What kind of colleges should I be looking at?

Chance Me / Match Me
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ok so my dad is very pushy about college (despite me being a high school freshman) and has been for pretty much my entire existence and will not shut up about me needing to get into the ivies. it’s really annoying and i know it’s out of love or whatever and he’s just looking out for my future but i’m 90% sure i’m not ivy league material and i keep telling him that but he just doesn’t believe me. he’s also an immigrant and unfamiliar w the american college admissions process and pretty much thinks i’m guaranteed admission to a top school as long as i have good grades, which is obviously not true.

i know i’m only a freshman so this isn’t really important but the pressure at home makes it important for me. i don’t want to get my hopes up for getting into a top school if i don’t have a realistic chance, so please help me out and tell me what kinds of schools u think i’d have a shot at.

stats:
we don’t do gpa until junior year
i haven’t taken any standardized tests but i did some practice sats at home in 8th grade once the pandemic started bc i was bored and i was scoring ~710 ebrw and ~540 math.
my grades are meh. i’m going to end the year w a B in honors alg 1, A in english, A in french, A- in global hist, and an A- (potential A) in bio.
i was going through a lot w my mental health this year and my mom was diagnosed w cancer so i was defo struggling a lot academically but everything’s a lot better now so i’ll probably do much better next year.

classes:
i’m currently taking honors alg 1, the only adv class freshmen can take.
next year, i’ll be taking honors english, honors french, honors geometry, honors chem, ap euro hist, psychology, and intro to comp sci (the hardest course load available).

ecs:
again, meh.
i’m a member of my school’s creative writing club, going to be a co-president of it and editor-in-chief of the lit mag next year.
i’m a staff member of my school newspaper and i applied for an editorial position, don’t know if i’ll get it.
applied for mun bc (only 10th grade and up are allowed to do it), don’t know if i’ll get in.
couldn’t play this year bc of an injury but varsity field hockey for next year.
i have my own lit mag and our first issue is coming out in june and i’m forthcoming in another lit mag.
i’m a poetry and prose reader/editor for two lit mags.
my poetry is going to be in a published anthology later this year (super psyched about that!!)
i’m doing a summer application-only creative writing program but it’s not that prestigious.
i’m interning at a pretty well-known non-profit that runs creative writing workshops this summer. ​

honors/awards:
i got a scholastic writing awards gold key for poetry this year.
yeah, there’s pretty much nothing here lmao.

literally any thoughts are appreciated, i need to hear from people who aren’t my parents <3

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forgot to mention: i was one of two kids in my grade selected to go to a county-wide young writers’ conference

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There are merit scholarships for top grades, start with your state university.

Also could look at Colleges That Change Lives. https://ctcl.org/

University of Iowa has youth program for writing. https://iyws.clas.uiowa.edu/

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Thanks! I already knew about UIowa (I was too young to apply for the program this year) but I didn’t know about CTCL.

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hi! I don’t rlly have good advice for you about college but your ec’s look p decent for a freshman—I def did not have that many activities going on when I was a freshman lol (I’m a rising senior now). and I totally get the whole parents thing- my dad is kinda like that too (hes also an immigrant lmao) but also we haven’t brought up the whole topic of college in a long time. eventually your dad is gonna need to understand that his thought are illogical and unrealistic and, when you apply to college, please do not only apply for only ivies since they’re very high reach schools for anyone and rejection from all of them is super likely. when you apply, make sure to apply to a wide variety of schools with varying acceptance rates, even if he tells you to apply for ivies only or something. hopefully over these 4 next years of high school your father will begin to understand how everything works in terms of college here. I’m sorry abt your mother, I hope she can recover, and I hope youre doing better with your mental health. <3

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thank you so much for that <33

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Based on your interests, look into colleges known for their creative writing and literature programs:

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Barnard College, the Women’s College of Columbia University.
Known for independent women and huge roster of well known writers.
It’s a 7 Sister College, which is where smart women went before Ivies became co-ed in the late 1960s and 70s. Very prestigious. Keep writing. Don’t put yourself down! Tell your dad there are dozens of colleges every bit as good as Ivies and as prestigious.
– Don’t Sweat the Essay, Inc.

1 Like
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For writing, definitely check out Emerson in Boston.

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