Rising senior with good stats and mid ECs/awards plans to shotgun for physics [4.0 GPA, 36 ACT, 1590 SAT]

Chance Me / Match Me
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Midwest, competitive public school. Finances are not an issue.

Intended Major(s)
Physics

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 4.0/4.0
  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.7/5.0
  • ACT/SAT Scores: 36 ACT/1590 SAT
  • APs (until senior year): Physics C, Biology, Calc, CSA, US History, Lang, Spanish 5. Taking Gov, Micro, Lit, Chem, Spanish 6, Stats this year.
  • Self-studied freshman year: Physics 1 (4) - probably won’t submit, Music Theory (5)
  • Also took Calc 3, Lin Alg, Discrete Math (DE), Diff Eq (DE), and Quantum Physics (DE)
  • Took band throughout high school
  • Spanish Seal of Biliteracy

Awards

  • Major awards at state science fair (top project/best in category)
  • All-region/all-state band and composition awards
  • AIME qualification (2x)
  • National astro contest award
  • Scholastic gold keys (7x)

Extracurriculars

  • Helped run a physics-related contest for high schoolers
  • Local research internship this summer
  • Northwestern summer research program
  • AI spring program, published research
  • Physics Club Co-President
  • Completed a space-related mentorship program
  • Published physics guides and handouts in a newsletter
  • Marching band section leader/community band player
  • Teach at a nearby school/tutor in various capacities and volunteer with state science fair
  • Online writing mentorship program, published writing in small journals, help edit my school’s lit mag

Schools

MIT (EA?)
Princeton
Stanford
Yale
Caltech
CMU
UPenn
UIUC (EA)
Northwestern
Cornell
UT Austin
Vanderbilt
USC
Illinois Institute of Technology
University of Iowa
UChicago (ED II?)

It’s a pretty discombobulated list right now because I don’t know where I stand in the applicant pool. Would appreciate guidance!

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Why IIT and Iowa ?

If you need safeties, how about RPI and then either Arizona (some rate top 10 in physics) or Colorado. Both are far higher regarded in Physics than those two. They are the kind of schools where a student like yourself would find higher level physics brethren than Iowa and IIT.

With those two, you can shotgun but rank your favorites because if you get essay fatigue, you want to ensure you get your most important ones done b4 giving up.

Your list and strategy are fine but don’t just throw in safeties. Pick them smartly because the safeties, not your reaches, are the most important schools on your list.

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Are you seeking ideas for additional colleges to consider?

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And do you have any financial limitations. IOW, can your family fund all of these colleges should you get accepted?

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Yes - also I want to know if this college list is reasonable or if I should be placing more emphasis on targets/safeties.

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Yes, I’m lucky that my family is able and willing to fund my college expenses

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You seem to have a sure thing or two for admission on your list already…right? It’s good to have two just in case…because it’s nice to have a choice.

Please give your parents a huge hug and a big thank you for supporting financially your higher education anywhere. Some families don’t do that, even if they can. So…give that big hug and thank you to your parents.

Do you like Iowa and IIT? If so, that’s terrific. Just research other options to be sure these are your best sure thing options. If so…fine!

As you know, many of the schools on this list above are reaches for all applicants…but if you are happy with your sure things, that doesn’t matter. Having said that, you might want to reduce your reach school number so that you can devote sufficient time to each application.

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This originally was written for another OP with an interest in physics. The suggestions emphasize purely undergraduate-focused colleges:

As an opinion on your list specifically, you might benefit from considering a few more potential choices that might be regarded as high matches or matches.

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Congrats on your wonderful accomplishments. But as you seem to know, the vast majority of schools on your list are reaches for all unhooked candidates. You are certainly a worthy candidate for each college, however, there will be many more worthy applicants than spots available. Another somewhat less competitive school like URochester may be worth adding to the mix.

With so many applications, be sure to allow yourself ample time to focus on writing outstanding and school specific supplements. If necessary, cut the application list a bit.

And yes, hug your parents. :smiley:

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Shot-gunning is time consuming, expensive, and takes up energy (emotional and otherwise) that you could be spending on living your life.

What does your guidance counselor say about your list? Start there.

