Advice on overcoming high GPA/low rank?

emswim
Thu, 21 Apr 2005 20:53:48 +0000

(I posted this originally on the chances board and got no replies, so I’m asking for some advice from the knowlegeable people on this board.)

I am really worried, maybe a little paranoid, about the college admissions process. I am a junior, and I would really like to attend a top university. I think I have a very strong academic record, with a 3.94 UW, 33 ACT, 221 PSAT, and a lot of extracurriculars. (Swimming 12-20+ hours a week, cross country, tutoring inner-city kids, teaching Sunday School, peer tutoring, working with International Students, NHS, and I’m doing 5 weeks of medical research at Boston University this summer) I will have taken at least 10 AP classes by the end of Senior year, and I am also enrolling in two college courses senior year at our local college. After sophomore year, I scored a 5 on both the AP Bio and AP World History exams. My high school is extremely competitive, but it is not well-known by top universities because it is a charter school and just opened my freshman year. In just three years kids are already going to Yale, Cornell, MIT, U Chicago, Northwestern, Middlebury, Carnegie-Mellon, etc. However, my class is very small, with around 70 students. I have only gotten 2 B’s ever, in AP Calc and AP Chem (Well, it will probably be 3 after this semester, AP Chem again) Here is the problem: There are AT LEAST 3-4 students with 4.0’s, so I might actually out of the top 10% since we don’t weight grades. Almost all of these kids haven’t taken nearly as many AP’s though, and have been known to drop hard classes to keep a 4.0. How will my low rank affect my chances at places like Stanford, Rice, Notre Dame, Wash-U, and Emory? It seems like a big deal to be in the top 10%, so will it kill my chances if I am, say, 8 out of 70? Thanks in advance for any advice.