TX Resident, Junior in HS. 3.4 unweighted GPA, Need guidance on college admissions [now 3.53 GPA, top 40% rank]

Chance Me / Match Me
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•US Citizen
•TX Resident (Public HS)
•No budget

Intended Majors:
•For now, I am not sure what major I want to go into. I want to go the pre-dental route, so I just need to take the prerequisites. What major would be good? I do not want to go into a stem major.
My grades have been a high upward trend throughout high school as well.

GPA:
Unweighted: 3.46 out of 4.0
Weighted: 3.91 out of 5.0
Class Rank: 453/922

HS Coursework:
•ENGLISH:
-1&2 honors
-Dual Credit English (college credit)

  • Senior year next year: AP Literature

•MATH:
-Alg 1 Honors
-Geometry Honors
-Pre-calculus
-Senior year next year: AP Calculus AB

•SCIENCE:
-Biology
-Chemistry
-Physics honors
-Senior year next year: AP Environmental Science

•SOCIAL STUDIES:
-World Geography honors
-AP World History
-Dual Credit history
-Psychology/Sociology Dual credit

•LANGUAGES
-Spanish 1&2 prior to high school (HS credit)
-Korean Credit by exam

•FINE ARTS:
-3 year orchestra (2 year sub-non varsity, 1 year varsity)

Extracurriculars:

  • 2021-2023: 3 Self published books
  • Orchestra: 2 years + 1 varsity
  • Church Student council
  • New Orleans mission trip
  • Church volunteering 200 hours+
  • 2 year DECA
  • Track 1 year
  • Orthodontist shadowing
  • Host at Brunch Cafe for a year

Schools: (I-in state) (O-out of state)

  • Baylor University (I)
  • Emerson College (O)
  • Indiana University Bloomington (O)
  • New York University (O)
  • Purdue University (O)
  • Rutgers University (O)
  • Southern Methodist University (I)
  • The University of Texas at Austin (I)
  • Texas A&M University (I)
  • Texas Tech University (I)
  • The University of Texas at Dallas (I)
  • University of North Texas (I)
  • University of Pittsburgh (O)
  • Vanderbilt University (O)

I am wanting to major in something that is not so popular, so my admission acceptance rate chances are higher. I am also predicting my SAT score to be above a 1480-1500.
Some of these schools are reach schools as well.

I am also wanting to EA to some of the schools as well.

Please let me know what my chances are, and what I should think about majoring in.

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Means your parents will pay whatever it costs ($100k+ at some colleges), or you do not know?

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It looks like you qualify for UNT auto admit by 3.0+ GPA.

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Yes, they sent my sister to a college in Boston as well. As long as I get accepted they informed me that they will send me there.

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Do you an SAT or ACT score? TTU would be assured if you have a 1240 SAT or 26 ACT with your top 50% rank.

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There is a dental school in San Antonio. You may want to take a look at UT at San Antonio and St. Mary’s University there.
I teach in a large Texas public high school. Your GPA and course list are close to my students attending Texas Tech, Texas State, and UNT.

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I think that there are three things to think about in choosing a major.

First of all, check out what the pre-dental prerequisites are. I am not sure how similar these are to the premed / pre-vet required classes. However, whatever pre-dental classes that you need to take, if these overlap with the requirements for your major, that might limit how many required classes you are going to need to take.

Secondly, think about what you are good at, and what you like to study. If you are doing something that you like and that you are good at, then you are somewhat more likely to do well in your classes.

Also, think about what you would want to do do if you do not make it to dental school. Having a “plan B” is very important for premed students, and I am thinking that it is also most likely important for pre-dental students.

Aren’t the pre-dental prerequisites relatively STEM-heavy?

Let’s suppose that you pick an affordable university for your bachelor’s degree and save considerable money this way. Will your parents be willing to save this money to pay for dental school? Assuming that the dream of making it to dental school is successful, it would be best for you to minimize any loans that you need to take along the way.

To me this would appear to make UT Austin and Vanderbilt and NYU unlikely – I would put them as high reaches.

However, your strong upward trend should help you quite a bit at many or most of the schools on your list, and should help you a lot to be prepared to do well once you get to university.

I think that this is the wrong approach. You should major in something that you like, that you are good at, and that overlaps with a reasonable “plan B”. If you major in something that overlaps with pre-dental required classes that may help also. Then you attend a university where you can get accepted given your major. There are a lot of very good universities in the US, and in Texas. What you major in is likely to have a larger impact on your future life compared to which university you attend.

And at the risk of repeating myself, I expect that your strong uptrend will help you a lot. You will want to make sure to continue the hard work that caused this uptrend once you get to university.

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What is there niche academic interest of yours? Korean? If we knew we could better recommend colleges.
What’s your Plan B?

UT, TAMU are basically out of reach - apply to your favorite just in case but…
UTD is basically all STEM&business so if you want to major in something else, it’s not the right choice.
Due to rigor, definitely apply to the Honors colleges at all the other TX publics.

