[Lucy Miao]

I took the SATI in the fall of 10th grade and got a 2360, and my SATII composite is 2320 (760 - Bio, 800 - MathIIC, 760 US History). My unweighted GPA for junior year is 3.95 (or at least I think so, the damn thing wasn't on my report card for some reason -__- so I had to calculate it by myself).

I was thinking about it, and I would probably be hella unhappy in a really cold-winter environment (does that even make sense? LOL) so even if I apply to Ivy Leagues, even if I get accepted it's dubious whether I'd go there or not, since I'll probably be miserable in New England XD

Stanford was a b!tch to international applicants this year (I live in Shanghai, China), so I doubt I'd have high chances of getting in there. (I'll probably be applying anyway just for kicks. Same with those Ivy Leagues.) I'm thinking about applying to the UCs, but they're all extremely large, and I'm more comfortable in smaller schools (like around the 3000/4000 undergrads per university types.)

I'm also thinking about applying to Rice, which is pretty good considering what I have in mind, but aside from that.. I need more options XD

Oh yeah, and I want to go into a Biology/Biochem major.

Help? XD

--edit;

I'm also Chinese, which makes it even worse because there'll probably be 17098427498273 Asians applying to the schools I'm interested in/you people suggest.

[Avex]

mini cooper with those scores you can apply to anywhere, but in all seriousness, just make sure your personal statement is unique and gives the colleges a reason to want you

[soralee]

dang, you are very, very smart (: good job one those scores, first of all.
no cold weather? hm.. what do you mean stanford wasn't.. as nice to international students? like, their acceptance % wasn't high or something? cause i would definitely say stanford & uc's for the top choices.
how about cal tech? (or more specifically, california institute of technology). they have a biology and chemistry major, but i guess they're more of a engineering school. idk what kind of field you want to go in for biology/biochem, but it's a pretty awesome school (in cali!).
rice is good. university of texas? although it's huge, they have branches in arlington, dallas, san antonio..
but ya know, it's not good to be too picky (;

[Avex]

the thing is, you should look up some details about those schools and figure out what appeals to you (i.e. what qualities), and narrow down your search from there; it's really difficult to decide from us, given that the majority of people in soompi (or ppl in general) don't come from ivy leagues.

i'll give you an example. uc berkeley was my number one choice for college because i wanted to study civil engineering while preserving asian architecture (there's a gigantic library at berkeley dedicated to east asian works; not that i will read all the books or anything, but the influence helps). ranking is pretty high (it's the #2 civ engineering school in the us, according to newsweek), but sometimes rankings don't mean anything.

i actually want to be an architectural engineer, and after i got accepted to cal, i found out from my friend, who got accepted to usc, usc has this amazing architecture program, and surprisingly, they had a civil engineering BUILDING SCIENCE program (basically, its architectural engineering!). i was so pissed that i didn't even apply, since berkeley didn't have anything like that! however, knowing that financial aid would be difficult on me, and USCs expensive cost, i decided to let go of that since there were still lots of things (i wont mention them) that i love about berkeley.

so in short, do your research on what those schools can offer to you; go beyond rankings! as you saw in my situation, usc's Civ engineering program isn't on top of berkeley, but you saw why i was somewhat unhappy - usc had something that cal did not have. just because a school is high ranked doesn't mean it may be right for you.

[DaAzNkIgGa627]

mini cooper with those scores you can apply to anywhere, but in all seriousness, just make sure your personal statement is unique and gives the colleges a reason to want you

You'll do fine =D

[christee8876]

you have an awesome GPA and SAT score but what about your extra curriculars?

[Lucy Miao]

you have an awesome GPA and SAT score but what about your extra curriculars?

i realized after i posted the thread that i forgot about those LOL.

ok i've been on the varsity volleyball team for 3 years, and i'm joining again in senior year - i might make captain, but we'll see LOL. i'm on my youth group & the church's worship team and the youth group's leadership team, i was a regional finalist at the siemens competition during junior year, president of underclassmen speech club in 10th grade...
uhh i did hella interning last summer & this summer, and i'm getting a job as a TA for this chinese-based test prep organization...
i'm trying to think of other things LOL. i'm starting a student support services group this year >> for all the new kiddos that come to our school HAHA.

