Nepo baby math major with no olympiads or extracurriculars and an average GPA! [3.73 GPA, 1500 SAT (1560 superscore), math through calculus 3 and linear algebra]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Demographics

  • US Citizen
  • Northeast
  • Competitive private school

Cost Constraints / Budget:
No cost constraints.

Intended Major(s)

Math, perhaps a CS or Econ double major

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.73
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.40
  • Class Rank: 60th%
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 1560 (780/780). 1500 on first test (780/720) and 1500 on second test (720/780)

MY SCHOOL DOES NOT OFFER AP CLASSES, HOWEVER, WE DO HAVE A PROGRAM WHERE STUDENTS CAN DUAL ENROLL AT A LOCAL COLLEGE

List your HS coursework:

  • English: 4 years of English
  • Math: Calc 1, Calc 2, Calc 3, Stats (dual enrolled), LinAlg (dual enrolled)
  • Science: Physics, Chem, Bio (dual enrolled), Chem (dual enrolled)
  • History and social studies: 3 years of history
  • Language other than English: 3 years of Latin
  • Visual or performing arts: 2 years of drama
  • Other academic courses: Senior Thesis

Awards

  • 1 MUN Best Position Paper award
  • Several awards at novice debate tournaments in Freshman year, however, I plateaued and never won any awards beyond the novice level
  • Nothing else :frowning:

Extracurriculars
(Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)

  • Math/CS research at a T5 school. I will likely have a paper published around spring. As far as I can tell, this is ‘legit’ research - I contributed some original ideas and generated the database that will be used in the paper.
  • Computational biology research in a lab at a T100 school; I hated this internship and spent the entire internship trying to learn the software they were using.
  • Wikipedia editor for 4 years. Made 10,000 edits and was entrusted with site privileges to review and accept draft articles.
  • Debate team for 3 years
  • MUN for 4 years
  • I play a very niche strategy board game online
 I’m not that good at it though, at my peak I was only ranked 2000 of 500,000 players. Currently I’m ranked at 3500.

Essays/LORs/Other

My essays are probably okay.

LOR from a well-renowned professor at a T5 school
LOR from sophomore year history teacher. I got an A on nearly every assignment in her class and her class is a notoriously hard class, so she must have liked me a lot.
LOR from sophomore year chemistry teacher. I got an A on every assignment in her class and she’s my advisor, so she probably likes me.

Schools
(List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if unsure, leave them unclassified)

  • Assured (100% chance of admission and affordability): UMass Amherst (My school has data showing that not a single student from my school has ever been rejected from UMass Amherst so it’s my safety school)
  • Extremely Likely:
  • Likely: Northeastern
  • Toss-up: BU, BC, NYU
  • Lower Probability: UChicago, UMich
  • Low Probability: MIT
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Why is this thread not appearing in the Chance Me / Match Me! forum? I can’t see it.

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Are you a Nepo baby in that your family is top 1% wealthy and has a college building named after them? Or are they celebrities of some kind? If that’s the case then it’s impossible for us to know your chances.

Your math classes and SAT scores are very impressive but your GPA and especially your class rank are low for the schools you’ve listed. Recs from sophomore teachers are generally discouraged over junior year teachers, especially for both recommendations.

If I were you I would add another safety or two and some more match schools. Northeastern really isn’t a likely imo, and I’d put BU BC and NYU in the reach category.

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The “nepo baby” joke was wrt to the research I did at the T5 university and the rec letter from the professor

I don’t think NYU is a reach? The average GPA at NYU is 3.8 and mine is not significantly lower.

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The counselors at your competitive private HS will be the best source.

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Looking at a school’s stats for accepted students and comparing them to yours is not a good way to determine if the school is a reach. You have to consider who was rejected as well. In a school like NYU with an 8% acceptance rate, that means that many students with stats like yours, as well as students with higher stats than yours, were rejected. Put another way, NYU had 118,000 applicants last year - 9440 were accepted and 108,560 were rejected. The majority of those 108,560 who were rejected had really good grades and test scores and some of them likely had perfect 4.0 unweighted GPAs and even higher test scores than yours. No school with an 8% acceptance rate is a match for anyone, even a class valedictorian with a 1600.

You have a lot going for you, but I’d agree that Northeastern, BU, BC and NYU are all reach schools. You could get into one or more of them, but you could also easily get rejected by all of them, as well as Chicago, Michigan and MIT. Therefore, with this list, you run the very real risk of only getting into your safety. Most students really like to have options in the spring of their senior year with at least several acceptances to chose from, so I’d recommend including some true likely’s and matches! Maybe - hopefully - you will get into one or more of the reach schools on your list, but if you don’t you’ll still have great options!