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I agree that IIT and Iowa are kind of surprising choices for safeties. I think you should spend time carefully picking safeties that you’re really excited about. For example, IIT is really different than the rest of the schools on the list.

And try to pare down the rest of the list. It will be hard to do that many high-quality apps. They’re all prestigious, but other than that some of them are quite different from each other.

Caltech, MIT, (and CMU) are intense. There’s a drinking from the firehose culture that may or may not be the right fit for you – give some careful thought to that.

You don’t HAVE to have target schools on your list as long as you have safeties. But there are some good ones if you’re interested.

There are a lot of big schools on this list. Are you also interested in smaller schools or no?

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I think the suggestions to rethink or add to your likelies is a good one.

You’re also lacking in target schools - if all the reaches reject you, will you be okay with the safeties, or should you add some targets? My kids had solid targets (OOS publics, mostly) and we talked those up because the reaches are always so reachy and unpredictable, even for my high-stats younger kiddo who is now a senior and getting a mix of awesome and head-scratching results.

And I agree with others who are mentioning essay fatigue. It’s a thing. Lackluster essays for your later reaches will not help and may well move you to the “no” pile, even with your great stats.

Good luck! With a balanced list, you will land somewhere great.

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Some random thoughts that might help you select schools on your list…

  1. I agree with others here that you should have a couple likely admits on your list (in the crazy college application environment of the past few years is there such a thing as “safety” anymore?), and you should pick schools that you would not mind attending. Do your research. Understand that some schools practice yield management and may defer or reject you if they think that you are just using them for a safety, so show interest.
  2. How many schools on your current list have you visited? CC is full of posts about students visiting their “dream school” for the first time and being turned off, or seeing a school near the bottom of their list and loving it. Visit as many as possible before applying. If available, sit in on a class or two.
  3. What are your long term plans after undergrad? There are not a lot of jobs for BS Physics grads. Do you plan on grad school? Do you want to teach or do research? If you want to stay in academia do some work on what undergrad Physics programs are feeders to PhD programs.
  4. The schools on your list vary greatly in size, location, culture, etc. If you had to write a list of attributes for your ideal school, what would it include? When my son had his acceptances in I made him do a ranked matrix of the schools based on ranking, outcomes, campus, culture, location, resources, student services, etc. before making his final decision. Even if the final decision is based to some degree on emotion or “gut”, this exercise will provide some focus.
  5. Always pick fit over prestige. You are better off going to a top 15 school with a perfect fit, than the number three school where you are miserable.

You have an impressive CV - kudos to you. I wish you luck, wherever you land.

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The OP listed Iowa, which admits liberal arts and science applicants whose RAI score exceeds 245 (IA resident) or 255 (non-IA resident): https://admissions.uiowa.edu/academics/first-year-admission

Another poster suggested Arizona, which automatically admits applicants with a 3.0 GPA: Application Review Process | University of Arizona Admissions

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If you like your safety to the point that you will be happy to go there if you get rejected everywhere else, then you have done what you need to do for that. You can also remove any schools that you like less than your safety.

However, it is possible that there are other safeties that you may like better than your current one, so you may want to see if that is the case.

Is Iowa your state of residency?

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Our feederish HS starts with this framework as a baseline. It works very well in most cases, although for various reasons our more competitive applicants usually do more than 2 Reaches, although our counselors try to discourage more than like 5-6 Reaches:

https://support.collegekickstart.com/hc/en-us/articles/217485088-Differences-Between-Likely-Target-Reach-and-Unlikely-Schools

The reason not to do more than like 5-6 Reaches is basically math. To summarize a complex topic, if you do a really good job picking your Reaches, it is very unlikely any additional Reaches will yield an offer you would actually take. Doing a good job means two things: (1) thinking seriously about exactly what you want in a college experience and picking Reaches that really make sense for you in light of those things; and (2) assessing what each college says it wants in a student and determining in good faith you are what they are looking for. I note our college counselors are really helpful on both those issues, but people here can help too.

Anyway, if you do that carefully, it is extremely likely one of two scenarios will play out. First, at least one of your best 5-6 ideas may make you an offer. In this scenario, you don’t need any more offers, because if you have done this carefully you already know you would prefer this offer. Second, none of your best 5-6 ideas give you an offer. At this point, it becomes extremely unlikely you would get an offer from any Reach (this is the math part, and I can explain it in detail if you like, but at a high level it has to be this way because there are only so many Reach enrollment slots to go around, so it can’t be possible to beat that fact just by applying to a lot of them).

