nj_azn_premed

"On a side note, you also sound like a prissy brat with that last sentance of yours."

Oh yeah? Here's something Wneckid99 posted on one of my chances threads:

"YOU HAVE NO SHOT AT ANY OF THOSE SCHOOLS- YOUR ECS ARE WEAK AND YOUR SCHOOLS WILL HATE YOUR variety of things

basically you're a weak applicant"

It seems he now has some immature and altogether uncalled for vendetta against me personally. Regardless, the buffoon is fortunate I was not any harsher in rebuking his original comments. And, tjan91, your own comments are a sweeping generalization of American colleges. However, the situation is very different for top colleges. They still want "some of everything" as you put it, but they select applicants who, once pieced together into a freshman class, will excel in individual subjects and not those who would offer a mediocre performance in every field of study.

swoop

wow you guys.. and premed, weren't you a little harsh?? I mean I respect your advice but that might have been a little over the top..

and aren't my stats comparable to hers, yet you said i have a good chance?
furthermore on my thread you said I COULD emphasize my humanities ECs OR my science courses?

aren't you contradicting yourself here by saying that courses don't count for experience? or are these circumstances different than mine?

i'm not attacking you, just trying to straighten things out...

nj_azn_premed

Actually, swoop, I told you the same exact thing I'm telling this candidate (and, you're right, you two are somewhat similar, though you did have a stronger app in all honesty). I told you to find a focus before you apply to colleges. You seemed to be split between the sciences and the humanities. However, this applicant is focusing on science, whereas her app reflects a humanities inclination. Therein lies the difference between the two of you and the reason why my advice for you was different then that I offered to the OP of this thread. However, I did tell you only to find a focus, not necessarily to make it a humanities one (though, in your case, I expected you to choose the humanities b/c you seemed to be leaning towards them in any case). The same I said here, however, applies to you: If you choose to apply to some of the colleges on your list with a science focus, you will likely be rejected by many of them.

swoop

yeah that is EXACTLY what i was thinking

dayzeeland

thanks for all your replys and that includes you too nj_azn_premed. I actually do have alot of interest in evolutionary biology and genetics because of my fascination with dinosaurs, paleozoic and creatures, post-mesozoic mammals and the evolution of humans from autrailopithicus, but I really can't do much other than read books or published research because it's not like I can go grab a bunch of dinosaur bones from the museum. If you put individual pictures of a mammal's or dinosaur's bones in front of me, then I could classify its approximate size, locomotion, diet, brain size, gender, skeletal structure, bone density and hip type at the least. I would love to have research opportunies, but they're frankly not open to me as you need to be certified before coming within 10 feet of prehistoric bones.

lobgent

Hmmm...nj_azn_premed, a lot of well-rounded people do get into the top colleges. As a person who went to both the Harvard and Yale prefreshman visitation programs, I met a fair share of admits who had been obviously admitted because of their immense talent in one field, but I met just as many students who had been immersed in a wide range of fields. These people included prospective science majors who had won essay contests and been involved in theatre and music, and prospective humanities majors who had participated in science fair contests and math competitions. Speaking on a personal level, I (admitted to HYP) wrote for my Harvard and Yale applications one of my essays about a purely "humanities activity" and the other about my take on scientific advancement.

That being said, top colleges do like to admit students who have a lot of passion for the subjects they're interested in and the activities they pursue -- only, the passion doesn't have to be in one field, but rather, for the whole landscape of one's interests, which may be incredibly diverse.

galoisien

*rolleyes*

You have no idea what linguistics is, my friend.

Linguistics is the science and theory of language, drawing from the fields of acoustics and physics, neuroscience and physiology, philosophy, information theory and high-level math [especially if you're going into generative grammar], and also has an alliance with artificial intelligence and other computer-science fields. Its principles become especially important in the study of information integration in a neural net and the problem of conception versus perception, as well as nativism versus behaviourism.

So please, educate yourself about the science/humanities dichotomy first, which by the way, is a Western idea (pioneered by Aristotle's conceptions of classification), and becoming an increasingly outdated one.

Do you know the Fourier transforms involved when artificial speech programs attempt to generate a dental consonant and link it between two vowels, and why many such synthetic programs are imperfect thus making the speech sound metallic?

Or did you think that calculus was completely absent in linguistics, you ignorant dolt?

vicariousparent

Thank you galoisien for that post.

Just because someone is fluent in a lot of languages it doesn't mean they are 'linguists'. It just means they are fluent in a lot of languages.

OP does state an interest in a double major- biology (probably coz parents want her to be a doctor?) and Japanese literature which no doubt springs from her fluency in Japanese.

OP: It looks to me like you're applying to the right mix of colleges. Iowa is a safety, I guess? Northwestern and Rice should be safeties (or safe match) too, I'd hope.

MSMDAD

Wrong! A composite score of 32 on the ACT places the OP at the 99th percentile. I *would* send the ACT scores.

Altaholic

its a coin flip at the ivies.

Pyroclasm

and by "coin flip" he means "20-sided die roll"

ChaoticOrder

Vicarious Parent, wow, i had completely no idea the level of complexity that dwells within linguistics. As it is probably a common misconception to associate linguistics with fluency i too was ignorant of this bit of information. Thanks, it actually sounds very cool, maybe i will sit in on a class in college on it.

Keshira

You stand out to me... mastery of that many languages is HARD. Srsly that to me is more impressive than all of your other ECs put together, but of course I don't know if ad officers will agree. Colleges aren't supposed to take your planned major into account, but you can always just put Japanese on your app or decline to state a major.

Make sure to stress any awards/accomplishments in your ECs and elaborate rather than just listing them (as you did with Ballet), and definitely include your music accomplishments.

BIGTWIX

just curious, have you looked at U Chicago?

Also, you are fluent in Japanese? Why would you double major in i then? I'm pretty positive that if you are fluent in Japanese, a Japanese lit. major won't do much for you really. In fact, I don't really know of any Japanese depts. in the country that focus on literature until grad school because the point of undergrad languages in America is to teach languages to you...from the perspective that you are not fluent in the langauge at all. For a true japanese literature major you'de probably have to look into Japanese Universities, where japanese classes arent about learning the language(since they all already know it), but about learning about language through advanced literature.

Grad school is really where it is at when it comes to literature in the US, because that's where, if you are doing say japanese lit, chinese lit, etc, they expect you to already know the language very proficiently, if not fluently.

dayzeeland

thanks for all the replys!

To bigtwix: I have looked at uchicago, but I just felt like I wouldn't fit in with all the alternitive-ish kids over there.

I'm fine with Spanish literature if whatever school I attend dosen't have Japanese literature. I have also been looking at foreign colleges such as Todai, Kyoto University and Oxford. I just didn't put them up because I didn't expect that many people to know of those schools.

Keep them coming!