Underperformance after applying as a junior and ending up in the exact same place [AL resident, 4.0 GPA (with 10 college courses including advanced math), 36 ACT]

Applying to College Admission Stories
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GPA: 4.0/4.45, 5/268

Courses: 7 APs all 4 and 5, 10 DE with 3 higher lvl math courses up to abstract algebra

36 ACT

Major: Business at schools with a dedicated B school, math/philosophy/linguistics at all others

Domestic from AL, noncompetitive public school and bad school district, wasian male

Awards/Honors:

  1. Top 30 at natl debate tournament
  2. Ranked top 150 in US in debate
  3. Pretty good award at intl music competition
  4. State champs for math (team)
  5. 3rd at state for math (individual)

Extracurriculars:

  1. Founded debate tutoring org for debaters w/o school program, coached kids w/o a program to 7 TOC bids+3 full quals+multiple top speaker awards+multiple natl tournament champs+$72k valuation+estimated to be by far the best student coach in the US
  2. Director of debate at one of the largest speech+debate nonprofits, directed production of substantial part of $311k of free speech and debate resources including 1000+ pages, 3000+ debaters reached thru lectures, and camps.
  3. Hired debate coach at fairly well known private school, coached 2 CFL quals and state champs in first month of coaching
  4. Codirected an online debate camp (5x previous enrollment, 20->100)
  5. Competed in debate, see awards above for the bigger achievements but I also competed w/o any school support and 3rd in state
  6. Solo bassoonist, see awards above
  7. Math team captain
  8. Volunteer tutor @ local Korean school
  9. Semi selective summer journalism camp

Essays:

Common app is 8.5/10 ish

School specific probably averaging 8.5-9/10, 10/10 diversity essay

LORs:

AP Lit teacher: mid/10

AP Physics teacher: mid/10

Counselor: mid/10

Accepted:

Stony Brook EA

FSU RD+honors

UF RD+honors+URSP (top 2% of accepted students)

Colgate AMS

Emory main campus

Waitlists:

UChicago AGAIN (2 years in a row)

Williams

Emory subcampus (Oxford)

Dartmouth

Rejected:

Yale REA (no interview?)

Emory Woodruff scholarship

NYU

NU

Amherst

Brown

Columbia

Cornell

Wharton

Harvard (no interview)

Due to prior experience, I’d have to start at junior level in a lot of disciplines, which leaves me with a few choices now.

  1. Dedicate two years to exclusively retaking courses or taking redundant courses to satisfy core requirements
  2. Go to a state school and be forced into industry or grad school at 19
  3. Wager everything on a sophomore transfer

I don’t know where I went wrong…

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Please explain this.

You could always pick up a second major.

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You have five admissions to research universities, where there should be upper level and graduate level math (and other subject) offerings for you to take. Are they affordable? If so, what is wrong with them?

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That would exacerbate the problem.

The issue is twofold. First, anything I would consider as a second major, I have the same problem for. The second is that at Colgate, upper division classes are often not granted core designations, meaning I’d have to take a significant number of repeated classes to finish the core.

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Stony Brook is impossible money wise

FSU UF and Emory would be very tight financially

Colgate would require me to take about two years of repeated classes to fulfill core requirements (prematriculation credit is ineligible to be applied towards any core requirements)

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Seems like your application list did not have any suitable safeties that are comfortably affordable and which do not have the core / general education requirements that you do not like.

In your previous thread at Chance Me: AL resident, 4.0/36 ACT for math/econ 2025 at Brown ED and others [<$20k on parent income $110k] , there were various safety suggestions given. Were they all unsuitable?

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They would’ve all had very similar issues unfortunately, my high school courseload more or less pidgeonholed me into reach-or-bust

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This would have been the case for most of your list.

If you do not have any affordable acceptances, it’s not too late to apply to some affordable options. Probably not what you want to hear at this stage, but you could always apply for grad school at some of the the schools on your list.

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Colgate is affordable

I’ve had grad school in mind for a while now and taken a few steps in that direction, but my primary concern these next 4 years more or less has to be the next 4 years

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While Colgate’s general education requirements are voluminous (looks like 12 courses, which means that you have about 20 other courses in an eight semester schedule), it does look like each category has a fairly wide range of offerings where you may be able to find something interesting that is not a repeat of what you had before.

