Trying to narrow list

College Search & Lists
1

<p>Hi</p>

<p>So I am a rising senior at a competitive New England public high school. I have a 4.0 unweighted and 4.32 weighted with a relatively tough schedule. 2240 SAT… lots of soccer for EC’s and strong volunteering but i care less about chance stuff right now. Right now I have way too many schools on my list and I need help narrowing it down. </p>

<p>I want to stay relatively close to home or family (live in New England, Family in northern Cali, and sister in DC). I like a relatively athletic campus and don’t want a giant school (some of my safeties are because I’d rather have state schools for safeties). I dont want a commuter campus. I don’t know what I want to study but I my favorite classes in high school so far have been in History, IR, and Bio.</p>

<p>Here is my list:
Stanford
Dartmouth
Brown
Bowdoin
Georgetown
WIlliam and Mary
Middlebury
Tufts
Colby
George Washington
Boston College
Colgate
Vassar
Skidmore
UVM
University of Connecticut
University of Massachusetts Amherst</p>

2

<p>Massachusetts parent here. </p>

<p>Nice list. </p>

<p>Here’s what I would recommend, if you can be a little mathematical.

  1. Do everything you can to try to rank your preferences. Visit colleges, read about them in the Fiske guide, CC, etc.
  2. Do you have Naviance? If you do, try to estimate to the nearest 10%, what your chances of getting in are.
  3. Now, assuming that you’ve done that, you can calculate the probability of attending a given school. For example, suppose the list that you provided was your preferences, and that you estimated that your chances at Stanford, Dartmouth and Brown to be .1, then your probability of attending Stanford is 0.1, your probability of attending Darmouth is (0.9)(0.1)=0.09, and for Brown it would be (0.9)(0.9)(0.1)=0.81. </p>

<p>Now keep doing that until you hit a school where the probability of attending is less than 5%. Unless it has a realistic possibility of being your first choice, eliminate it. Continue this algorithm until you have no schools that have a probability of attending less than 5% except for 2 safeties and any school that has the possibility of being your first choice. </p>

<p>That’s your list and you don’t have to waste time on applications that have little likelihood of being relevant.</p>