Chance me for Dartmouth ED!

Chance Me / Match Me
1

Demographics

  • US domestic

  • State/Location of residency: Texas

  • Type of high school: Private Prep School

  • Other special factors: Legacy at Dartmouth (mother is active in community and volunteers as alumni interviewer), grew up in Latin American and moved to the US at 11

Cost Constraints / Budget : N/A

Intended Major(s): Quantitative Social Sciences, Statistics, Social Sciences

GPA, Rank, and Test Scores

  • Unweighted HS GPA: 3.9-4.0 (All A’s and A+’s)

  • Weighted HS GPA: 4.5

  • Class Rank: school doesn’t rank, but at least top 20%

  • ACT/SAT Scores: 34 ss w/o science, 33 composite, 35 ss with science

List your HS coursework

  • English: AP Lit, 5 on AP Lang (self-taught)

  • Math: All honors, 5 on AP Stat, currently taking BC Calc

  • Science: All honors except physics, currently taking APES

  • History and social studies: 5 on WHAP, 5 on APUSH, Honors World History 1, Psychology, Civil Rights/Law, Philosophy/Ethics

  • Language other than English: AP Spanish Lit, All honors Spanish, AP Spanish Lang got a 5

  • Visual or performing arts: Creative Writing in and out of school

  • Other academic courses: Did an self-taught independent study class on Incel Development, basically taught myself a bunch of statistical stuff and did a literary and statistical review of incels.

Awards

8+ Model UN awards on a national and international level, 3 Debate tournament awards, 3 Quizbowl Awards; Won my school’s Freshman English Award and AP Statistics Award;

Extracurriculars
On the American travel team for MUN; head delegate of my school’s MUN team; varsity member of WSD team; varsity QuizBowl member; captain of varsity esports (top 30 in state); social media executive of a literary magazine (raised over 300 books and $2500 for Sierra Leone education); Norton Fulbright Mock trial program (Jury Foreman); Teaching Assistant for STEM camp; Chairman my schools Culture Festival; Member of Student Diversity Leadership Board; founder and president of my school’s crochet club which donates to charity; some other stuff

Essays/LORs/Other

Strong personal essay on my experiences growing up in many different countries tied back to a family macaron recipe I’d have to adapt everytime I moved and how that mirrors my perseverance, fortitude, and adaptability.

LOR’s should be strong, all are written by former teachers, one of which coaches MUN, other of which was my Stat teacher and Independent study sponsor

Peer Rec letter is strong and is written by a very close friend of 2+ years, emphasizes my friendliness and confidence.

Schools
Dartmouth (ED 1) – Applying for Quantitative Social Sciences

Wellesley (ED 2) – Applying for either statistics or some sort of social sciences

RD: Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Claremont McKenna, Tufts, Indiana University-Bloomington, Smith, UC-Boulder, UMich-Ann Arbor

2

Great list. IU and CU will happen. I’m guessing Bryn Mawr too.

I bet some others will too and maybe even your EDs - it’s too hard to know. Smith more likely but Wellesley wouldn’t surprise given you are submitting a test.

Your school may have direction from past grads but it seems like you have a great profile.

Good luck

3

I would guess your HS counselors have the best idea of who from your school is competitive for Dartmouth, but to me you look obviously well-qualified. Dartmouth still rejects most well-qualified applicants due to space constraints, but you seem like the sort of applicant who can reasonably apply, write your best application, and see what happens.

I also like the rest of your list and it seems very understandable to me why you would pick most of those colleges. The one thing I might note is aside from Bryn Mawr, you don’t seem to have any other smaller, social sciences-focused colleges in the Target/Match or Likely/Foundation range.

So if you would like some suggestions along those lines, we could provide some.

Just to give you a taste, I would think Macalester in the Twin Cities is a Target/Match level college for you, and it could be really great. Social sciences are big there, and they really lean into being in the heart of a great, diverse, globally-connected metropolitan area. Like see what they say in the Sociology department:

They are also big into things like statistics and data science, and they have structured their math department around such interests:

If you were looking for more of a research university option in the Target/Match range, you could look at William & Mary. W&M is a very interesting college in that while a public, it is very old and feels in many ways more like a Dartmouth-style college (indeed, it was another colonial college).

Again W&M is very big into social sciences, data sciences, and the intersection. You might be interested in checking out the Applied Statistics track within their CAMS (Computational & Applied Mathematics & Statistics) major:

They also have all sorts of Social Sciences/Sociology majors, minors, and concentrations. Sociology alone has four possible concentrations, and you can also just do general Sociology:

Brandeis would be another private research university that is very strong in social sciences, including in fact an entire “school” dedicated to them:

You may have already considered Mount Holyoke, but briefly that is another I would recommend checking out if you haven’t already.

Then finally one I think might be Likely/Foundation colleges for you would be St Olaf. Like some other academically strong LACs, St Olaf has an integrated Sociology and Anthropology department

That may or may not be of interest but I think it is a good lens for truly broad, foundational social science paths.

Anyway, St Olaf might also be a particularly good fit because they also have a Statistics & Data Science program:

That program in turn is tied to what they call the Center for Interdisplinary Research (CIR), which can provide some interesting research opportunities to students with an applied statistics interest:

OK, so that’s just a taste, but I would think you could consider adding a few more colleges like this to your RD list, in the event ED1 doesn’t work out.

4

Based on your interests, you may want to consider a major in data science, with a social science as your applied domain.