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Please tell me what “Nepo” means?

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Gen Z speak for nepotism.

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Please explain why this would impact college admissions.

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I have no idea why the OP thinks it would. I thought perhaps he was a Kardashian or something but apparently not!

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The OP indicates he did research at a T5 school. If the OP received this opportunity due to connections because OP’s parent is faculty at the T5, this would be a hook.

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Your first stop should be the college counselors at your competitive private high school. They will have a good handle on how students from your school do in terms of college admissions. So
start there.

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Maybe the OP could clarify? Doing research at a T5 and knowing a prof is different than having a family faculty member.

OP, what does your counselor advise?

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Many schools want one STEM teacher and one humanities teacher. And they don’t allow any additional letters of recommendation. You will need to check this everywhere you plan to apply.

I think a number of your toss up schools are lower probability.

Hoping @AustenNut will give his opinions on your list.

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I think NEU, NYU or Chicago are all unlikely without an ED application.

Northeastern: being full pay and lots of demonstrated interest and EA will help.

Chicago: I think they prefer a more well rounded, intellectually curious across the board student. 3 years of History and FL will not help.

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IME, it’s very hard to get into NEU Boston as an unhooked, non-MA student for STEM unless OP applies ED 1/2.

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OP is MA but I generally agree with your sentiment. A satellite campus is more probable.

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Sounds like you’ve verified that UMass is a safety, especially since you’re applying for math and not CS. (Something to look into would be your access to CS coursework as a non-CS major.) So, an important question is, how do you feel about UMass? Is it a safety that you’re happy with, such that your other apps can all be reaches because UMass would be fine if the reaches don’t pan out? Or do you need to look for match/safety schools that you like better than UMass?

It’s hard for folks here to “chance” students from competitive prep schools. A lot of the top colleges accept very few applicants with below-top-10% class rank, but it can be different if you’re coming from a highly-competitive private. Still, strong EC’s can be an expectation, since private schools provide many great extracurricular opportunities.

One alternative would be Canadian U’s. There are top-notch programs in your areas of interest at a number of these, and admissions are quite standardized and stats-based, with much less emphasis on EC’s and essays. There are top-notch research opportunities at schools like Toronto, McGill, and Waterloo, and they’re all closer to home for you than Chicago or UMich.

BC feels like an outlier on your list - what makes it a better fit than, say, Tufts? Do you like the idea of the co-op model at Northeastern? (Because your other schools mostly don’t seem co-op-ish.)

Have you considered the Pittsburgh schools - CMU and Pitt? Pitt’s admissions are rolling, so apply ASAP if interested. CMU has a very strong math department, in addition to their obvious strength in CS. (And math isn’t as ridiculously-difficult an admit as CS.) Pitt and CMU are immediately adjacent and have cross-registration.

Have you consider U of Rochester?

JHU is another high reach that seems to fit the pattern of schools you’re interested in. Not sure of your odds there, but better than MIT or UChicago, anyway! Also in Maryland, UMD could be worth considering (but an EA app is a must here if you want to apply at all).

This list might be helpful: Top Feeders to Ph.D. Programs

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I agree with the others that your best information will come from the counselors at your competitive private high school.

Below are my own guesses as to what your chances for admission might be:

Extremely Likely (80-99+%)

  • UMass-Amherst

Likely (60-79%)

Toss-Up (40-59%)

Lower Probability (20-39%)

  • Boston College

Low Probability (less than 20%)

  • Northeastern (if you want to start in Boston)
  • NYU
  • U. of Chicatgo
  • UMich
  • MIT

@Aquapt has already given a number of good suggestions of some likelier admits. Two other schools you may want to look into include Rensselaer Polytechnic (NY) and U. of Wisconsin, both of which have produced large numbers of undergrads who went on to earn their doctorates in math.

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My first reaction is that U.Mass Amherst is a very good university, and is very good for Math and CS. If it really is a safety, then this gives you a lot of freedom regarding which other schools you apply to.

This concerns me a bit with respect to admission to MIT, and probably Chicago. When I was a student at MIT I did not meet anyone who at least admitted to being this low in ranking in their high school class. I suppose that someone might have been and just kept quiet about it. I would similarly consider U.Michigan as a reach given that you are out of state.

I expect you to get accepted at some of the other schools you are applying to, in addition to U.Mass. However, even if you only get into U.Mass, it is still a very good university which will give you opportunities to get a great education.

Also


Your guidance counselor at your local high school should know better than we do how much this helps your chances.

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