<p>Objective:[ul]
[<em>] SAT I (breakdown): 2350 (800 CR, 750 M, 800 W)
[</em>] SAT II: 790 US History, 750 Lit, 750 Math Lvl 2
[<em>] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.0
[</em>] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 1/400
[<em>] AP (place score in parenthesis): USH (5), Microecon (5), Calculus AB (4)
[</em>] Senior Year Course Load: AP: Spanish Lang, English Lit and Stats. Also self-studying AP Psych, Macroecon and European History.
[<em>] Awards: NMSF, AP Scholar
[/ul]Subjective:[ul]
[</em>] Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Youth in Government (President, 3 state awards); Academic Team (Captain, state champs last yearhooray!); Model UN; PAC (planned/ran leadership conferences); Student Council.
[<em>] Volunteer/Community service: 200 hours at local history museum
[</em>] Summer Activities: Girls State and Girls Nation
[/ul]Other[ul]
[<em>] Intended Major: Political Science!
[</em>] State (if domestic applicant): FL
[<em>] School Type: Public, poor (average SAT score is 1410all 3 sections!)
[</em>] Ethnicity: White
[<em>] Gender: F
[</em>] Income Bracket: $100k
[/ul]General Comments: Besides chancing me, do you see any ways I could improve my app? Is there anything that doesn’t make sense to you that I should explain to the adcom?</p>
<p>Congrats on your achievements. Really. You’ve done an amazing job so far! Your (and anyone’s) tipping points will now be your personal statements and the clarity of your teacher recs. Please make sure they include a personal and detailed anecdote which backs up their praise of you – generic and formulaic cheerleading is not memorable for the file readers.</p>
<p>Good luck to you.</p>
<p>Thanks for your encouragement!</p>
<p>Are you governor for your state’s Youth & Government? just wondering</p>
<p>Governor? No, not me! I decided I’d rather stay in the Legislative program than run for office.
I was the Senate President at Girls State, though.</p>
<p>I assume you do Youth and Gov’t too?</p>
<p>write good essays and you’ll have a good chance.</p>
<p>kayabertz, did you participate in this fall’s elections, the real ones? It’s a little late to do something about it now if you did not, but when I saw your thread title I expected to read that you had just been deeply involved in the presidential election. When I saw that you were from Florida, a hotly contested state at the presidential level, I was sure that’s what I would find in your resume.</p>
<p>This may be what many Yale adcoms will expect, too, if you say you are a poli sci geek. You may want to make sure your essays cover this omission in some way if you did not. Many, many high school students volunteered in the elections this year, in addition to loads of college students.</p>
<p>Wisedad, I did a fair amount of political volunteering this past year, but not enough to make it one of my top 7 extracurriculars. The CommonApp only has space for 7 activities; is it worth it for me to send in an extra essay or attach a resume to add that? I didn’t list it because I keep hearing that admissions officers value depth of involvement over breadth.</p>
<p>kayabertz – Involvement in adult activities is more impressive to adults than you may realize, certainly more impressive than school clubs generally are. That’s why holding a paying job is impressive.</p>
<p>Student government and Model UN are practice for the adult world, one you will probably be old enough to vote in and can start to look for work and internships in very soon, if not now. So you want to tell colleges about these kinds of activities because they indicate something about what your adult interests and commitments are going to be.</p>
<p>Btw, if you have more to say about your activities, attach a list or resume to your Common App. Have an adult look it over to make sure it’s meaningful and succinct, but don’t allow yourself to be limited by the “top 7 extracurriculars” if you have more. Try to think about the story your application tells about your interests, not just recording what you spent time on.</p>
<p>If you read carefully about what distinguishes the top schools like Y, you will often find references to the professional level quality of the ECs there. For undergrads who are interested in poitics, this may mean debates at the Yale Political Union, but it also often means Yale students, including undergrads, taking active roles in political campaigns in New Haven, Connecticut and the US. And yes, some of those students started their involvement in political campaigns before college. </p>
<p>At our house, all parents and children can say that.</p>
<p>What exactly did you do in your volunteering?</p>
<p>Thanks for your advice!</p>