I’m a current Junior and I will be applying to colleges this July.
I’m a Haitian American girl from an immigrant family and a single mother. My school is not very high rated, but I still remain in the top 18% of my class. I am a founding member and president of my policy debate team at school and ranked in the top 50 for both state competitions and in the Harvard National Tournament for 3 years in a row. My GPA is currently a 3.7, and my SAT is a 1470. I also published poetry as a sophomore. In addition, I was a member of the Youth Advisory Council and I am now taking three AP Classes. I have not taken any in the last two years, but I took all honors in 10th grade. I am a member of the National Honor Society and I have not yet received my SAT II scores. Do I have a chance at the Ivies, NYU, Stanford, or UChicago? If not, where should I look?
I’m not sure how much this helps but I also got a Varsity letter for debate and I’ve been doing Varsity lacrosse for two years as well
Ivies, Stanford and Chicago are reaches for everyone. Your stats and EC’s are good but not exceptional and are on the low side for those schools. They would be very high reaches unless you are a recruited athlete for lacrosse. NYU would be a match as would BU, Michigan and USC level schools. You will also need a safety or two, most likely your state flagship.
Thank you for your comment!
In the “consider in the future” category… it’s not a big deal for this forum because nobody knows your name and so mistakes won’t be held against you, but when you’re applying to college and jobs, make sure you don’t have user names or email addresses that contain odd or potentially offensive phrases.
You do not want the admissions officer at Yale to start to send you an email only to wonder what the heck is up with the “spicygrandpa72@gmail.com” email address for example.
If you are out of state for Michigan, it would not be a match but a reach.
Haha, noted. I only made it for this site because I wanted a quick second opinion on my situation. Thanks.
As a woman, you may want to consider Ivy-equivalent women’s colleges. Many have special programs for women. Pls check –
Smith
Wellesley
Mt. Holyoke
Vassar (now coed)
Bryn Mawr
Hollins
Agnes Scott
Barnard
Scripps
Mills
Simmons
These all have solid to great academics and may have special housing or other programs for you.
Best of luck.
I agree BU might be a potential match - I would not put it at the same level as Michigan or USC, however. Michigan and USC would be reaches.
Looking at the CDS reports from each school for 2016-2017, here are the SAT score distributions for the incoming classes (middle 50%):
Michigan Reading: 640-730
USC Reading: 630-730
BU Reading: 590-680
Michigan Math: 670-770
USC Math: 650-770
BU Math: 630-740
Michigan Writing: 650-740
USC Writing: 650-750
BU Writing: 610-700
Those are pretty substantial differences, not to mention the Michigan stats are for the general population (it gets even tougher for out-of-state if that applies for the OP). The OP’s current SAT score puts her above the 75 %ile easily for BU, but puts her in normal range at Michigan. The GPA is below average for Michigan and about average for USC (although GPA calculations get fuzzy at high schools and between colleges, so standardized test scores with many discrete outcomes (i.e. SAT) are better for measuring academic quality across large sample sizes). Either way, it is clearly significantly tougher to get into USC/Michigan, than BU.
Can you afford NYU? They are not great for financial aid, and as presented here you don’t appear to have a profile that would get one of their (very few) big awards.
If you will need financial aid then you need to work from the bottom up*, not the top down, starting with finances. Do you know your Estimated Financial Contribution (EFC)- the number that schools will expect you to be able to pay (it will vary by school, so run a couple to see what kinds of numbers are coming up). Check with the relevant adult(s) to see if they can (&will) pay the EFC.
Remember that there are 2 kinds of money: need based and merit. Most colleges will consider your financial need when deciding whether or not to admit you, and merit money is basically a way to get students that the school *really wants to come. In either case, the stronger you are compared to their average student the more likely you are to get money.
That is all a long way around saying that, if finaid is important you need to be looking at colleges that are going to want you, not just whether you can get in.
*actually, everybody should do this, but it is critical if $$ are an issue
You are a competitive applicant. Your stats and ECs are solid. Your URM hook will probably help your application. Write great essays and you could get accepted to any of these schools
I appreciate the desire to be encouraging- and obviously the OP could get accepted. But notice that a long-time, well respected poster (@TomSrOfBoston) and the CC UMi expert (@yikesyikesyikes) discussed whether University of Michigan is a reach or a match school for the OP, with the answer tending toward reach. Note that UMi has an OOS acceptance rate of ~24%- and the OP is asking about colleges whose acceptance rates are under 10%.
OP could win the lottery. But I wouldn’t pin my hopes on it, and I wouldn’t base my college application strategy on it either.
If you are you low income, you may want to investigate applying through QuestBridge.