Firstly, I’m a rising senior at a specialized high school in NYC and i realized that Duke or Amherst are my top choices. It would be a great help if you guys could evaluate my current application.
SAT- 2120(i am going to retake it soon)
SAT II- US History (740), Bio (720), Math I (780), Math II (680), Chem (720)
Unweighted GPA: 3.92
Weighted GPA: Around 4.2
AP: World History (5), US History (5), Bio (5), Chem (4), Psychology (5)
Senior Year: AP Calc BC, AP Spanish, AP Physics, AP Gov with Econ, Honors Senior English with Debate and some electives.
EC: Model UN (9, 10, 11, and will continue at 12) I was treasurer in 11th grade
Math Team (9, 11, and possibly 12)
Badminton Team: (10,11, and will continue at 12) I will be co captain in 12th grade
UNICEF: (9, 10, 11, and will continue at 12) I was VP in 11th grade
Jobs and Summer Activity: I got a paid internship at a law firm during my sophomore summer. I also participated at my school’s intell research class. We basically get paired up with mentors from Universities and labs and create our project. I did mine on Psychology/Neurology at NYU.
Volunteer: Around 100 hours
Awards- I only have some Math Team awards, Badminton awards, and MUN awards.
Essay: I want to tie in my ambition of predicting people’s decisions (specifically criminal ones with neurology. I basically want to major in Neurology and get a Law degree. I heard that Duke and Amherst has superb programs for that.
Btw I am Asian.
Thanks for taking your time and reading this. Please tell me how i might do if I apply early to either Duke or Amherst. I understand that the answers here would not probably correspond to the decisions of the admissions committee.
Both Duke and Amherst will be reaches. Average ECs. GPA is fine, but you should get the SAT up to 2200+ to be competitive for ED. By the way, check out this Decision Science certificate program at Duke that might be of your interest:
It’s not so much that you could be dragged down but instead could be drowned out by other applicants because with institutions like Duke and Amherst they receive thousands of well and competitively qualified students, many with numerous EC’s or fantastic ones or both. But you can never have a 100% accurate guess so that’s not saying you can’ get t in. you’re obviously a hard worker with good stats so work on the SAT score and focus hard on your essays to somewhat make up for the EC’s. But be aware with such selective places like those because they get so many “great” applications
Have you taken the ACT? My son who is strong in math, science and social studies found that the ACT was a much better test for him than the SAT. His SAT scores were close to your scores but his ACT score was much higher. Good luck!
@Lift35 Thanks for the input. My peers somehow manage to do 5 APs in one year, participate fully in 4 clubs and win lots of competitive awards. It seems disheartening at the very least. But I’ll try really hard to get my SAT up and write some good essays though.
@txstella No, i haven’t. I panic easily when I’m running out of time and the time constraints of the ACT is a huge turn off for me.
Also do I have a chance to get into UMich LSA Honors EA with my scores? And maybe snag a Ross pre admit as well?