Need help limiting college choices to apply to this fall

College Search & Lists
1

Hey! I would love advice on what schools I should get rid of based on my preferences. Currently, I am planning to apply to mostly top schools but made sure to have safeties and matches. Because of this, I have a lot of reaches as they accept ridiculously few people, although I believe I have the academics to get in to some.

I love college sports (football/basketball), but for some schools I’d be fine missing out on them.

As far as what I want to do, I’m current undecided but want to do something STEM related. Probably not engineer though.

Unweighted GPA: 4.0
Current rank: 36/551 (semester just ended though so it hasn’t updated, by far my strongest semester though so should help)
Rigorous schedule with as many PreAP/AP classes as I could take, with exception of Principles of biomedical sciences sophomore year. Also straight A’s all 3 years so far.

ACT: 32 (35E, 31M, 32R, 32S) essay: 8/12
33 (35E, 32M, 31R, 34S) essay: 8/12 just took ACT again the day I’m writing this

SAT: 1440 (700CR, 740M) essay: 7,6,7
1490 (710CR, 780M) essay: 6,6,7

Just took subject tests last week, don’t have scores back.

Activities/ECs/Achievements:
Football 4 years
Spanish Honor Society
National Honor Society
Officer of Carrom Club
At least National Merit commended, not sure if semi-finalist yet.

Lead class of elementary schoolers every Sunday at my church since 6th grade (400+ hours)
Student ministry at church since 9th grade every Sunday (50-75+ hours)
Mission trip to Nashville summer of 2014
Mission trip to New Orleans summer of 2015
Mission trip overseas summer 2016 and again 2017 (can’t specify as they’re closed to missions work)

My current list is:

Baylor
Duke
Harvard
Princeton
Rice
Stanford (my top choice, will apply restrictive early action)
U Chicago
UCLA
U Michigan
UNC Chapel Hill
UPenn
USC
Vanderbilt
Yale

It’s a lot of schools so I was hoping you guys could help me narrow the choices down a little. Cost is not an issue. Thanks!

2

Bump

3

What is your Home state? So $240K/4 years at many of these schools is not an issue???

Usually your in-state options make the best safeties since they are usually affordable and you have a high chance for an acceptance.

4

Texas. Probably should’ve mentioned that

5

I see one school on your list that appears to be a safety (Baylor?). You have 13 reach schools. I would eliminate some of these reaches and add more realistic options. What are you looking for in terms of size, etc? Can you add any Texas public schools?

6

^^^ Agree. I looks like you could be auto admit to UT and TxA&M.

7

Identify at least one true safety (auto-admit for grades/test scores, fully affordable with nothing more than federal aid, offers your likely major) that you’d be more than happy to attend if all else goes bad in the application process. Once you know where that place is, then you only need to apply to places that you like better.

Lots of people find that they like their true safeties well enough to not bother to apply anywhere else at all. I you are auto-admit to UT and TAMU, then the question you need to ask yourself is what the other places really do have to offer you that you can’t get in TX.

8

With a 4.0 and 33 on ACT you guys still consider schools like Michigan, UCLA, and USC reaches? I know they’re ridiculously competitive schools and reject a ton of people, but I thought I had the academics to consider them matches. I’d rather go to Baylor than UT, as I come from a Baylor family, so I’d rather not take the auto admit schools in Texas, but I’ll try looking into UT further. I appreciate the suggestions, thanks.

9

Even though those schools may look like matches on paper, they are still reaches. Do you have the stats to consider these schools? Yes! But…plenty of students with your stats do not get in. Does your school have Naviance?

I would eliminate a few reaches and add some likelies.

10

Any school with a less than 20% acceptance rate should be considered a Reach for all applicants. These schools get too many qualified and competitive applicants all competing for a few spots.

11

@Trenteroo

As others are mentioning, I would add a few true safety schools.

Also, I’ll give my standard advice: What are you looking for in a school? USC and Princeton are pretty much different in every way except being a “top 25” research uni.

Do you really want to pay OOS prices for UCLA?

Sports are a huge deal at USC, UMich, UCLA and some others on your list, pretty much not a big deal, except a few rivalry football and basketball games at the Ivies.

I’d suggest: 1) identify what you’re looking for in a school. (Do you really want to be in LA? Ann Arbor? New Haven? If you like STEM but not engineering, what are thinking of studying? Do these schools offer what you think you want to try? Can you get those courses easily? etc.)

I would hope once you identify some of the things you want in a school, you might trim down the “reach” schools. (which is really a bit of a silly way to look at them - perhaps it would be psychologically easier to just look at them as “low acceptance rate schools.” Really anything under 20% you just have to realize is a “reach” due to #s, not your or anyones quality as a student. UCLA got 100k applications last year. They just can’t accept all the deserving students. Ditto most of the schools on your list.)

Maybe replace one or two (or more) of the lower acceptance rate schools with a school or two that has everything you’re looking for in a school, but has a higher admissions rate.

One last warning: applying to more selective schools (and more schools in general) takes a lot of time. I think Stanford has 5 essays - if you want to apply EA you need to get working on them asap (and there are two theories on that, btw, you might want to research a bit. Some people suggest that due to Stanford’s popularity it actually gets a bigger pool of high-stats students in the early round and it’s marginally harder to get accepted early. I really have no idea.)

Many of the other schools on your list will have a “school specific” essay beyond those required in the common app. the UC system has it’s own eassay requirement that works for all UCs iirc. Applying to that many competitive schools will take some time.

Lastly, if you do apply to USC, make sure you get your application in by their merit deadline (Usually Dec 1 but double check.) That is both a chance to get some money to help offset USC’s very high cost to attend and a way to indicate interest.

Good luck! You’ve got great stats. You’ll get in someplace awesome. Just try to make sure it’s a place you want to spend 4 years and 10s to 100s of thousands of dollars!