Chance a high aiming PG

Chance Me / Match Me
1

<p>OK, last year I applied to Harvard, Yale, University of Chicago, and a couple of safety schools, regular decision. I’m a white male from a large high school in Kansas with a good but brief record. My essays were good but maybe not as well considered as they should have been, and my counselor dropped the ball in getting the forms in months late. As for stats:</p>

<p>The Good: Tests
ACT: 36
SAT Superscore: 800-800-780 (2340 in one sitting)
SAT IIs: 760 (physics), 780 (Lit), 800 (world history)
AP Tests: US History 5, English Comp 5</p>

<p>The Bad (relatively speaking): Grades
3.55 UW (I’m a bit haphazard with homework) in highest classes
4.05 Weighted</p>

<p>The Ugly: Class Rank
25% mark (bleeping grade inflation)</p>

<p>ECs included debate, forensics (national qualifer in extemp), BSA (Life Scout), Academic Decathlon (1st place nationally in GPA class of online competition), Scholars Bowl (leader of Top 4 state team), a few other academic competitions, football sophomore and junior years, moderate service hours from BSA and helping mom with GSA troop. I know, I should have picked something specialized like the didgeridoo.</p>

<p>As you might guess, I was rejected by my three reach schools. Did something weird and took a PG (post graduate) year at a Connecticut private school (Pomfret) to 1) redress age differential 2) get better counseling and 3) improve grades and extracurriculars with fewer distractions. Additionally an application this year will have several boosters from last spring, like winning the AcaDeca contest again, getting four more 5s on AP tests, and NQing again for forensics. My questions are as follows:</p>

<p>1) Do I have a shot at these schools this time around?
2) Do I have a shot at the following? (Rice, Wash-St. Louis, Stanford, Cornell, Brandeis, Reed, MIT, Caltech)
3) Are there any other schools with strong social science or pure science background that I could get into that I should look at?</p>

2

<p>If I were you, I’d play it off like I tanked my grades on purpose for Academic Decathlon. Given your scores, that’d actually be quite believable. But that’s for last year.</p>

<p>In my opinion, you are an outstanding candidate. Your scores are great and I’m quite envious of your success in academic competitions. That said, since you’ve already been rejected from Yale, Harvard, and UChicago, your chances there are pretty slim. If you get rejected once, you might as well wait for graduate school. Or at least that’s what I hear. I understand that you got screwed big time by your counselor, and I really do feel bad for you.</p>

<p>On the other hand, I think you’re in a very good position for Rice, WashU, Stanford, Cornell, and Reed. Make sure you very directly address what you gained from the gap year and how you’re a much stronger candidate and a much stronger person than you were a year ago. </p>

<p>As for CalTech, don’t count on it. CalTech is VERY math/science oriented and unless you can show some outstanding achievement or aptitude in one of these areas (winning generalized academic competitions, unfortunately, doesn’t count), your chances are not very good. MIT is a little more forgiving, because it always needs fresh bodies for Sloan (economics), but your chances there aren’t as good as at your other schools.</p>