OK, then given this framework, I would agree you need to be very thoughtful about what you choose for your Likelies and Targets, and you need at least 2 Likelies and 3-5 Targets. And really, you should be thinking of these just as carefully. What do you really want in a college experience? What sort of college is really looking for someone like you? You should be considering all that when determing your Likely and Target lists, and it may take serious investigation to finalize them.

OK, then you should have at least a couple Reaches, and maybe up to 5-6. But unless you have some special reason to do more, that should really be it. And instead of just coming up with more and more Reaches to put on a list, you should be devoting a lot of time to figuring out the answers to those two questions above, so you can make sure you are applying to the best possible 2-6 Reaches.

All this is a lot of work, but it is worth it in the end. If you do all this, you basically can’t lose, because no matter what you will end up with college offers (likely multiple offers) that you know would be particularly good for you. And then maybe that will include some Reaches, and maybe not, but that isn’t such a high stakes issue when you have carefully chosen each college on your list.

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Congratulations on building a strong profile in high school so far!

The balance of a college list should be individualized based upon a person’s individual makeup. For some people, rejection is like a fuel that makes them want to be even more amazing wherever they land to prove to the rejectors what a big mistake they made. For people like that, having a very reach-heavy list can be a reasonable decision. For most people, rejection is definitely a mental/emotional blow. And if someone receives too much rejection, they can start to question their own value and that of any acceptances they have received (i.e., if all these others rejected me, then anyone who accepted me can’t be that great).

I find that most people do better with more acceptances than rejections, but this is very much based on the given individual. I would reflect about how you handle rejection (which you may not have received much of so far since you are such a strong applicant) and perhaps talk with some trusted individuals who know you well, and then decide how you want to balance your list between likelies and lower probability admits.

To help you think about it some more, read through this:

Admit, Admit, Admit, Reject, Reject, Reject, Reject, Reject, Reject, REJECT, REJECT, REJECT, REJECT, REJECT, REJECT, REJECT, REJECT, ADMIT, REJECT

If you think getting a series of decisions like this would be problematic, reconsider the balance of your list (that’s 4 acceptances and 15 rejections, for context).

Right now, think about what kind of college experience you want to have. What’s important in a college for YOU? Then go through your list of colleges and see how well those colleges match up with your desires. If they fit well, keep them. If not, eliminate them (if they’re low probably admits) or replace them (if they’re likely admits).

You will be a very strong applicant. I would not be surprised if you were accepted to any or even all of the schools on your list, if you have thoughtful, individualized responses to school-specific prompts. That said, however, I also would not be stunned if your only acceptances were from UIUC, IIT, and U. of Iowa. If spring of your senior year came and you would be satisfied if those were your only three options and you would happily submit your enrollment deposit at one of those colleges and plan on spending a happy four years in college, that’s great. If that’s not the case, however, you need different likely schools.

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I would apply to UCSB CCS Physics and maybe OU HTC if focused on graduate school.

CWRU is need aware, so if you’re full pay, I’m sure they’d love to have you. You could hypothetically take both classical mechan and electricity&magnetism first semester, which is probably more than what you can handle.

WPI is also need aware and does not enforce prerequisites, so you can take any math and physics courses you’re up for.

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Case is a school that practices yield management. In past CC threads parents reported that their extremely strong stat kids were deferred by Case and invited to apply ED II. If the OP applies to Case he should show lots of interest with site visits, info sessions, etc. If accepted, he would likely receive a very generous merit aid package.

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But is better for physics than some others listed as ‘alternative’ safeties like RPI.

What we don’t know from OP is were IIT and Iowa picked purposely or they are without thought because he figures he has zero chance of attending. It may have been done purposely. Hopefully OP will respond.

A school like RPI, as an example, plays with the heavyweights as does Arizona on the large school scale, even though both are safe.

RPI physics sales was $75,667 with a range of $70-83k.

CWRU only reports one grad with a range of $35k-39,999.

You likely can’t assess from that but RPI is known as a powerhouse in the major ( as Arizona always has been amongst large flagships).

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