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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I take it, this eliminates all the LACs. You’re obviously looking for something on the big side.