Match Me: CA resident, 3.9uw, 1530 SAT, bio/biotech

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • U.S. citizen
  • California resident
  • Public high school, ~550 graduating class size

Budget
REALLY varies depending on school. For example, my parents don’t want to pay more than UC tuition for a school worth same/less than a UC. But if a school like MIT cost $130K/year (which it doesn’t), they would be willing to pay that. Sorry for this nonconcrete answer; I know the ‘worth’ of a school can be subjective but this is all I’ve got :frowning:

Intended Major(s)

  • Biology or adjacent major (long term goal is get PhD & go into research/industry)

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • 3.92 unweighted, 4.69 weighted (4.0 scale)
  • Class rank: N/A
  • 1530 SAT score, 1550 superscore

List your HS coursework

13 APs (9 excluding senior year).

  • English: AP Lang, AP Lit
  • Math: AP Calc BC, AP Stats
  • Science: AP Physics 1 (in progress), AP Bio, AP Chem
  • History and social studies: AP every year besides freshman
  • Language other than English: AP Chinese
  • Visual or performing arts: Orchestra
  • Other academic courses: AP CS A

Awards

  • Awarded prize at county science fair but didn’t make it to states
  • USABO certificate of merit - 2 years
  • National Merit Commended Student
  • AP Scholar

Extracurriculars

  • Lead a few bio/chem clubs at school (2-3 yr)
  • 6 wk internship at biotech company last summer
  • Comp bio student research program (2 yr)
  • Program involved in community service: board member (3 yr)
  • Volunteer for teaching coding to middle schoolers (only in sophomore year)
  • Orchestra (3 yr), including soloist once (from winning competition)
  • Music-related community service (2 yr but not hugely active)

Schools
So far, I’ve applied to Stanford (reach obviously) and Univ of Washington. Almost done with UCs. I know this should’ve been done way earlier but I’m really struggling to build a college list and would greatly appreciate any suggestions. There just seems to be too many options! Here are some things I’m looking for (I completely understand that it would be difficult to reach all these criteria, but it would be nice to have at least most):

  • Academic but not TOO intense
  • Collaborative over cutthroat (like I don’t want any sabotaging between students)
  • Strong in biology/adjacent majors
  • Quality teaching from professors
  • Not TOO small (i.e. large enough to meet a great variety of people and not see the same students every time I walk to class)
  • Strong research, good research opportunities for undergrad
  • Prepares you fairly well for career
  • Has good study abroad program (I don’t know much about studying abroad but really want to try it for part of college)
  • On-campus housing OR live with classmates nearby
  • Not strongly affiliated with a religion or specific gender
  • More or less STEM-focused
  • Easy to participate in career-unrelated activities with 0 prior experience (like I might want to try a sport just for fun). Basically I want to try new things in college!!
  • I don’t know whether large universities or small liberal arts colleges would be a better fit - I like the idea of tight-knit/strong communities…but also want a large campus and to meet a lot of people. It’d be nice to learn directly from my professors since they’re probably more qualified than their teaching assistant…but I’m not really good at forming strong student-teacher relationships. Finally, I like liberal arts colleges’ reputation for providing hands-on learning and containing people who love learning for learning’s sake…but I like that large unis have a wider range of academic choices and extracurriculars.
  • I’m not planning to participate in Greek life so ideally it’s not TOO prominent & it’s completely fine socially to not be in that
  • I don’t care about how good the sports are

I see that many other threads name more schools and fewer of these bullet-point preferences, so I greatly apologize if I misused the Match Me system. But if you happen to have suggestions for schools I might apply to, I would absolutely love to hear them and thank you so so much in advance!!

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Welcome to College Confidential. Have you visited UC Davis? It seems to check off almost everything on your list. Have you considered Cal Poly SLO?

For the UCs, would you please calculate your UC GPAs using the instructions and calculators on this page? GPA Calculator for the University of California – RogerHub For the CSUs, you can use this calculator. GPA Calculator | CSU Cal Poly SLO considers grades from 9-11 so it looks at a different GPA than your 10-11 CSU GPA.

Regarding budget, I understand what you are saying. I did the same with my kids. We had budgeted for UC/CSU tuition and expenses. I told my kids that if they were applying to privates, the school would need to match or beat UCs/CSUs. Depending on the school or opportunity there was wiggle room, but we didn’t want to go into debt for a private school when we have such great public options.

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Biology will have lots of pre-med students competing for A grades.

What schools do they consider worth more than a UC?

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I don’t know what this means.

San Diego State has successes and failures. MIT has successes and failures. At last report, 22% of UCB grads in 2024 were still seeking. It was 18% for their chemical biology major (they don’t list bio). Near half were in grad school as it sounds like you’d be. So actually getting jobs, not that many.

If the goal is to not pay more than a UC for an equal or less, then why apply to equal I suppose - UW - however you determine equal.

