You guys have been great! Thank you SO much for all your thoughts. I started looking into all the places you’ve suggested. Some of them seem like real reaches for me though (Georgetown, U of Chicago, UPenn etc) . Do you think with my ECs I would have a chance at those more elite schools?
So far, the schools that seem like possibles that I really like:
NYU
Boston University
University of Washington
UC Irvine
University of San Francisco
San Diego State
Macalester
They are pretty spread around the country. I’m glad all the schools have put effort into doing virtual tours on their web sites. I’m still open to more suggestions though!
One other thing about Hawaii is that lots of Japanese tourists visited the state before COVID-19. If your Japanese language skills get good enough, perhaps a part time job as a tour guide on one of those Japanese language tour buses may be of interest once tourism restarts.
One thing about your list - you don’t show a test score. Being from Wyoming will help - but NYU and BU for sure are reaches. You also have big - UCI, SDSU, and then smaller - USF, Macadlester.
You say you don’t need aid - but that does not mean you want to pay $80K a year. Ask your parents - if so, take the Ivies off. As you point out they are reaches anyway - but they also have no merit.
If you want to be in Philly - and I’m not saying to apply there - but Drexel (Penn’s neighbor) would be a better fit admission and aid wise. I still say Charleston would be a strong fit for you -it’s very up and coming.
If college towns - sizable in their own right - would be ok. Oregon, CU Boulder, and Arizona would fit - with Oregon and AZ in decent size cities. AZ and Oregon are affordable…you may not need aid but it doesn’t mean you don’t want a great deal.
Someone mentioned U Denver before - it’s fantastic for international programs.
One question - your weighted GPA isn’t much higher than your unweighted so I assume your rigor isn’t great. That’s ok - if you take whatever APs your school offers. If they offer 20 and you take 3, it’s not great. If they offer 4 and you’ve taken three…that’s helpful.
Schools that are stretches for you are like Rochester, UMD, UF / FSU. So your targets are gonna be a lower level - and there’s some great ones that yes have greek life, but you’ll always find your crowd. Targets to me (and even safety) that offer a Japanese studies environment and that are in a city: U of Kentucky, etc. or a U of South Carolina (big out of state contingent) in addition to Arizona and Oregon mentioned above. Just realize that you’ll be with no one from Wyoming - but I guess that’s sort of the point.
Why assume Oregon is affordable? It doesn’t offer WUE or much aid to OOS students so cost would likely be over $50K per year. Arizona is more plausible, their merit is pretty transparent.
Fundamentally OP needs to think about possibilities at different price points ranging from $30K-$80K per year and discuss what makes sense in terms of budget (and what else could be done with $200K since that’s the difference in total price over 4 years).
Affordable relative to others and she’ll get merit there - but yes, it’s not transparent. Some schools are guesses, some are not (like AZ, Bama, Ms State) but just trying to throw out less than $80K options. She’d likely qualify for Apex and perhaps more - so that’s $7,500 a year. Anyway, you have to have arrows in the fire - and hope one or more sticks.
AZ (and ASU) are great schools, large merit - especially U of A. The size may be overwhelming - she says large but 6K+. I actually think a school like Miami of Ohio is perfect - until she says in the city (it’s in the sticks but within an hour of Dayton and Cincy). There are schools like WWU in Bellingham but they are in smaller but vibrant cities. Still much less than other schools and with merit opportunities and a smaller (16K) campus than the behemoths.
University of Houston…4th largest city in the U.S…solid economy (many internship possibilities)…extremely diverse…great athletics… wide variety of major options (including Japanese).
Thank you again to everybody for all these suggestions. I didn’t know about or had not thought about most of these universities so I’m really glad that I have so many options to look into now. Most of my friends are not going to college and the ones that are plan on staying in WY so I just didn’t know what was really out there that I had a chance at.
My HS offers 12 AP’s but they are only offered if enough students sign up. Most years, there are only about 8. I will have 5 AP’s total because I’m taking 3 next year. My ACT was 29 so I thought I would go test optional.
Whether to apply without test scores does depend on whether the 29 is good or bad relative to the college’s range. The answer may be different for different colleges.
You may want to try an old released SAT to see if you would do significantly better on the SAT than ACT.
Wani, I asked about your facility with Japanese - if any - because there are few colleges which offer majors specifically in Japanese studies and fewer still which offer literature classes in Japanese rather than in English translation. When you look at various programs at the schools you are considering, you might want to check this as you delve into the details.
There are also very few colleges which sponsor their own study abroad programs in Japan. Most use programs run by CIEE. When colleges run their own study abroad programs, they typically closely coordinate with their academic program on the American home campus. Not so much if it’s someone else’s program. So, I suggest that you contact the Dept. of Japanese Studies at any college you are considering to see what coordination they do with any study abroad programs in Japan.
When I looked at colleges to suggest, I looked at cities which have substantial Japanese-American populations in the same city. I was surprised to find that Japanese are such a small percent of the population of any city anywhere in the US. But to the extent that such communities exist, you might want to take that into consideration. Study of a culture can be enhanced by leaving campus to connect with local communities. Here’s the Wikipedia page that I looked at:
Thanks for researching all this information! I didn’t know there were so many Japanese Americans in Hawaii. I guess that does make U of Hawaii a good option. It seemed kind of far away but I’ll take a closer look.
I looked at U of SF and they said they take advantage of being near a Japanese American community and the Asian museum in the city so that looked good to me. They even said that their students could use the Asian libraries at Berkeley. I’m not sure how far away that is though.