xkaeze

OKay, so I'm currently a junior in a pretty decent public high school, we get about 6+% into Ivies every year (of last year's senior class of roughly 300 kids, 16 went to Princeton University). But this year our seniors have been getting screwed over by the big, well-known schools, so.. being the nervous asian that I am... help?

STATS (as of sophomore year... since my school doesn't release updated GPAs.. until the end of the year)
--PSATS: 211 (I can't do SATs for some reason, but hopefully I'll do better than that on the actual thing)
--UW GPA: 3.83 (A- = 3.666, A= 4.0; no A+)
--W GPA: 4.22 (very few weighted classes before Jr. year, this will go up by a lot by the end of this school year)
--No rank

this year's (core)classes + grades I will most likely get:
AP Eng -> A-/A
Latin -> A
AP Bio -> A-/A
Pre-calc (Acc) -> A-
AP Macro/micro -> A
AP World -> A

EC's (thus far)
Founding member of Volleyball club + president (10, 11)
MUN (10,11)
Asian American Club (9, 10, 11)
Community Service Group Leader/Member .. 150+ hours, planning on adding Hospital to the list (10, 11)
Knowledge Masters Vice President (10, 11)

Awards (lacking seriously...)
National Latin Exam Silver (9)
National Latin Exam Gold (10)
13th place in the Stock Market Game (9) <-- does that even count?!
Meritorious Achievement in the PROBE program and Rider University

SAT II's (thus far)
Chinese - 800
USH - 750
Chem - 710

Major: Business/Undecided
Dream: Wharton/Stanford (large reaches?)

So what are my chances assuming my GPA jumps by about .05+ and weighted goes up by .5+ and SATs are over 2200 for:
Ivyies (esp. Wharton/Huntsman Program, Princeton, Stanford, Cornell)
NYU Stern
Carnegie Mellon
Emory
McGill
UCs

Bah. Much love for all of you who waste time chancing us juniors who are scared out of our wits
Please suggest things for improvement + other colleges I should consider!

xkaeze

bump10char

xkaeze

aww come on CC, where are the scathing comments?

applicannot

I'll say what I usually say. Are those schools you really want to go to or do you only want to go there because they are top 25 schools and because many kids from your school go there? That aside, if you REALLY want to go there, you have as much a chance as anyone else. Unfortunately, at Ivy League schools, that may not be very good. Ivy league admissions are really hit or miss and often depend on the applying class. Could you get in? Yes. Will you get in? Well, those schools usually accept between six and twenty percent of applicants.

xkaeze

Hahha, I get where you're coming from, so I'll be honest. Partly... it's because they're ivies. But more than that... Ivies are generally pretty well rounded and since I have no idea whatsoever as to what I want to do with myself in college I figured I would try for the colleges that are strong overall. Kids from my school do go to Ivies.. but I suppose PU was a bad example. I live in Princeton, go figure.

hmom5

What will your rank be?

How many of the 16 who went to Princeton were staff kids, legacies and otherwise connected.

I'm guessing you're from NJ?

mynameisrose

I really don't get the whole perception that McGill is an insanely hard school to get into. Yes, it's one of Canada's best schools. But is it is hard to get into as Ivies? Absolutely not. The majority of people I know who have applied there (that being said, they're all above average students, but definitely not outstanding in any way) have been accepted.

I can't say anything about the US schools you've mentioned because my guess is as good as yours, but if your stats match your predictions you will have no trouble getting into McGill.

xkaeze

@hmom5: No ranks.. but GPA wise I pretty high up there simply because most of the kids in my grade are smart but don't have particularly strong GPAs. I would guess top 10%-
Of the 16, I would wager at least 5 are staff kids, most staff kids surprisingly chose against PU.

xkaeze

@mynameisrose: McGill is about the same price as Rutgers (Jersey state school) but a lot better of a school I just wanted to make sure I could get in so I don't have to suffer with 500+ kids in each class and seeing half my grade again ahahhah

Thanks for the input!

mynameisrose

No problem! If you do end up going to McGill, Montreal is such an amazing city. You'll definitely love it!

cnaut

BTW Stanford is not an ivy.

hmom5

When your school doesn't rank, they approximate a rank for you. Sending 6% to ivies makes a school somewhat competitive, but not highly competitive. There are quite a number of schools ending 20% and up to 'ivies plus.' So I think if you don't have a hook, the ivies other than maybe Cornell will want to see kids from your school in the top 5%.

For Huntsman, you need to find a way to truly stand out. Having an unusual target language helps a lot, and your language should never be your native language. Most Huntsman kids also have 2300 plus SATs. Huntsman is super popular right now, I do alumni interviews for Penn and the interest seems to have skyrocketed.

Your second group of schools seems like a good list other than you should think through whether the UC's are worth paying $45K for out of state. I just don't see it with California's budget crisis except for maybe Haas, but you can't get into Haas as a freshmen. I'd choose Stern over Haas personally anyway.

I'll bet more kids than you know from your school have an in at Princeton. There's no way they are take 11 unhooked kids from any school.

xkaeze

The thing with our school is that there's several types of students and the school system itself is highly unstructured. Of the 400 some kids in my grade.. there's only about 150 give or take that could even be considered "academic" in the sense that .. they actually try in school. In other words, we're an overall highly un-motivated school. Among the 150 though, it's highly competitive.

The kids who go to PU often don't have "in's" but our high school allows us to take courses at the University which often gives us a greater advantage.

@cnaut: my bad x)
@hmom5: yeah, I see what you mean. I just really like CA for its weather and the fact that it's practically the polar opposite of jersey. Thanks for the input

hmom5

Look at Claremont McKenna and USC.