So I would apply to schools that would be equal or lower in cost - lower because they buy a ton of kids like you in to help raise their profile.

Example - at an Alabama, your cost would be $22K a year - so half a UC but it’s a big flagship like a UC. Florida - would be $45K or so - it’s ranked higher if that’s what their basis of excellent is - than a UC. A U of Kansas would be under $30K, etc. While you are exceptional, these schools have exceptional kids like you all over.

As for research, it’s everywhere - just ask. That’s a fallacy that kids can’t do research but College of Wooster is exceptionally known for research - it’s required.

You want quality teaching? Well - every school will have great…and not so great profs. Small classes - even small schools may have big classes but UCs will have lots of big classes. You can go to each school’s common data set section I3 to see.

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That’s UCLA’s lecture sections - they’ll have subsections too (probably many taught by TAs).

It’s 3rd party so take it for what it’s worth, but best professors below. I’m sure there’s other links. And you might want to look at W&L - and apply for the Johnson scholarship.

To me, if you want a UC or UW, these are just big flagships. I don’t see them as better - I see US News ranks them and people take that into their eco system. I do think they are harder admits - but that doesn’t mean better.

Since you mention things like career prep, most don’t do this…although they’ll have opportunities for you to work with their career centers. There are some that do - W&L comes up again and for a big school, @momofboiler1 speaks often about Purdue (her student was engineering) that was big into career prep. On the other hand, you mention you’d continue schooling - so the career pep would matter less.

Finally, I put a PhD feeder link below. Use the right side for per capita. You’ll find schools like Hendrix (will match UC’s cost) and Kalamazoo (likely cheaper) - likely schools you never heard of and yet for a wanna be PhD, are home runs.

Good luck to you.

Colleges with the Best Professors | The Princeton Review

Best Colleges for Career Services | The Princeton Review

Top Feeders to Ph.D. Programs

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Wesleyan has ~3000 student population. Superb academics across the board. Definitely large enough to not know everyone yet small enough to not get lost in the crowd. A full city block of STEM classrooms and research facilities:

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At the price point you’re describing (probably looking for significant merit scholarships from non T25 schools), I think it’s worth looking into small private research universities like Brandeis (has a special bio research scholars program, gives good merit aid, academic culture, etc.), Case Western Reserve (less merit aid than Brandeis but might still meet your parental threshold for “worth it”?, also strong in biosciences in particular), and University of Rochester (similar to Case but I think maybe stingier with merit aid). Any of these looks like a match to me for you (Brandeis honestly probably a likely). Culturally they skew nerdy. :slight_smile: They also care about demonstrated interest, so figuring out a way to visit over winter break (if possible) could be good; also sign up for interviews and if you haven’t missed their fall visit to your school, get on that.

You might also consider applying to some of the larger more science-y liberal arts colleges that provide merit aid. I don’t think they’ll have quite the same range of research faculty but in exchange you might find better faculty mentorship (and you’d not be competing for research opportunities w/ grad students). Oberlin in particular comes to mind – as well as some of the consortium-type LACs (Haverford – big reach school but strong in bio, and if you’re female, Scripps/Mt. Holyoke/Smith/Bryn Mawr, etc.)

The dataverse at college transitions dot com (annoyingly I can’t link it here anymore) can give you a sense of which schools have historically sent a lot of students to bio PhD programs.

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Just throwing out some schools
Miami University (Ohio)
University of Tulsa
Tufts (only guarantees housing for 2 years)

You might want to look at some honors programs within larger universities.

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One daughter is currently studying for a PhD in a biomedical field at a very good and well known university. Her bachelor’s degree is in biology. The other students in her PhD program come from a huge range of undergraduate schools. There are students in the same program with a bachelor’s from Harvard, a top New England LAC, public flagships, public non-flagships (often not top 100), well known private universities, and small colleges that I have never heard of. What these students have in common is that they did very well as undergraduate students and have good research experience. You can do this at any one of a huge range of universities and colleges.

Perhaps one piece of good news is that there are many, many universities that will give you a good start in this area. You stats to this point are very good and will help you get into a wide range of schools. Perhaps the bad news is that it can be difficult to figure out which one is right for you.

PhD admissions can be very competitive. You will want to get quite a bit of research experience, which fortunately is possible at any of a large number of universities. Grades will matter, although apparently straight A’s is really not needed (and would be hard to come by anyway since your classes will overlap with premed classes). Letters of reference will matter, and some of this is likely to come from your research experience.

This is already a very good start. You might want to also think about whether the CSUs would be a good fit. WICHE/WUE schools are also a possibility.

I would have expected the U. of Washington to be significantly more expensive compared to your in-state public universities.

MIT and Caltech might be almost the poster schools for “intense”.

