Anonymous wrote:Where does University of Pennsylvania place in terms of college list for a high stat student?

Anonymous wrote:Boy, 14 APs by end of 12th grade, 1570 SAT with 4.97 WGPA and 4.0 unweighted from MCPS school. Thinking about Engineering, but might be open to other fields. However, he will have to consider a direct admit situation so I guess will have to lean into engineering just in case as it's probably the limiting factor to get into some schools?

Haven't taken his 11th grade APs obviously, but the 9th and 10th grade APs were all 5's. State level music achievements, rec sports, started a club that he is passionate about, President/VP of some other clubs in school, write for the school newspaper and served as section editor, and some leadership in community projects. Have done some side passion projects that mean a lot to him on a personal level, but nothing where he entered into competitions or won an official award. Works part time in something completely unrelated to his potential career field, mostly because he wants to interact with adults and earn money. Has done trivial shadowing in engineering, but no real tech internship.

Frankly, most colleges seem to be a Reach for engineering majors and I cannot seem to distinguish between Low Reach/High Target/Target. I feel like the College Vine numbers are particularly inflated for him because of his stats, and do not consider major or any other school demographics. Also, does being a boy make it more competitive for admissions to engineering? To me, he seems to look like every other high performing kid.

Looking for colleges that are not too small, maybe 5000+ undergrads. At the least, the school can be in city or suburban areas but not out in the middle of nowhere.

Would appreciate your wisdom and suggestions with categorizing the Low Reach/High Target/Target lists, and whether it's worthwhile to ED.

Anonymous wrote:My DS is similar. In the old days, his reach would be Michigan, his target Purdue, and his safety Lehigh. But who knows? Now, they all feel like reaches, and he should ED to one if he really loves it.
I'd say our son's actual safety is Penn State and maybe VT. Hard to figure out reach and targets because I suspect schools will yield protect kids like ours. But those are big schools.
Since you're looking for smaller schools, I'd say take him to tour Lehigh and Johns Hopkins

Anonymous wrote:I think it also depends on what kind of engineering. If it’s computer science or computer engineering, that’s a whole different ballgame.

My kid, with a similar profile but a little higher on some metrics, used Ohio State as a safety. And also UMD in-state because they admit first into the school and then the programs, so he could have been a physics or math major there.