I admit that I tend to chance conservatively. OP is a very strong candidate, but
some schools won’t grant an admission to top candidates if they think they’re unlikely to attend (with Case an example, as you mentioned).
Many of these schools are small and while OP seems like a great addition to any college campus, if there’s a physics pre-major who plays the ubiquitous tuba, or somehow seems to complete the class “puzzle” better, then they may get the nod over OP. It’s just harder to tell.
The schools in the Low Probability bucket tend to be just that. We’ve all heard the stories of students with perfect stats who don’t get in. They’re just extremely competitive for admissions.
I will page @hebegebe who might have additional insight since OP has gold in both physics and math olympiads.
I could not agree more. Once you get into the ultra competitive level for admissions there are a great many highly qualified students rejected because the school in question accepted too many people from their HS last year, or they needed a trumpet player, but not a saxophone player for the marching band, etc. It’s crazy out there.
Admissions to Case, however, is not ultra-competitive (I think their acceptance rate is 30%) like some other schools mentioned in the thread. If the Case AO thinks the OP will matriculate, they would accept him in a heartbeat. At the next rung down, applicants start running up against yield management.
This is getting down in the weeds, but in our feederish HS, Rochester and Case are often cross-shopped, but part of the reputation of Rochester (supported by some data) is that as long as you do basic demonstrated interest stuff, they are likely to admit high numbers kids (and then offer them merit), whereas Case may need to see more demonstrated interest or in fact an ED application (but they will also offer merit).
So Case ends up more popular with kids who have it at least very high, if not at the top of their list. Rochester can also be like that, but it could instead more be an attractive likely/softer-target and/or merit play for the high numbers kids.
@kiasuamma, tell me more about this. Are you saying that you were selected for the British IMO team and the British IPhO team and got gold? Or something else entirely?
This jibes with feedback from CC students/parents who applied to Case the same year our son did. Parents were outraged that their extremely high stat students were deferred by Case and invited to apply ED II. Case AOs knew these students were using them as a safety, and that they would matriculate at CMU, GA Tech, etc. if accepted. Case basically called those students’ bluff with their ED II invitation.
Case and U of Rochester were two hard match schools that came to mind when I read the OP. I won’t repeat what others have said but will add that U Roch has a high percentage of international students (from memory 20-25%). That may be appealing to OP.
Best of luck! You’re getting fantastic input here.
Oh yeah, that’s a great point. They are actually near the top of this list compiled by US News with 24%, tied for third with CMU and behind only NYU and The New School:
Again things I have heard (so take this for what it is worth): Rochester supposedly long ago realized it was going to struggle to get all the really strong academic students it wanted just in the US domestic pool, because that pool has flattened out and Rochester, NY, is not exactly in the hottest market when it comes to competing nationally. So they have, among other things, been targeting building up their international networks. Again, I don’t know of an official source for any of that, but it seems plausible.
As usual, my philosophy with these sorts of things is if you happen to fit into a university’s strategic plans in a way that also makes sense for you–that’s a win-win! In fact Rochester is a very strong research university academically, definitely not least in Physics, and so that does seem like a really good fit for the OP–both ways.
I concur that this usually represents the case, in that courses in topics such as thermodynamics commonly appear as distinct offerings oriented either toward physics or engineering majors. Nonetheless, a predominance of engineering majors may effect the general academic climate at some schools. At Carnegie Mellon, for example, engineers outnumber physicists at a greater than 11 to 1 ratio.
CMU seems to have physics majors share physics 1 with biology and chemistry majors (33-121) and physics 2 with engineering majors (33-142). However, there is also a harder version of these courses (33-151 and 33-152) that presumably attracts mostly physics majors. It looks like the harder version has the smallest enrollment.
But the lower level courses may be less important than whether the physics department at any given college has enough instructional capacity to offer all of the usual upper level core courses for the physics major as well as upper level electives at reasonable frequency.
If you want to combine your physics major with another topic, Mcgill might be a good fit academically. McGill Physics: Undergraduate Curriculum Mcgill seems to advertise specializing your physics education and exploring what you can do with it. They only look at test scores and grades. You would be a strong candidate. No essay is needed too. They also accept lots of international students.