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It’s great that Colgate is affordable. Great school.

As I said, it would be unlikely to graduate on an accelerated timeline from most of your list. If you’d like to get college credit for the classes you’ve completed, you’d need a different list.

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I guess half the battle here is just getting over the bad luck and moving on

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If you’re an Alabama resident, why didn’t you apply to Bama and/or Auburn.

They are equivalent to UF and FSU. If those two work except affordability, then the in state will work.

You can still get into Alabama.

There are trade offs in life - one of which is affordability.

No one in society, forget US News, sees these schools as anything different from each other. They are all large flagships.

Are you NMF ?

That seems a solid plan to me. If you graduate at 19, you can continue schooling or go to grad school.

Not sure how you got so far ahead but it’s a gift. It gives you flexibility.

If you’re ok repeating and Colgate is affordable, that’s another option.

You have options so you didn’t go wrong except you didn’t apply in state assuming it’s affordable.

Fortunately you still have time.

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THIS!

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Can you be more specific about which advanced credit you have? (Here or in a PM)

I’d like to think you can make Emory or Colgate work for you - the general education requirements aren’t so cumbersome as to take up a full two years, and you can take graduate classes without needing to graduate college early.

Are you fixed on grad school for math or are you open to exploring other mathy fields like statistics, physics, CS, economics?

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There is a lot I don’t understand from your post. What does it mean that you were waitlisted at the University of Chicago two years in a row?

Also, what does “due to prior experience I’d have to start at a junior level in a lot of disciplines” even mean? You will not exhaust the course offerings at any of the schools you’ve been accepted to! I guarantee you will learn a great deal in every one of them.

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And to add to Cinnamon’s fine post-college isn’t like HS. You don’t need to take a class you’ve already taken to satisfy some random requirement. There will be departments with classes you’ve never heard of and fascinating opportunities all over the place.

Want to know why Brazil and India’s economies differ? Curious about how oceanographers track tsunamis? Always wondered why recycling rates differ across the world, or why the “express” line in the grocery store doesn’t seem to move faster than the regular lines? And why do film critics describe “Chekov’s gun” so frequently when reviewing contemporary movies?

College is not going to be a repeat of HS, and no matter how many “credits” you walk in with, you will not be repeating stuff you’ve already studied- you’ll move on to more challenging, or deeper, or just different material.

Go to the affordable option and knock the cover off the ball!

PS- the Operations Research class I took which explained the express grocery line conundrum plus dozens of other real life problems was FASCINATING. I now go about my life (taking the train, subway, standing at the ATM, using the restroom at a highway rest stop, waiting for an elevator as other people keep pushing the button and yes- grocery shopping) able to diagnose and fix whatever crowding/bunching problem I see. Just a nice by-product of a really interesting class taken decades ago.

You’re going to love college…

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Emory has cross registration with Georgia Tech. You might be able to take some classes there. Emory is an excellent school.

Did you get any scholarships or the out-of-state tuition waiver at FSU? Their honors program is pretty good. I’m assuming you would bring transfer credits. You probably could graduate in 2-3 years.

Graduating at 19 or 20 isn’t the worst thing. You could try to find a co-op. Work for a few semesters and push graduation out.

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Colgate or Emory are likely to offer in-depth classes in a lot of subjects (there, AP would just be the assumed background/quasi pre- req to many classes, NOT an equivalent to a 1st year class).

Plan to double major in Economics and Math + perhaps add a minor in something of interest.
You could spend a semester abroad learning new ways to do math.

At each, email the Math Department, list the college-level classes you’ve taken, where you took them, the textbook used if any, and the grade you got. Ask them what the Math major would look like for you.

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Sounds like a gap year wouldn’t be a terrible idea either.

EDIT: I had to go back two threads to understand what the heck was going on here: it’s not that the OP is underage, but rather that he accumulated a lot of h/s credit last year and could have graduated as a junior. As a consequence, he wound up applying to a lot of colleges prior to the current cycle (and apparently struck out?)

Those prior threads are cringe worthy, btw. He’s lucky he got into Colgate.