What are my odds for Ivies/top20s

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Basic Info

Junior White/Asian Mixed Male

Northeast

Competitive Private School

Interests: International Business, International Affairs

Hooks and Interests

Im First gen American, both parents immigrants

Polyglott, I can apparently put that I am fluent in 4 languages on my college app.

Stats

ACT: 34

UW GPA: 3.8 (This isn’t that good I know, but strong upward trend. Junior year is the first year since 5th Grade I have Straight A’s)

W GPA: 4.4

Classes: My school doesn’t offer AP, so Honors is the top. I have taken every honors class offered to me except for Precalculus this year because I suck at math

Subject Tests: None Yet, will take soon

Rank: School doesn’t do rank

ECs

Debate 9-12: Im captain of my team and my partner and I are top 500 in the country this season.

School Newspaper 9-12: I am currently second in command, but am pretty much confirmed to be the Editor in Chief next year.

Theater 10-12: Not my main priority, did it mostly to improve public speaking for debate, but have been in 4 productions at my school, currently one of three student leaders for the program at my school

Economics Club 9-12: President, This is just some club I run where we discuss economics and finance.

Yearbook 10-12: Going to almost certainly be Chief Editor on my school’s yearbook next year.

Research: I am doing a History Research program at my school next year, writing 30 page paper, might get published

Sports: Did Crew for 2 years, hated it, currently somehow a varsity diver.

Running Amazon Resale Business - I buy stuff on AliBaba and sell it on Amazon.

Jobs: Interned at a bank branch in Germany (German btw) in 9th Grade, worked as a Gardener for a summer in 10th.

Honors

National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards Gold Medalist - Wrote an article where I interviewed refugees, am one of 16 national/international finalists in my category, apparently this contest gets 350,000+ submissions overall.

Debate: Top 500 in country for PF, #1 at regional tournament

Stupid award for Global citizenship at my school

Was awarded position as theatre captain for next year

Schools

Reach - Ivies, Especially Penn, Princeton, Columbia and Harvard. Maybe JHU, Georgetown, UChicago, Northwestern, UCLA, Emory, Tulane, Duke

Match/Safeties - Northeastern, BU, Penn State, Lehigh, F&M, Indiana for Business, GWU, Maybe some lesser UCs?

2

What is your budget? What is your home state?

If you are from the northeast, or any state other than California, you would be full pay at the universities of California.

If you are from the northeast, then why are your matches and alleged safeties all out of state?

A safety is not a safety unless you can afford to attend. With an unweighted GPA of 3.8, Northeastern is not a safety. Whether it is a match I am not sure, but my guess is that it is probably also a reach. Northeastern and BU would not be safeties or even matches unless you can afford to be full pay or have run the NPC and are okay with the results.

What schools do you actually believe are safeties? Have you run the NPC on them and can you afford them?

To answer your original question: In my opinion any university in the top 20 in the US is either a reach or a high reach. I think that it is worth applying to 2 or 3, but you need to focus on finding safeties. Once you have identified 2 safeties that you know that you can afford and that you would be willing to attend, then you can start thinking about matches.

3

Hi, thanks for your advice. Paying for the schools isn’t a concern for me right now, my family is able to afford all of the schools on the list. As for your other point, My state is PA, so I think for Safeties I can put down are Penn State, Indiana and GW, and I think I have very good odds of getting F&M as well (A lot of kids from my school go there). Since I need more safeties, what are some schools you could suggest?

4

U of S Carolina is #1 for international business and you should get scholarship money to attend. So you’re 1st Gen American but not 1st Gen College student? I think schools are more interested in 1st Gen college student (but I could be wrong here).

5

Your right, colleges are probably more interested in 1st Gen College, but if being 1st Gen American helps at all, im willing to put it out there.

6

^ Correct, the first generation tip is for being the first in your family line to attend college, not for being international or immigrant. (As a side note, if you were born in the US you are second-generation, not first-generation.)

7

GWU is not a safety, it is a match.

And spend some time on CC around this time of year, and you will discover just how many students don’t understand that a match doesn’t mean "50-50’.

8

Didn’t you post this to A2C too lol

9

Your reaches are just that, reaches. It will be a tough go, and a very small chance that you get accepted to any of them, but if you have the gumption, go on ahead and give it a try. Just make sure to put the same effort and enthusiasm in tryout match school applications. If you read through the threads herd, you can see that many students with resumes and numbers way up there were not accepted to schools like your matches. Watch those deadlines and get those apps in early. Certain state programs fill up fast, and it is possible to be waitlisted , denied or defected (to satellite schools) at state schools that you consider safeties I’ve seen it happen often.

I suggest getting some early action and/or rolling apps going so that you have some good schools in the bag and then you can go all out in reaches. One thing I noticed with a number of kids (and parents) is that it’s hard to give the schools with less name recognition and prestige the attention often needed when focusing on the big names.

Good luck in getting those apps rolling.