Asian Male at private boarding school
Weighted GPA: 4.269
Unweighted GPA: 3.908
SAT:
Math: 800
CR: 800
Writing: 770
SAT 2’s
Math 2: 800
US history: 800
AP’s:
Sophomore:
Microeconomics: 5 (self study)
Macroeconomics: 5 (self study)
Junior:
US History: 5
Environmental Science: 5
Calculus AB: 5
Language and Composition: 5
Senior year course load:
Advanced Studies in Paleontology
AP Stats
AP Calc BC
AP Literature and Comp
Spanish 4
AP Biology
EC’s:
Football: Varsity (10,11,12) Senior Council (12)
Basketball: JV (10,11) Captain junior year; Varsity (12)
Track and Field: Varsity (11,12)
School’s Honor Committee: (11,12)
Chapel Council: Tech Manager (10,11,12)
FBLA: Vice president (10); President (11,12)
Debate: (9,10,11,12)
Peccary (Paleontology) Society: (11,12)
Job/Work Experience:
summer after 10th grade: interned at Cal State LA with a Finance Professor: research
summer after 11th grade: worked at school’s paleontology museum: research
***Paleontology has been a big part of my life at school and I want to pursue it as a hobby at Harvard. I am using it as an essay topic and also to set me apart from others.
forgot to mention that I have published papers in Paleontology and will be presenting at a major vertebrate paleontology conference in October in front of the worlds most famous paleontologists
Apply.
That Paleontology interest is unique.
Go for it!
How do you take a course called Advanced Studies in Paleontology? Lucky you. Can I take it?
What are you planning to study?
I can only take the course because it is offered at my school. I’m not really sure what I want to study. Either something in the natural or social sciences.
I think you’ve got a great chance. The Paleontology is unique.
Getting real – you have excellent credentials. Unfortunately, so do 30K+ other applicants. That’s why they call it a lottery school. Your chances are as good as anybody’s. But the acceptance rate is absurdly low.
Wow. You have really good chances but make sure your recommendations are really good. Admissions officers are looking at how someone has taken advantage of opportunities available to them so I guess uve done well on that front. U have amazing chances. Go for it!! Which class are u applying for?
Fellow Harvard EAer here. It’s really hard to tell what your chances are at colleges like Harvard. I’d say that you have a good shot. But like one poster wrote, so do 30k+ other applicants. Your paleontology stuff will really help you a lot. Best of luck!
PS: Would you mind PMing me and telling me the name of your school? I’m curious.
Actually, to say 30,000 other applicants have a good shot is very likely an exaggeration. Not all 30K or so that apply to Harvard have the credentials even upon superficial review. Maybe more like half that. Still, it doesn’t change anything that Harvard, Stanford, et. al. are very tough schools to get into. 2,400 acceptances out of, say 17,000 reasonably credentialed is still only 14%. That’s low, probably as low as any school IF you could weed out the applicants that had no business applying in the first place, from a stats point of view.
You are definitely going to get in; jk I don’t actually know, but your chances look really good!
If you do a good job on your essay and highlight the paleontology part you should have a good shot
You have a great chance, but like everyone else said harvard gets so many people with high credentials.
chance me back?
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1828886-northeastern-university.html#latest
You’re at a boarding school – ask your GC – he/she knows exactly what students from your school Harvard has taken in the past and their credentials. I’m also betting you have naviance and can look at your school’s history with Harvard on your own. Your EC’s are, as you know, fantastic, so factor that in when looking at the data. Your only problem may be too much competition from your classmates – how do your grades and rigor compare to the other kids applying EA? Are there 7 other kids with 4.0’s who took AP Chem and Physics? Also, keep in mind that your school may not rank, but assuming that Harvard sees many applicants from your school each year, they’ll have a rough idea of where you might fall (which is only a problem if your school has grade inflation, which it probably does not).
Check Naviance for a better idea. My son’s school’s Naviance scattergram showed a few admissions with a lot of denials with the GPA range of 3.9-4.1 and ACT of 32-35, and no admissions outside of that. Perhaps it was EC’s, or legacies, or some factor but it wasn’t just academics. Good grades and test scores are a necessary and but not sufficient condition.