Can you share which schools in the T35 are safeties? Note that safeties must have assured affordability as well as near certain admissions. Some generalities for categorization for high stat students:
-Schools/programs with under 20% are reaches for all
-20%-40% acceptance rate schools can be targets for high stats students.
-40%-80% acceptance rates can be targets to likelies (some can be near safeties for some students depending on HS placement record)
-80%+ safeties for high stats students, obviously not a safety for all students
So he is ok to spend at least one year (depending on transfer credits) in a CC?
If he is so certain of his academic abilities, I don’t understand why he deliberately chose not to take the PSAT his junior year so he could earn National Merit?
Have you planned for the family diplomacy issues, since it looks like you overspent for the older kid and nephew, so that you are now unable to spend for a similar education for the younger kid?
If he’s OK with doing that as his safety option, then he is all set.
Please be aware this is somewhat offensive and, for that matter, inaccurate. There are some amazing students at colleges outside of the top 35. People choose their college for many different reasons other than rank, so you will find great students at pretty much every university in the country. And they are also getting a great education.
Especially with the limitation to T35 schools - the higher you go up the ranking, the less chance that they will offer any merit-based aid. Although I think some T35s do use the CSS profile? And that could definitely help to unlock more need-based aid due to having a sibling in college. So hopefully that will all work out!
So are there two ways to go from a California Community College to a UC?
TAG – which guarantees a transfer, but only to specific campuses and possibly to only specific majors? (It looks like the campuses are : Davis, Irvine, Merced, Riverside, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz)
a “regular transfer” which is not guaranteed but could be at any UC campus and at any major?
Yes that’s a good summary. I would just add that even outside of TAG, I believe students from CA CCs have some advantages in admissions over transfers from other schools. But I am not the expert on this.
It’s a great pathway for many students but it does come with some drawbacks such as not necessarily starting out with a traditional college experience (although some CCs are located very close to a UC campus), and coming in to the UC as a transfer student (which can in some cases limit a student’s options compared to entering direct to college or direct to major as a freshman).
CC’s are great for safeties as long as the student is being honest and is happy to go there if their top choices do not work out. We all know from these forums that without good safeties things can go south quickly. Make sure safeties really are where you can see yourself.
He missed it last fall, didn’t think PSAT is important, common app only asks for SAT score, and we thought he could mention the SAT achievement (if top 1%) in one of PIQ essays. The “essay” posted by @worriedmomucb is absolutely not what I meant…
Has he taken 14 AP courses already or is that what he is planning by the end of senior year? Did (or will) he take the courses or is he self studying for some of the exams?