Asian male, PA, Public School, No Legacy, US
Double major in finance alongside another technical skill
UW GPA = 3.82 did not take SAT yet
Freshmen year: no aps were offered. Took honors precalc, history, bio, and English if that matters.
Sophmore year: took AP euro, AP calc AB and AP Micro. 3 on euro 4 on calc 4 on micro
Junior year: took AP Stats, AP Macro, AP Lang, AP US history. Scores didn’t come out yet
Presidents volunteer service award 2x
NHS and Tri M
PMEA District Region and All State x2
Volunteered as teachers assistant for language school 2 years
Going to intern at a bigger language school ligned up for senior year as a teachers assistant
Youth Orch Section leader / member
John Locke Essay (competition is ongoing, but I’m pretty confident ill make it to to the final round at least. grinding for this one)
On going process of creating a nonprofit performance group at my school over the summer collecting donations and then donating the money to charities
FBLA State qualifier 2x
Worked at a senior home over the summer
Getting LOR fro my music teacher and econ teacher.
None tuition concerns. My parents said they will pay for my college in full as long as its a reasonable degree.
I have no clue for my safeties, targets, and reaches. Please give me feedback! I know I will apply Penn State as a safety that’s for sure.
What foreign language are you taking and/or an assistant for?
Will you be taking Calculus BC senior year?(it’d be expected for most reaches since you took Precalc in 9th grade).
If you want Penn State to be a safety for Smeal, apply DUS. Dus is the way most UP students get into Smeal (it’s exactly like Smeal Pre Major. You take the same courses and need the same grades. Applying to Smeal directly rather than Dus means you risk having to go through reconsideration – and all for bragging rights only.)
Sounds like you’d be interested in the Jerome Fisher M&T program at Penn.
As well as IBE at Lehigh
Both are reaches.
Northeastern also has combined degrees that may be if interest such as
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The language is Korean.
Probably not taking BC because I struggled in AB, and it tanked my GPA. I could take it but I just don’t think I would be able to get a good grade and good score on the AP test.
Also for technical skill I was referring to something more like Statistics or Data Science, as I plan to break into investment banking after I graduate college if possible.
Speaking of, how would I match for a school such as NYU (Stern)? I was planning to ED there as the finance program has a high number of ungrads it sends into investment banking. I forgot to include that in the original post.
I forgot to mention this, but if I were to apply to ivy leagues, I would not choose finance and choose a less competitive major, maybe english or music education.
Stern is a reach for everyone. The admit rate is under 5%. It will be a bit higher for ED, but not enough to make much difference. Stern would almost certainly expect BC as mentioned above given what you have done so far. Although NYU is test optional, for stern especially would recommend SAT over 1500\ACT 34+. By all means apply but make sure you have good targets and safeties that you’d be happy to go to as well.
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I see. I will definetly talk to my counselor about this but he might be against it because he saw how badly I was struggling in AB.
Based on my current stats what would you say my safeties and targets are?
Need some indication from you what you are looking for in a college, there are safeties and targets all over the country for you but they vary widely in terms of size, public/private, rural/urban, how far from home etc. An easy safety would be ASU Carey school of business (well ranked, 3.4 GPA required for direct admit), or possibly Indiana Kelley depending what your SAT/ACT ends up (GPA 3.8 + SAT 1370 or ACT 30).
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I see. I will go focus on studying for my SAT and winning the John Locke Essay competition as well as finalizing my non profit music organization before coming back then, because my application is still not completed.
Tbh the only factor that I really care about is location, I definitely prefer being in the city. But above all I want to attend the best ranked college and the one that will give me the easiest chance of breaking into investment banking. So I’m willing to sacrifice the other stuff for rank if that makes sense.
If you don’t take BC then the above colleges (beside Penn State) will be off limits, as well as Stern. Adcoms will all wonder why someone who took Calc AB in the 10th grade does not have BC (at least) on their transcript. If I were you, I would register for Bc next year and review AB this summer through Khan Academy because it’s quite possible your brain just wasn’t ready then- there’s a reason this is a 12th grade class after all - and it will all click now.
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Part of the reason I did so bad in AB was because I was dealing with a lot of mental health issues at that time. I’m well recovered now so im sure I would easily pass with a 4.0 in the class if I retook it. Thanks for the honesty and ill talk with my counselor about it after AP exams. Is there anything else?
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While Penn State Smeal will be better for your goal (remember the hack: apply DUS), Pitt will be in a city which you may like better. Pitt Honors + Business would be a cool combination.
(Btw if you apply Smeal Premajor not DUS, it becomes an automatic low reach/reach due to a sub10% acceptance rate).
Check with your parents whether both would be affordable (run the NPC with them).
Add Fordham/Business honors as a target - excellent placement in Finance. If you really want to be in the City, look into Lincoln “campus”.
