nedthehobo

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General: Rising Senior, Male, Michigan.
Ethnicity: White.
Career Interests: Physics, Law, Political Science.
School Stats:

GPA: 3.7 Unweighted. 4.2 Weighted.
(4.0 unweighted during junior year)

AP : Junior Year -AP US History, AP Language and Composition, AP Gov

: Senior Year -, AP European History, AP Economics, AP Physics,
Calc 2 and Calc 3 (dual enrolled at local college), AP Psycology

Rank: Our School doesn't Rank

Standardized Testing:

ACT: 34

Sat I: Total: 2160 (math-780)(reading-770)(writing-610)

SAT II: Math II - 760
Physics - 800
US Hist-800

AP's: Ap Gov-5
Ap Language- 5
Ap US History-5

EC's:
-Eagle Scout
-Summer class in Calc 1 at local college (summer '08)
-working 40 hrs/week in as an intern in probate court ( all summer '08)
-Caddy for summers of '05 and '06
-Worked as a file clerk for summer of '07 in father's office(for 4 weeks)
-Volunteer Service –at Catholic Church in Detroit (100+ Hrs)
-Football Varsity (quit after 3 years because of injury)
-Track Varsity-2 years

Excellent recommendations (my History teacher and my Physics teacher)

i know my SAT writing score was garbage, will my ap language grade make up for it?

indiejimmy

everything looks good to me. my guess is that you will probably get in.

guitarman89

You seem to be very well rounded. The only thing that I could nit pick would be that your unweighted gpa is a tad low, however, everything else looks near perfect. Don't worry about your SAT I score (which most definitely is not garbage btw). The admissions officers will see your outstanding ACT score and ignore the SAT (they consider only the better of the two), which would be about 80 percentile among ND students.

Great SAT IIs, APs, and ECs. You pretty much look in to me.

Oh and btw I'm fairly certain that not much weight is given to the SAT writing. They will mainly see the 1550 between Math/CR which is excellent.

kevdude

I'm an English major who got an 800 on the SAT Verbal and a 640 on the Writing the first time I took it, and I'm friends with a lot of above-average to undeniably brilliant writers (I am however, admittedly, not one of the latter), and we've come to the consensus that the SAT Writing not only prefers but also celebrates simplicity and mediocrity. People who are clearly talented writers often over-think the questions, or the questions are decidedly too simple and arbitrary to matter in the grand scheme of things. It's called the Writing section, not the Editing section, but that's what it seems like.

Sorry for the rant. But it comes from my experience with the Writing section. The first time I took it, I wrote what I considered to be an excellent essay. I was very pleased with it's style, tone, structure, etc. I received an absolutely abysmal score on the essay (having receiving the grade I was expecting on the rest of the Writing section). I ended up retaking the SAT to bring my Math up (as I really didn't consider the Writing section too important, as I was the first class to take it), and wrote a bland, unimpressive, structurally basic and almost-childish essay for the Writing out of sheer lack of interest, and ended up receiving full marks on my essay, which (along with a few extra points on the multiple choice sections) bumped up my overall score by 90 points. I was more upset by my improved score than I was with my original score.

In short, ignore everything I've said. The Writing section is pretty much useless, and a 5 on AP Language clearly demonstrates an excellent control of the language.

newyork09

To nedthehobo:
I'm not even sure why you feel that it's necessary to ask.

To Kevdude:
I can agree with much of your disdain towards the Writing section. However, it is my contention that a major component of successful writing in general -- regardless of either its "mediocrity" or expansiveness and eloquence -- is thorough and often tedious editing. As an English major, would you disagree?

kevdude

I agree wholeheartedly. But the editing process takes more than the half hour per section they give you, and consists of editing coherent sentences in context that may not be grammatically flawless but are more in keeping with the tone and structure as they are, as opposed to disjointed examples proving you know what dangling modifiers and sentence fragments are and why they're BAD. Sometimes sharp, illustrious and powerful writing does not come down to the basic "rules" of grammar, and wouldn't quite fit on the sentences diagrams you drew in 6th grade.

I guess the writing score only means anything if it happens to be significantly higher than the CR score, showing that, while you may not have a specific aptitude for thinking critically about a piece of writing, you still have the ability to express yourself through writing and communicate your ideas effectively.

Again, this is all based on personal experience - experience that has ground 12 years of 5-paragraph, intro-body-body-body-conclusion format essays into my skull, only to find out the difficult truth that essays like that tend not to be the most effective. However, it seems like the Writing section seems to celebrate these cookie cutter reproductions of style, beginning with the "let's see how I can rephrase the question into a statement that has my answer at the end, and then I'll make that my thesis."

Also, the essay in the Writing Section is the only section on the SAT that can be considered truly subjective, and, although the SAT no longer stands for "Standard Aptitude Test," it at one time did, and "standard" implies a certain level of objectivity that has been lost through the use of the essay.

BobbyC

i think u have a great chance. good luck!