<p>I am a junior interested in Cornell’s Industrial & Labor Relations school. I plan to apply early decision.</p>
<p>GPA (Weighted): 90.92</p>
<p>Not very good, but that is mostly because of a mediocre freshman year and a sophomore year during which I had an extremely packed schedule. First semester of junior year, I had a 99.73 GPA, and I am on track to possible surpass that this semester. Will exceptional junior year grades forgive mediocre grades earlier on?</p>
<p>ACT: 28</p>
<p>I took it in December and am looking to take it again. I am shooting for a 30.</p>
<p>Extra-Curriculars:</p>
<ul>
<li>Elected Under-Secretary General of Model United Nations (9th-11th grade) </li>
<li>Founded a Book Club with four of my friends</li>
<li>Co-host of a weekly sports podcast with Steve Lenox of 1050 ESPN Radio</li>
<li>Wrote sports game recaps for a local newspaper</li>
<li>Volunteer as a sportswriter, with articles published on CBSSports.com, BleacherReport.com, Seamheads.com, BronxBaseballDaily.com, Examiner.com, and ClassActSports.com</li>
<li>Member of the Stock Market Club</li>
<li>Track (10th grade)</li>
<li>Cross-Country (11th grade)</li>
<li>Volunteer as a coach for a youth baseball team</li>
<li>Played guitar since I was 11</li>
</ul>
<p>To be safe for ILR, I would advocate an ACT around 31-33. The higher, the better. Also, you really need to show more interest in ILR itself, not business. To me, it seems like you do a lot of different stuff, but you need to show an emphasis and a fit in one of the areas of ILR. At Cornell, they are revered for rejecting near-perfect candidates who do not demonstrate fit into the school, and it just seems to me that you have not shown enough of an ILR-esque EC list.</p>
<p>My understanding is that they like leadership, government, etc. Model UN and the other positions I have held are pretty good indicators of those qualities, no? Either way, what would you recommend as an activity that was better fit for ILR.</p>
<p>Leadership’s always important, in any college. However, from my limited understanding, ILR seems to really like hands-on work in Labor and Government areas. That would mean actually volunteering for your local Senator/Rep/State Rep or something to get your feet wet and really see how the interactions work, or you can work on it for the other side too in a labor union or something. The issue is, too few kids do this, but to really help you with ILR, those sorts of hands-on actual, visceral experiences are what they want, at least as they explained it to me.</p>
<p>If you can, make this summer really count and do something in Government or in Labor, and if ILR is your dream, by participating in one of those fields, you should be able to get into Cornell with relative ease. By all means, this is unnecessary, but it will definitely help you significantly not only with Cornell, but also any other school you may be applying to as well.</p>
<p>Suppose my weighted GPA ends up around a 3.7. (If you take out two classes they add from my 8th grade year, it would be around a 3.8.) Would that be enough with a 28 on the ACT and the EC’s that I have?</p>
<p>Not sure…seems 28 might be a bit low…why not take again? My son is applying RD to Cornell…he has a 31 ACT composite (got a 36 in math…fell down a bit on the english) and has a 98 UW average in HS…he is a senior. I kind of wish he took the ACT again to bring his english up…he is a very good english student, just did not test well. He did take the SAT II’s and got high 700’s. Even with these grades we are still not sure if he will make it. He was already deferred from Brown on ED. Guess time will tell. Good luck</p>
<p>You should check the Cornell website or other college handbooks; they usually list the SAT/ACT scores for the 25th percentile and 75th percentile. I think that a 28 might be at the bottom range of what ILR accepts (but you should check for yourself).</p>
<p>Weighted of 3.7? With all due respect, you’re credentials make SUNY Binghamton a bit of a reach, let alone Cornell. With a 28, you’re below the 25% at Cornell, and you’re sitting on it at Binghamton. I urge you to reconsider your goals, or perhaps to engage in more fruitful test preparation.</p>
<p>With those credentials, my chances . net has me at a 88% chance for Binghamton, certainly not a reach. For Cornell, it is a 40% chance, definitely worth pursuing.</p>
<p>I think your GPA definitely needs some work. The ACT score is low too but you have time to improve that. Remember Cornell will UNweight your grades so it looks like your unweighted gpa might be in the low 3.3 area. worth trying but grades and scores need improvement</p>
<p>I was at a 3.5 before this year, and this was the first year a took AP classes. My unweighted GPA this year, first semester, was a 95. So, unweighted, my GPA has to be above a 3.5. Because I haven’t taken AP classes before this year (my school didn’t offer them) the difference between my weighted and unweighted GPA is slim.</p>
<p>it depends how weak the ed pool is. Even with a possibly weak ed pool to ILR next year, your chances are slim. You have excellent ecs, but you are going to be reaching for that spot in ILR.</p>
<p>by the way, not challenging yourself by taking harder courses is not a good thing.</p>
<p>well then it’ll depend on how you do relative to your peers. If your school doesn’t offer a good number of ap courses, chances are it’s not very very good. You would need to stand out from your peers even more in terms of academics. If you are at the very top of your school then you have a good chance.</p>
<p>The New York Post rated my high school the third best in New York City. It is widely considered a very good school, and schools like UMich and SUNY Binghamton are known to really admire our school, evident by a completely disproportionate amount of acceptances. My peers are very high achievers, and, although our school does not rank, I would say I’m somewhere in the top 15%.</p>