What are my chances of getting into a Top 10 school?

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Hey, just wondering what my chances are of getting into a top 10 school based on stats and extracurriculars. I’m just going to jump into it:

ACT Composite: 34
SAT: 1540
SAT Subject Tests: Math II - 770, Chemistry - 800, Physics - 800
PSAT: 1500
AP Exams: World History - 5, Chemistry - 4, Lang - 5, Calc BC - 5, Physics 1 - 5, Government - 5, Literature - 4, Spanish - 5, Psychology - 4, Physics C - 5

Cumulative GPA: 4.776 (on a 4.0 scale)
Class Rank: 2/435

Extracurriculars:
Key Club (VP 9th Grade, President 10-12th Grade)
Renaissance Leadership Team (10-12; VP 11-12th Grades)
Robotics Team (10-12; Team Captain 11-12th Grades)
Volunteer Math Tutor (10-12th Grades)
National Honors Society (11-12th Grades; Junior Exec and President)

I have quite a bit of awards and other volunteer stuff I did, along with tons of summer classes and involvement both inside and outside of school. So far this is what I’ve got and I’m not sure if I’d be able to get into any Top 10 School. Thoughts?

2

You are a competitive applicant. Your stats are good and your ECs are decent. Write great essays and you could get accepted to any of these schools

3

Thank you for your help!

4

They are good, but instead of focusing on just a “top 10 school” you should focus on a school that you feel like is a genuinely good fit towards your interests and one that you will thrive at. Because everything else is subjective.

5

It’s going to take a lot more than some great essay. If you dig into what your targets look for, maybe you’ll get a better idea of what does make a match to what they want.

You’ve quoted, typically, stats and titles. That’s the bare bones and suggests you havent done this digging. Now you need to figure out what else you need to have, to show. You can rise to that challenge.

What year are you? What major?

6

By my count there are about 60 "top 10 school"s :

Universities:

  1. Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT
  2. Caltech, UChicago, Columbia, Penn
    10.Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Hopkins, Northwestern…

LACs:

  1. Williams, Amherst, Swat
  2. Bowdoin, Midd, Pomona, Wellesley
  3. Carleton, Claremont McKenna, Hamilton, Haverford, Vassar, Wesleyan…

Those are just some of the private schools. Add a dozen top public schools that equal them (or nearly so) in academic strength and sometimes surpass some of them in research output and international clout… and the next 10-15 private U’s and LACs each (which also have great profs and admit a lot of 4.0/1500 kids themselves)… and now we’re looking at 60-70 schools that can rightly be called elite.

And then there are another 100 schools that are also very good. And another 100 that are pretty good. etc.

There’s nothing wrong with the top-10-ranked LACs and U’s, but they are not the only schools worth consideration. Please don’t be one of the kids who only applies to them. :slight_smile:

7

Excellent, @prezbucky You should repeat that post often.
^:)^

8

Well… the top-10-quality private U’s:

Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, Caltech, UChicago, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Hopkins, Northwestern, Emory, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Rice, Vanderbilt, Washington U, NYU, Tufts, USC, U of Rochester, Case Western, Wake, BC, Tulane, Lehigh, BU, Brandeis. Mighta gone overboard, but those are all outstanding, and we’re at 32.

Top-10-quality public U’s:
Berkeley, Michigan, UVA, UCLA, UNC, Wisconsin, W&M, Georgia Tech, Illinois, Washington, Texas, UCSD. I stuck to 12 there, but could easily add another 10-15 really good ones…

Top-10-quality LACs:
Williams, Amherst, Swat, Pomona, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Wellesley, Carleton, Wesleyan, Vassar, Haverford, CMC, Smith, Hamilton, W&L, Mudd, Davidson, Colgate, Colby, Grinnell, Oberlin, Reed, Bates, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, Macalester, Kenyon, CC, Lafayette, Scripps. I am arbitrarily stopping here because my right index finger is worn out. That’s 30. Could add another 20 easily.

The point is, you don’t have to get into a reach to get a great education. We have a great many awesome schools with great faculty and smart students, enough to present a solid app list to anyone compiling said list based on fit and finances. Forget the names of the schools and instead concentrate on the schools that best fit your known academic, environmental and social preferences. This requires knowing yourself a little bit and doing an awful lot of reading – like reading the Fiske guide cover-to-cover and perusing these forums – and running the NPC before applying. But it will be worth it when you are presented with acceptances from only schools you like and can afford… when your choice of which offer to choose is a hard one because you like all the schools you got into. That is a good outcome.

9

@prezbucky I completely agree and thank you for your response! I’ll definitely look into more and I won’t only be applying to major schools. Thank you for your help!

10

@lookingforward I will be going into my junior year in the fall, and as for major I hope to be majoring in biomedical engineering with premed, or perhaps a combined 6 year BS/MD program that are offered at certain schools. I have dug around to find what these colleges look for in terms of accepting an applicant besides just grades and test scores, which I do understand is the bare minimum requirement. Thanks for your reply!

11

Rising junior and you have SAT and SAT2 scores, 10 AP behind you, with scores? Or some of that is what you hope for?

I think you need to expand those ECs. Robotics is the only direct collaborative stem EC? Where are the health delivery sorts of activities?