<p>Im a junior in high school, and am hoping to apply to some very good schools (UofC among them). I have good grades & test scores, and volunteer, but i dont have a lot of ECs. </p>
<p>Feel free to answer my question off of that information alone, but if you want more, here you go:</p>
<p>Grades (unweighted):
freshman year 3.6<br>
sophomore year 3.8<br>
junior year 4.0 (hooray upward trends)</p>
<p>AP/Accelerated classes:
freshman year: none
sophomore year: AC math & us history
junior year: AC math, AP government, AP english
I am also taking a hebrew class for credit outside of school this year (my school doesn’t offer it), and plan on taking a class at the University of Michigan next year</p>
<p>Scores: SAT 2260 (first try), ACT 34 (first try)</p>
<p>ECs: I have been involved with debate team (1 year)
a jewish youth group (2 years), was on the football team for a year, and wrote articles for the football team booster club for another year. The only EC that I have been consistently involved with is Latin Club (all 3 years, president this year).
I have also done various volunteer work, among them tutoring. When all is said and done, I will probably have between 100-200 hours (broad range, i know). I also plan on doing an internship this summer.</p>
<p>So, what do you think? My thoughts are that my academics make up for my ECs to the point that if I write a really good essay I can get in to most schools. Would you agree?</p>
<p>There are so many variables to your application. The better questions would be “are the people assigned to my region more attached to EC’s or academics?”, which no one on these forums can reliably answer (to the best of my knowledge.) The bottom line is to do whatever you aspire to do in high school. Don’t let these forums make you do something that you don’t want to do, especially if it involves hundreds of hours of your life. It’s really almost too late to drastically alter the theme of your stats (barring some extra activities on par with Mother Teresa), so you can’t really change your chances much anyway, except through writing great essays. Good luck.</p>
<p>I really do not think your extracurriculars are quantified like the number of points you scored on the SATs.</p>
<p>Colleges are looking to “cast” the class including the various kinds of people they need to enrich the community. If you had only one activity outside of school, but it happens to be something they are looking for (theatrical technical director, marching glockenspiel, feminist community organizer, yearbook layout editor, quirky home-schooled sheep farmer), it won’t much matter that you didn’t ALSO belong to eleven other clubs.</p>
<p>What are you interested in? What do you do outside of school, if not extracurriculars? Most people applying to Chicago are going to have fine to stellar academics; it’s what you do with your free time that’s going to be of interest. Find a way to convey your passions outside of school, and that’ll be what stands out about you.</p>
<p>What’s the internship? Is it related to what you want to study/do? Why do you volunteer? What do those things say about you?</p>
<p>GET ECs. You need to show that you are committed to something and demonstrate excitement and passion beyond what you do in school. You cannot ride on grades and scores when it comes to a top 20 like U Chicago</p>