#High school sophomore not sure what my list should look like

21 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

wise valve
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I know I'm not a junior yet so recommended college lists are hard to curate but I have a few in mind and I wanted to see if anyone else has any opinions based on personal experience.

  • Location/Region: I'm from NYC and I go to a specialized high school, but I do not like it here at all. I'm really want to study abroad in Canada and countries in Asia like China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Singapore, but it's not a major priority
  • Major: majoring in either comp sci or any comp sci related fields, meche, ee, biotech, biomed engineering, computational bio, or ai, interested in double majoring or minor in Asian studies, Chinese, or international studies
  • **GPA/Test Scores: ** 3.71/4.0 unweighted, 4.21/5.0 weighted, but my school doesn't use a 4.0/5.0 gpa scale I js calculated it myself. My cumulative right now is likely around a 96% I took an sat mock earlier this year and got like a 1390 but I'm taking prep so hopefully it will go up to 1530+.
  • Classes & Clubs: no clubs in particular but it would be nice to have a mun team, robotics club or team, makerspace, and badminton club/team
  • Size: It doesn't matter that much to me, but smaller classes
  • Costs: not sure but probably less than $80k USD out of pocket in total, financial aid is pretty important to me bc I have a younger sibling going to college right after me.
  • Schools You're Currently Looking At: definitely Cornell, upenn, Dartmouth, MIT, CMU, UCLA, UCSD, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, umich, cwru, rice, WPI, rpi, Stony, and uwaterloo. (Other safeties not included)
  • **Additional: ** I hate party schools. I lowk love Cornell's environment, community, and campus. I'm a sucker for pretty campuses (Princeton, Yale, Cornell), I can't handle excessive year-round heat, I need to touch snow at least once a year (skiing/snowboarding), any city that remotely resembles NYC is a no
still sorrel
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purdue

naive hinge
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Take the UCs and Michigan off your list. If you don't like heat ditch Rice.

Think about adding Union, RIT, Harvey Mudd, UB

Given you have somewhat broad interests, going outside of the US doesn't seem like a great fit. Especially because most international schools are going to be in big cities.

wise skiff
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Duke has a campus in singapore inthink

wise valve
mortal lynx
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NYU Shanghai?

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WUSTL has skiing opportunities and is very academically flexibile

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Also URochester

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You should grind SAT prep for a NMF-worthy PSAT score

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Erica Meltzer, 1600.io orange book, jwtutoring Desmos YouTube playlist, sat black book 3rd edition, official qbank

mortal lynx
naive hinge
wise skiff
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Ask me anything abt cornell

snow finch
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have you thought about LACs like Williams?

wise valve
wise valve
snow finch
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I think LACs fit your criteria well (small classes, rural or college town setting, usually quieter social scene, a lot are with great skiing access, often give good financial aid), although it would be hard to do an engineering degree there

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A lot of the schools you've picked (Dartmouth, UMich, UCLA, Irvine, Penn to an extent) have pretty big party cultures

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Others like MIT Cornell CMU UCSD CWRU Waterloo definitely won't have

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But like BG said I would absolutely take the UCs off your list right now, any out of state publics will be too expensive

manic fog
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have you looked into georgetown? from what i know it has a really really good study abroad program!!