You would likely be auto admit at Indiana University (and you could try for Honors).

Would you be interested in universities such as St Olaf (very good for premed so I assume pre dental too), Wheaton MA, Emory-Oxford, Franklin&Marshall?

If your parents really said they can afford anything, UIUC isn’t just for STEM and has excellent creative fields such as Media&Film studies

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My daughter’s undergrad roommate is now a dentist. She was a chemistry and something else like bio major. Her mother is a dentist so I believe directed her toward a STEM major and getting into dental school was still very hard to get into dental school.

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OP: In regards to Purdue, you might look at the Purdue Data Digest, here: https://www.purdue.edu/datadigest/; and especially the links to “Applications, Admits, and Matriculations” and “New First-Time Beginner Profile”. You can plug in your stats to some of the interactive links on these sites, and perhaps get an idea where you might fall relative to recently admitted OOS applicants to Purdue.

If you haven’t done so already, you might look at the Common Data Sets for the schools that you are interested in, especially Section C7 (which lists how various academic and non-academic admissions factors are weighted by each school) and Sections C9-C11 (which list mostly objective criteria – GPA, class rank, test scores – for matriculated students). These may help you in focussing your applications to schools where your own personal information and data will be more competitive.

If your school has Naviance or a similar software program, you should take a look at that for the schools in which you are interested. Also, sit down with your guidance counselor and discuss what schools would be a good match for you; and hopefully your GC should have historical information on admissions from your high school to various colleges and universities.

Finally, perhaps a look at Colleges That Change Lives – here, https://ctcl.org/ – might give you some additional ideas about schools to consider. For example, Rhodes College in Memphis has a good percentage of students from Texas; and I think that it has a good track record of placement of its graduates in health-related professional programs.

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Here is a non-exhaustive list of need-aware schools: Need-Aware Colleges: A Full List by Prep Expert

These are places that will take in to account the face that you can pay in full when deciding whether to admit you or not. (This is if you say “no” to “will you be needing aid” in the application)

Also check out Ursinus college. They have a pretty popular pre-health program

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Please don’t perpetuate the use of inaccurate third party lists. There is much wrong on the two lists on the linked page, but I don’t want to derail this thread. If OP wants to know this information at the school level, the only way to get accurate info is to look on each school’s website. If the info isn’t there, contact admissions and/or the FA office and ask.

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Congratulations on the upward trend in high school!
A few questions/comments regarding your high school coursework:

  1. Are other AP science classes offered besides AP Environmental Science?
  2. What AP grade did you get for world history?
  3. What dual credit history classes have you taken? Have you done U.S. history or civics? Make sure that you meet the graduation requirements for Texas high schools (most high schools I’m aware of require both of those classes).
  4. For your Korean credit, through what level Korean did you test out of? Is it a heritage language for you?

For colleges like Vanderbilt, the expectation is usually that students will have taken rigorous academic classes every year of high school in the core academic subjects of English, social studies, science, math, and foreign language. One of my biggest concerns, especially for schools with lower odds of admission, is the fact that you haven’t taken any foreign language coursework in high school. If your high school offers other AP science classes, you have selected the science class with the reputation of being the easiest. Psychology and sociology (if in lieu of other academic social studies classes) might be perceived the same way. If you look at the Common Data Sets for colleges as @gandalf78 mentioned, look at how they view academic rigor. Generally, it’s very important.

What I wrote might sound quite negative, but I think it’s important to set reasonable expectations when going into the college search and application process. Even if you have a 1600 SAT score, it doesn’t override the rest of your application.

For every college on your list, I would go through and look at its academic requirements for admission, particularly for foreign languages, to make sure you have met them. And if there are recommended minimums that you do not meet, I would consider reevaluating your senior year course work.

Have you thought about any smaller colleges? Some possibilities that might be closer to home (just to visit to see how you like the feel of them) would be Austin College, Southwestern University, U. of Dallas, or Trinity University (which is a bit bigger than the others).

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Update on stats:

Unweighted GPA: 3.53
Weighted GPA: 4.148
Class rank: 365/918

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  1. Yes, there was AP bio, AP chem, and more.
  2. 4
  3. DC English and History, DC Sociology and Pyschology, and DC Government and Economics (senior year)
  4. There is a language test with three sections on it. Reading, writing, and listening. Yes, it is a heritage language for me.
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I disagree with this. UT is out of reach for some majors, and a “normal” reach for some…like college of liberal arts and college of education.

TAMU is a target IMO. I know many many people who get into TAMU with GPA and rank below yours. The in state acceptance rate is 60 percent. At our TX school the 5
Year average acceptance rate at TAMU (including Blinn Team) is 80 percent. It depends on your major but there are many majors for which I think you have at least a 50-50 shot of admission.

Congrats on bringing your grades up and good luck!