Chance me-Can I get into top US schools? REA Harvard? Good ECs, IB diploma [predicted 37/45], Icelandic

I suspect you know that 37 would normally be a low predicted IB score for an International applying to Harvard. 40 would be better but it is still on the lower end of their reported range.

But then you have a relatively unusual case–not from a large country, and the ballet in particular. You don’t describe your academic interests or whether you want to continue with ballet, but my understanding is if you tell Harvard you do, they will likely want to evaluate you closely before crediting that as a strong plus in your application (a lot of very talented performing artists apply to these colleges, so they more or less apply conservatory-level standards before giving that unusual weight in admissions). I believe evaluation of your ballet “spike” will be along the same lines at some of the other colleges you name, although not necessarily all. Being full pay will also help (or rather, avoid being hurt) at many of those other colleges.

But generally, I don’t think it is really possible to refine things too much now. Hopefully you will in fact get your predicted IB grades into the 40s, and eventually a high SAT. Then you will just have to see what happens.

As a final thought, I am not sure I really understand the logic behind the colleges you selected. I understand you would have to prefer them to your likely non-US options, which is fine. But that is still a mix of a lot of different colleges in different regions, settings, and so on. So if you explain what you were really looking for in a US college experience–academically and non-academically–people here might be able to help suggest some other options to consider.

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