chance me? (JUNIOR)

Irreplaceable
Wed, 06 May 2015 00:15:14 +0000

@DreamToRedeem You’re the one who brought up your social issues and “learning your lessons the hard way.” Why do you think that what you have to say is so important, and why do you think that I would care about what you have to say? Unsolicited advice and all, nomsayin?

@Kylemcgrogan The average accepted student at the top 4 schools on your list have the triumvirate of high GPA (rigorous course schedule is a given), high SAT and great ECs. Those who lack in one or more areas usually make up for it with some kind of hook, like being a recruited athlete, winning state/national competitions or being a poor minority student who works 2 jobs to help support the family. I don’t know about your family situation, but based off the information you’ve posted, you don’t have a hook to make yourself competitive. So since you’re not the typical overall strong applicant or an applicant with a hook, you don’t really have a realistic chance at schools that already have unrealistic acceptance rates. If you have some kind of compelling story for why your GPA was a 3.11 freshman year, then you could use Carnegie Mellon as a reach, but these are schools that reject tens of thousands of applications from well-qualified students.

Instead of fussing over applications to super competitive schools, you would be better served applying to good schools that have 20%+ acceptance rates (which are most schools in America). Throw in some more realistic reach schools (Case Western is a good reach I think). There are plenty of good schools that you have a chance at, like Boston University, NYU, Wake Forest, etc. Focus on those kinds of schools instead.