Chances for a top-tier school? And more questions...

Chance Me / Match Me
1

<p>Class of 2009:</p>

<p>Gender: Male
State: Arizona
Current Grade: 11th
School: Public </p>

<p>GPA/Rank</p>

<p>Unweighted GPA: 3.8
Weighted GPA: 4.53
Class Rank: 7 / 780</p>

<p>Classes</p>

<p>Sophomore year: AP Human Geography – 4 on the test
Current (Junioy): AP English and AP Computer Science
Senior year: AP English, AP Calculus AB, AP Physics, AP Econ/Government…contemplating AP Spanish 4</p>

<p>**SAT<a href=“Just%20got%20the%20scores%20back%20today…”>/b</a></p>

<p>Critical Reading: 660
Math: 740
Writing: 660</p>

<p>Composite: 1400
Total: 2060</p>

<p>Extracurriculars</p>

<p>National Honor Society
Key Club
Math Club
Al-Mahdi Youth Group (the mosque I attend)
200+ Volunteer Hours at the hospital</p>

<p>I’ll also mention that I scored in the 96th percentile on the PSAT’s, and while that isn’t too impressive, my counselor told me the cutoff for Arizona is around the 96-97th percentiles.</p>

<p>Now, by top-tier schools I’m talking about USNews Top-20: Stanford, UPenn, Duke, Columbia, Chicago, Cornell, Brown, Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, Georgetown, UCLA.</p>

<p>I have yet to take the SAT II. </p>

<p>I have a few other questions as well:</p>

<li>Is it preferrable for me to take the ACT?</li>
<li>Do I have sufficient EC activities? I know I’m lacking in leadership positions. I’ll bulk up on these during senior year.</li>
<li>This one is killing me…should I re-take the SAT I? I was sorely disappointed in my score. I honestly thought I’d do better on the critical reading.</li>
</ol>

<p>Any opinions or bits of advice are MUCH appreciated.</p>

2

<p>Ok, chancing for Tier-1 is not very possible for a completely unqualified person like me, but let’s work on these questions.</p>

<ol>
<li>I don’t understand what you’re asking…</li>
<li>You have enough in my opinion (though everyone on CC tends to have about a billion and four, so it’s up to you whether you want to reach for that), it just depends on how connected to them you are. I see you do a lot of service activities (awesome, I’m a Key Clubber myself)…are you planning on writing about why you do service? Do your activities tie into your “passion,” whatever it is? :)</li>
<li>If you’re disappointed with your score, do you really need to ask if you ought to retake it? ^^ If your question is whether a higher score would help you out, though, the answer is yes, you should retake it.</li>
</ol>

3

<p>Thanks for the quick response</p>

<p>Sorry about the first question, I meant to type “ACT”.</p>

<p>And yeah, I plan on eventually going into either Law or Medicine. Either way, I’ll tie my service activities into what I hope to get out of my future career, which is helping people out.</p>

<p>Another question: if I take the SAT again and score lower on the Math portion, will that count against me? Or will they take my highest math score and highest CR score?</p>

4

<p>Ok, then, I still don’t know what to tell you on that one. xD Sorry. But taking the ACT is not really necessary, if that’s what you wanted to know. I was too lazy to take it with writing, and it didn’t seem to matter on the apps.</p>

<p>Oh, wow, that’s really cool. :)</p>

<p>Some schools will mix and match the different scores, but many won’t. I would say just take it again and see which score serves you better. They won’t count it against you, I’m sure, they’ll just take the highest composite. The obvious answer here is, though, to not let that math score drop more than 10 points, maybe even raise it if possible.</p>

5

<p>I’m going to bump for a couple more replies before making a final decision about whether or not to re-take the SAT.</p>

6

<p>I’d take an ACT sample test just so you can see which test is better suited for you.</p>