[soralee]

WELL then, i think the hardest part for you is to choose which college to go to after acceptance letters keep on rolling in (..hopefully [: )
but that's really cool. you should start applying for scholarships earlyyy cause all those big schools mean big bucks. -__-

[J-10]

damn i wish i had scores like urs. u can try georgia tech

[pri-T]

With your scores and extracurriculars, you pretty much stand a very good chance at any school you apply to.

Since you don't like cold weather and already expressed an interest in CA schools, I'd go ahead and recommend some good CA schools for you

UCLA, UC Berkeley. UCSD is also a very science-oriented school so maybe you want to research that too.

USC's Bio/Biochem program isn't that famous to my knowledge, but my pre-med friends have no trouble finding interesting research projects to get their hands on, so I don't think it's too bad either. It is a smaller school and I think it has a very supportive environment. They also like international students. I believe for this year's freshman class, we have the largest percentage of international students coming in. But tuition is pretty expensive, so apply by the scholarship deadline! I don't believe internationals can get need-based aid.

Other good privates in CA: Stanford, like you already mentioned, CalTech and the Claremont colleges - Claremont McKenna, Pomona College, Harvey Mudd.

Look into schools that interest you and see if you think it'll be a good personal fit for you, if you would like it there and then decide if you should apply there.

[Lucy Miao]

Thanks for the suggestions, pri-T! I was thinking about Pomona too, but isn't that generally known for being more liberal-arts?

& thank you to the rest of you for the feedback ^^

[hellosally]

o-o i want your sat scores..

[sunnicherri]

You should try some down south. Like Georgetown or Duke. Emory would be like a match school I think. The weather in the South is not as bad as the weather in the northeast.

[christee8876]

...you could get in basically anywhere.
I am so jealous.
just make sure your personal statement is good.

[xboredguy]

USC USC USC USC USC USC

haha but seriously, you have the total package(even if you are asian)
i would seriously consider attending the Ivy League schools(even if you despise the weather)
simply put: those schools have about 24000 applicants with about a 8 percent acceptance rate
that means you're throwing away a chance to attend a school where only about 1900 kids get into
most kids will kill for your position

but if you are really considering attending a school in CA, attend a private school
stay away from the UC system cuz they will have no love for you
budget cuts, higher tuition for international/out-of-state kids(although I am in instate, they showed no love for me in FA), overcrowded student body with a huge disparity in diversity and a slight decrease in education quality due to budget constraints
that was enough for me to choose a private school

[Avex]

^

How's USC's financial aid package for international students? My friend didn't really get a good financial aid offer (but then again, his parents in total make a lot of money, but not enough to afford USC). Make sure you know USC gives you a good financial aid package too.

[xboredguy]

^

How's USC's financial aid package for international students? My friend didn't really get a good financial aid offer (but then again, his parents in total make a lot of money, but not enough to afford USC). Make sure you know USC gives you a good financial aid package too.

Financial aid packages suck for international kids regardless of the school they attend. The only exception are the ivy league, MIT and stanford. However, she has a higher chance of winning a full scholarship from USC than she does at a UC.

and that goes for any other private school

[gubercootichunks]

i agree with whoever said you should start looking at scholarships asap. yes, you will get into most of the schools you apply to with your stats, but fa is a big factor. (unless your parents are hella rich and can pay for it out of pocket, but even if they can, it'd be nice if they didn't have to.)

anyways, i'm not totally sure about the policies at other ivies, but cornell has a very limited amount of financial aid reserved for international students. and cornell also doesn't award merit based scholarships. that being said, there are also 13,000 undergrads at cornell because it's the largest ivy league school; the student population may be too large for your liking, it seems.

like xboredguy said, i wouldn't rule out schools in the northeast solely because of the weather. there's a pretty different atmosphere and pace around here from the west coast, and i think it'd be ideal of you could visit to get a feel for it yourself to see if you like it or not.

as for other suggestions, there's a ton of small liberal arts colleges in the northeast. all very good, but small (though i'm not exactly sure how small.) a couple that come to mind are amherst, hamilton, bates, bowdoin and williams. other moderately sized schools are tufts and carnegie mellon university; both have around 5,000 undergrads.

[NoBreak92]

Columbia
Cornell
Harvard
UPenn
Carnegie Mellon
UCLA