<p>Here is my situation.
I want to apply to a selective school, but I don’t believe my test scores and such will allow me to get accepted. My SAT I is about 100-150 than the scores that other people have sent. I mean this school is already selective enough, so with my scores it just makes it a lot worse. </p>
<p>Should I go for it or would it be a waste of money and time? I’m doubtful, but then again that is why it is called a reach. Would anyone like to share his or her general guideline for choosing a reach school?</p>
<p>um if u want to go to Columbia, u should’ve applied ED. there can be certain factors that could help you:
-Ethnicity
-Extracurriculars
-Strong Essays
-Strong/Amazing Teacher Recs. </p>
<p>if u applied early, you would have a better chance compared to regular decision. 2 kids from my school got into columbia both EDed and they’re both really intelligent. your SAT score is on the low side, if it was a reach then as i said you should’ve ED’ed but i dont think your going to have a chance with the regular decision pool. my opinion, not trying to be mean.</p>
<p>Don’t worry about it Jimgotkp, that was basically what I was looking for. I mean I wanted to know if I should’ve tried or not. I’m guessing UPenn is the same huh.
Well anyone have any other “reach” schools they would like to advise me on? No real preference for this reach.</p>
<p>Don’t get discouraged just because of your scores. The rest of your application can certainly make up for them. I study at Penn, and there are a lot of students here who had weak SAT scores but had great recommendations and essays and did some interesting EC’s and got in. You never know unless you apply. Give both Columbia and Penn a shot, the worst that can happen is they reject you–but at least you’ll know you tried, and you never know, they might just accept you! Good luck!</p>
<p>It’s definitely a reach, but one worth taking. So yes, apply RD to Columbia and Penn. UChicago is another phenomenal urban school. it’s also known for bizarro admissions (both the app and the results), you could have a chance there too.</p>
<p>you can try Cornell… theyre Hotel Administration School which is Hospitality Management/Business oriented. I just applied for ED but I don’t really have great scores/average scores for ivy leagues myself…</p>
<p>I think I’m just going to choose Columbia. My cousin graduated from there and I’m already thinking about applying for Northwestern as my other reach school. I mean people generally only apply to two reach schools correct?</p>
<p>It is possible to find out if these schools are reaches or out-of-reaches for you. As you note, your SATs are low for them. There could be other factors that would put them within reach–most notably, if you are a member of an underrepresented minority, a recruitable athlete, or if you have some other significant achievement that makes you stand out. If you don’t have anything like that, and especially if your grades aren’t extremely good, you should make sure that you are directing your time, attention, and resources to schools where you have a reasonable chance of getting in. There’s no harm in applying to Columbia, except that it costs you money and time.</p>
apply only if you can imagine yourself going there and if you want to go there.
make sure you do well on your match/safe schools before you do this one…cuz columbia has its own apps. just make sure you have all the teacher/counselor forms done.</p>