What are my chances?

aquapt
Mon, 11 Feb 2019 21:12:41 +0000

You sound like you’re doing great so far. There’s nothing about your record to date that would disqualify you for any of these reach schools. However, you will be an unhooked, female applicant - that is a steep path into the most elite schools. So no matter what you do from here on in, you are more likely to be rejected than accepted, at any of these schools (with the possible exception of UCLA and USC, if your record is super-strong two years from now). That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a try. But at this stage of the game, building your list from the top down is going to make the whole process more painful than necessary.

You have nothing to lose by taking your focus off of Stanford et. al. for a while and putting your energy into finding match and safety schools that you love and would be happy to attend. You will most assuredly not forget to apply to the reach schools when the time comes, but you can then do so without feeling as if your life will be ruined if you don’t attend a single-digit-admit-rate college.

As to the number of AP classes, you will be assessed relative to what’s available to you at your school, so don’t stress about what isn’t available except with regard to areas of particular interest, where you might want to take the initiative to pursue a summer class/program or some other alternative to supplement what your school offers.

Have you discussed college budget and your overall financial situation with your parents? Do you know if you’d be eligible for need-based financial aid at $70K+/year schools like the schools you list, or if your family would be able to full-pay if not? There are no merit scholarships at any of these colleges except for USC’s National Merit awards if you qualify. UCLA, if you’re not a CA resident, would cost around $65K/year with no OOS financial aid or merit available.

For your academic and extracurricular interests, there are many wonderful places to go to college. Figure out what category of schools is financially realistic (i.e. best need-based aid vs. best merit and/or most affordable sticker price… or maybe money is not a constraint for your family, but make sure you know the parameters from the beginning). Figure out what kind of setting you’d like best, what amount of diversity is important to you, what kind of extracurricular life you’d like to have, how far from home, and so on. People here will happily help you find matches and safeties that you can get excited about and avoid putting all of your emotional eggs in the “lottery school” basket. Sure, you might still end up at one of the schools on this “dream school” list, but now is not the time to decide that these are the only options that could possibly make you happy and get you where you want to go in life.