posts. I agree with the other poster who mentioned that ED can help you a lot at some schools. Where else are you considering? Good luck!