IU Kelley is another one that should be on your list for sure. Add Miami Ohio Fisher, American University Business, St John’s in Philadelphia, St Paul’s or Loyola in Chicago.
Lafayette, Dickinson, Colgate, Middlebury, Lehigh aren’t targets but they do place relatively well. Not sure you’ve got the right profile (they’ll definitely want to see Calc BC) - dig into what they value and if it matches what you want, join their mailing list.
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Calculus is a key cornerstone of a lot of things in STEM and in economics. You started way, way advanced in math. You will need to get back to calculus, including multi-variate calculus, at some point. It is not likely to be any easier when you get to university (just as one extreme example, MIT covers all of calculus, multi-variate calculus, and differential equations in one year – my understanding is that this is quite a bit faster compared to high school calculus).
You might want to look at the requirements to graduate with a degree in finance from NYU. It would not surprise me if calculus is required, but I have not specifically checked.
I am pretty sure that at least some and possibly all of the Ivy League schools do not consider your major when deciding whether or not to accept you. At least at MIT (which is not Ivy League) whatever you put down as your intended major is only used to help to match you up with a freshman year advisor. Then at the end of your freshman year you pick whatever major you want. I thought that the Ivy League schools were similar in this respect. You should check
Also for those schools where they do consider your major in admissions, switching into the more popular majors is typically restricted. What you major in is going to be more important to your long term career path than which of 200 very good colleges and universities you attend. Thus you really are best off to put down whatever major you really want.
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Ok thanks. I will make sure to apply for BC next year. Should I do multi too? What about CSA? I don’t have any coding experience tho.
Do I need to take multi on top of BC? My HS offers a mutli class. Would it benefit my application?
You don’t have enough stats at this time; you need an actual SAT or ACT score plus actual/reasonable estimate of your class rank.
Does your public high school in Pennsylvania send many students each year to Ivy League & Ivy Plus schools ?
Maybe I am missing something, but NYU-Stern and Ivy League schools are a super reach for you. Why do you think that you would be a reasonable candidate for admission to these schools ?
Indiana-Kelley should be considered, but it is not among the top 30 schools for IB.
Your best chances should be at Penn State, Fordham, Lehigh, Indiana, Drexel, SMU (regional placement is strong), Villanova. Boston College does well–better than any of the schools that I have listed in this paragraph.
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We send a couple but not that much. Maybe like 5 each year max. I think this year there were around 4 or 5.
I don’t have a strong application I know they are giga reaches, I was just trying to find out my chances. Is there anything I can add to my app to make me more competitve for these schools during the summer? Thank you for your honesty.
Are there more schools like BC that do well in terms of IB placement? And if BC is the strongest option should I ED there?
Boston College is ranked at #13 for number of placements on Wall Street / IB accordingly to a very recently released study (just behind Northwestern University & CUNY Baruch). On a per capita basis Boston College ranks 17th.( Citi, UBS, & Morgan Stanley)
NYU Stern is #1 for highest number overall placed on Wall Street/IB. (Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, & Citi)
Without class rank & an official standardized test score, I cannot make any ED recommendation. But, certainly look at Indiana, Fordham, Boston College, & Lehigh. Drexel appeared among the top 30 for placement overall (which I believe was based on a LinkedIn search). Released by College Transitions (2025 update)
Could you link the study to me? I want to see the other schools. Seems its pretty good so I will consider ED there because I’m deadset on banking. I could ED NYU but a lot of kids got rejected from NYU ED that I know and their applications were pretty similar to mine so I think my chances are kinda slim.
I am pretty sure that you take these in order, with calculus BC first. My understanding is that calculus BC is typically a year long course, and this should be fine to complement your applications to universities. Generally math classes will depend upon many years of previous math classes, and also whatever you are learning now in math will be needed for other math classes in the future. Thus you need to be careful to take math classes in order, and avoid skipping ahead.
CSA would be a useful addition if it fits into your schedule and if you want to do it (note both "if"s). Having some experience with software is a good thing. Even for students who have no intention of ever being a software engineer, it is still a good idea to have some sense regarding what is involved in software engineering. You could instead pick this up while you are in university.
Generally the most important universities to apply to are your safeties. I am not sure whether Penn State is a safety for you, but I suspect that it might be and your guidance counselor should know better than me. NYU and the various Ivy League universities are high reaches for pretty much all applicants.
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Im a senior next year tho, so it will by my last year. Sorry if i didnt make that clear earlier. Should I take BC next year, or BC on top of Multi?
I mean I think I would like coding but I have 0 experience and all my friends said its hell and the teacher is really awful so im not sure 
Penn State is def a safety, my school has this software thing that matches our GPA and SAT (or PSAT) to calculate chances of getting into a school. Obviously, this is only a portion of the application but GPA and SAT are the two biggest factors and my chance of PSU main campus is like 80% or higher so its pretty much guarenteed knocks on wood