Anyone with any objective views about Chicago, please??

corranged
Tue, 29 May 2007 20:37:10 +0000

I normally don’t post personal info like this (both for privacy and because I don’t want to look like I’m bragging), but I wanted to contrast myself with Pinstriped. I also got the University Scholar scholarship.

My SATs were lower than his, and my SAT IIs were drastically lower. I had 5s on all APs I took, but my school didn’t offer many (officially offers 1 for junior year, I took 3–one because I was a year or two ahead in math and another because my English teacher thought I could do well on the English exam, meaning I didn’t self-study for any). I barely made the top 15% of my class, and I didn’t work very hard for or stress out about my grades the way other students did. I had a pretty good GPA, but it would be considered low for CC and for Chicago applicants in general, I think. I didn’t enter or win any contests or competitions. I played a Varsity sport until I was injured in pre-season Junior year. I am a good musician and sent in a CD which I know got a very favorable review, though I don’t play in college and never said that I would. I wrote the base of my essay very quickly but fooled with the last lines every time I sent in an application. I used the same essay for a lot of schools but changed the title, a couple phrases, and the last line or two to fit one of the Chicago prompts. It ended up being reasonably thought-provoking, I guess. I’m a white girl from New England. I write well, so my essay should have been good from that standpoint. My college counselor (who has a PhD in English) said that I would be admitted based on my Why Chicago? essay alone, but I doubt it was very much better than any other essay by a good writer who wants to go to the school. I interview very easily and effectively, and I had an on-campus interview. I suspect I had good letters of recommendation, though I didn’t read any. I didn’t have any spectacular ECs, but what I had probably reflected well on me.

What I’m trying to say is that it’s not all about stats or what people list on “chanes” threads on CC. Sometimes an applicant comes across excellently in an application with no specific reasons why. Let your application reflect you, and be honest with it (ironically, my long essay was basically a lie… but that’s a story for another day).

I suspected I was going to get a scholarship. I don’t really know why because, as I’ve said, my application was not extraordinary. Maybe, at times, the parts of an application can combine to create a whole greater than what can be conventionally communicated through places like CC. It’s hard to judge these things sometimes. I think I had good essays, a good interview, and good recommendations, as well as a solid transcript. I also suspect that they judged me on something more than simple stats or else I wouldn’t have gotten a scholarship.