Stanford is not very far behind. As one example I recall doing plenty of homework on Saturday afternoons when I was there (master’s, not anything related to biology). I did like it a lot. However, being older I might have been more ready for the intensity. I would at least expect that UC Berkeley and UCLA will have plenty of very strong students who are used to getting all A’s, and are willing to work hard to try to keep this up.

Also, anyone with a biology major is going to take quite a few classes that overlap with premed classes. Even at schools that are not super highly ranked, such as schools in the 100-150 range of ranking, there will be some very tough premed classes full of very strong students and with tough exams.

I agree with the recommendation to consider UC Davis and Cal Poly Slo. UC Davis has the interesting anomaly that is has the top ranked DVM program in the world. The required pre-vet classes are the same as required premed classes and will overlap with some of the required classes for biology majors. At UC Davis there will therefore be quite a few very strong pre-vet students. They will compete for grades in biology classes, but will not be competing with you for research opportunities, because they will be off with the cows and horses and other animals while you are in the lab. Personally I think that this is sort of cool but I suppose that different people might see this different ways.

Mostly I think that with your great results and accomplishments up to now you will have multiple very good options, and should be thinking about what schools would be the best fit for you. Best wishes.

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You might take a look at Whitman, in Walla Walla, Washington. They give merit aid - and I think there’s a solid chance you’d get in with enough to bring the cost down to about the same as U Washington.

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Thank you for your input! I didn’t realize UC Davis had many of these qualities, so I am very glad to hear. For UCs, RogerHub says 3.96 UW, 4.56 W, and 4.28 weighted & capped, but I’m basically applying to all UCs besides Riverside and Merced. CSU GPA calculator says 4.27, but I did get 2 semester Bs in freshman year so it looks like my SLO GPA would be lower.

I agree, the UCs are an excellent public school option!

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You are very right; still, I hope for an environment where students tend to help each other versus sabotage to get ahead (I’ve heard JHU has a reputation for this kind of toxic competition, but I’m not sure how accurate it is). I believe that a school can be competitive while still quite collaborative.

I unfortunately don’t have a solid answer for this; perhaps a school with a higher return on investment, quality of education, or other factors that generally put a school above another.

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Thank you so much for your very thorough feedback! I appreciate your advice and will certainly look into W&L and the resources you provided.

You’re right, I neglected the fact that “really good schools” can be much more beneficial to one student than another. I suppose it’s about the opportunities and potential a school offers; for instance, (using your examples) MIT is reputed to be better than San Diego State, despite your very true point that experiences/benefits will vary between individual students.

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Thank you for your advice on types of schools, and your specific recommendations! Adding them to my list :slight_smile:

Cool resource - I didn’t know this existed!

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Very hard to measure - especially when you are looking at a PhD, etc.

ROI is more likely major, than school, based…and you’re picking a not highly paid major overall.

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Thanks for your suggestions! I actually haven’t heard of any besides Tufts so I’ll definitely look into those.

Good idea; these sound like a nice way to get the academic benefits of small LACs with the social benefits of large universities (correct me if I’m wrong)!

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Thank you so much for your detailed and encouraging response! I will for sure intend to apply to UC Davis and SLO then, and will keep your PhD admissions advice in mind.

Glad to hear that PhD program acceptance isn’t dependent on type of undergrad school - makes me feel better that this step is not determining my whole future haha.

To be honest, I didn’t research UW very much and applied because it was very little work + a friend goes there and really likes it + a lot of people I know are applying there. You’re very much correct about the cost.

I’m sure Stanford is a lot of work, however it seems that students are still able to enjoy plenty of fun and socialization. When I say “TOO intense” I suppose I was thinking of UChicago, Reed College, and JHU - but my impression of these schools (very grind-y / students are always working) is built on a few online forums, so my perspective on their rigor compared to other schools could certainly be skewed.

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Thanks for your suggestion! I’ll admit 3000 feels a bit small considering my high school is 2000 something, but the rest sounds wonderful.

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I appreciate it! I’ll read up on Whitman.

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I’d go further and say ROI is mostly based on the individual student, not which college the student goes to, according to research.

@modnari-v1, your career will be great wherever you go. But you may enjoy the 4 years at college a bit more if you went to one that suited your learning-, social- and life-style well.

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would second a strong look at Tufts for a few reasons: 1) they pride themselves on a collaborative environment which you desire - when my student toured there, that came up on several occasions and the current students there seemed to corroborate that it was the culture there, 2) fairly strong in STEM with ample research but not TOO big like a state flagship university where you may tend to get lost in a sea of PhD/postdocs - a bit more of that LAC-feel without the constraints of being too small (~1700+ students per year), and 3) since you said might consider the Biotech industry as a future career, Boston is a great area to be in for internship/co-op opportunities due to its large number of pharma/biotechs. The major cons might be weather (can you handle the cold winters?), distance from home (CA), and cost (your parents might say the school name is not worth it if they were hoping for MIT/Harvard). Good luck!

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