Can't a Girl Dream... (Chances??)

emberjed
Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:28:32 +0000

Yes, your chances are small as of now. Even 5% sounds generous to me, if you don’t change anything. However, you aren’t totally out of the game; there are things you can do.

Retake the SAT, and study hard for it beforehand. Also consider taking the ACT; though it has somewhat stricter time constraints, the reading section is not as hard. Your extracurriculars are decent in breadth but lacking in depth; you don’t really have any leadership. Try starting a club; then you’ll automatically be the president of it, and if no one shows up, U of C won’t have to know that. Make sure you convey incredibly personally in your essays and interview (try to find a way to get one) the depth of one or two of your interests. It’d be best if you could find a way to relate it to CS somehow. Try contacting the U of C CS faculty beforehand to get to know the CS program; besides educating you about the program, it’ll show interest, which colleges like. Oh, and try to get the very best grades you can first semester this coming year; a 4.0 is near-essential with a GPA like yours. However, it does look like you’ve taken a challenging courseload, which they’ll see from your weighted GPA as well as from your transcript.

You do have a couple of things going for you; you have a lot of APs (though it won’t matter unless you got 4s and 5s on most of them) and, frankly, you are a minority.

Either way, though, don’t bank on U of C. No matter what you do, the odds are stacked against you. At highly competitive schools like this one, though, admissions rates taunt almost everyone, and you can get a great education at a less-competitive school.