mjohn995

Unweighted GPA
3.86

Unweighted Last Semester 11th Grade
3.90

Weighted GPA
4.13

My school was rated #5 in U.S. News: International Academy in BLOOMFIELD HILLS, MI | Best High Schools | US News

SAT:
780M, 800R, 750E

ACT:
36E, 36M, 36R, 36S

Which other colleges are you applying to?
Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of Chicago, Stanford, Yale, UPenn, Michigan State, JHU

List a few of your most important ECs
-Violin private lessons for several years, in symphony orchestra and an after-school orchestra (counts as a class) this year
-Ski team in 9th grade
-Youth president of local (Detroit/Michigan chapter) religious organization with about 200 members
-Organized a can drive, candy drive, book drive, and soup kitchen trip with about 30 members participating in each for the religious org
-Webmaster of the website for the religious org
-Went to MMSS (a med-math summer program at Univ. of MI)
-Did HSHSP (7 week research program at Michigan State)
-The usuals: Spanish Honor Society, Biology Olympiad, Linguistics Club, Quiz Bowl (no leadership positions in these, however)
-Just co-founded a Khan Academy club in my school (in my senior year)
-Math tutoring at library for community service (75 hours)

What do you guys think my chances are at Columbia?

MonsieurHorloger

I think your chances are fairly good because of the rank of your school and SAT scores. However, your activities are pretty generic and your GPA is fairly low. I know CC tends to look for students with a stronger interest in one activity as opposed to many.

gty101

I don't think your GPA is low at all, especially your unweighted. I actually had the same unweighted GPA when I applied to Columbia. In terms of academic stats, you have the basics down. However, I will agree with Monsieur Horloger(what a name...) that CC looks for students with a passion for something. It's not hard to do a lot of different activities. What makes someone stand out is someone who does something really well. That being said, I am not discouraging you. I'm not saying you have to know what you want to do in the future, but when you are writing your essay or when you list your activities on the common app, you should put emphasis on one or two activities. Usually it would help to have awards or a leadership position in that activity. Lastly, this might sound awful, but your chances also depend somewhat on the stats of your classmates who are applying to columbia. It's not as though one of you will be chosen over the other, but if many students from your school apply to columbia, that just might be the case as admission officers look at applications by regions (for the first round), so you won't be compared to a student from China or Florida until you have been compared to other kids in your state. So I think you have a decent chance, but then again we can never know what the admission officers are thinking, especially here at Columbia haha.