Hi y’all, I was wondering if you could chance my DD for HCYPMSE, WAHSP, and other top colleges, as well as some safeties like George Mason, American U, and Cornell. She had a special circumstance that caused her to be homeschooled in her sophomore and junior years, so I wanted to get an idea of things. Despite my best efforts her GPA is a bit sub-par, but hopefully her other work will make up for it.
GPA 3.8 UW
ACT Composite 33
State: NoVA
Income bracket: ~100,000
School: Pretty good suburban high-school and self-directed homeschool
Hooks: None
Course load: rigorous, 7 APs, some of them self-studied in homeschool
ECs:
Energy Club, Grade 9
Gay-straight Alliance, 9, 12
Feminists United, Secretary, 9, 12
YPJ International Brigade Youth Division, Squadron Leader, 10, 11
Key Club, 12
Essay: It’s about the time she went on a mission trip with a non-profit to a third-world country to help deserving families. She talks about how she learned to see the conditions of people less fortunate to her, develop good leadership skills, and deal with stress. I think it’s pretty good, but after reading some of her classmates essays about deaths of beloved family pets, I’m worried about whether she’ll be able to keep up with the competition.
Recs: One from her AP chem teacher, who she has a good relationship with and is a good writer, one from the counselor who she has met with several times over the last few years, and a local community leader rec from her overseas trip.
Does she have any leadership positions or awards? Her stats are good, but won’t stand out among other applicants to selective schools. I’d imagine she’d need incredibly strong extracurriculars to get in.
Does she have SAT Subject Test scores?
Take everything I say with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that your daughter’s essay topic is exactly what you are not supposed to write about when applying to a selective college. College deans have even joked about the “mission trip essay” at info sessions I’ve attended. Even if her essay is extremely well-written, the topic is cliché and overused, and I’m afraid that could hurt her. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it may be in your daughter’s best interest to redo her essay. Essays are extremely important for admission to selective schools.
Best of luck to your daughter- I hope everything works out.
Cornell is a reach for all, unless you are talking about Cornell College, which is in Iowa I think. Her unusual circumstance is best discussed in a guidance counselor’s recommendation. There are plenty of homeschooled applicants that do well in admissions, and you might want to post on the homeschool forum to ask aboutmhow to best approach that if no guidance counselor is involved.
Your daughter is a good student, but she will not stand out at any top tier schools. She can submit and hope for the best, just like everyone else. I am guessing as a home schooled student, her AP test scores might be looked at a little more closely and she should self-report them if she has fours and fives.
I have to say that I agree with the above regarding the essay topic. Death of pets is alos an overused topic and in fact, is unlikely to impress an admissions officer. There are a couple of interesting threads going right now on the college admissions forum which have good advice about the essay.
I am not sure what all your acronyms stand for, especially WAHSP?, but your daughter needs to apply to match and safety schools to ensure she gets an accpetance somewhere. For safety schools, her stats should be above the 75th percentile and the acceptance rate should be above 50%, and for match schools, she should be comfortably above the 50th percentile, and the accpetance rate should be below 30%. This isn’t hard and fast, but IMO, with her stats, I do not consider anything below a 30% acceptance rate to be better than a low reach.
The mission trip essay is overdone. Google “college essay cliches”
The “slice-of-life” pattern seems to work well for application essays. Google the squirrel essay from ‘A is for Admission’ or the paint brush essay from the MIT Admissions Blog; or the Costco essay written by a girl admitted to all 8 Ivy league schools.
Agree that her essay topic is universally considered the worst possible choice.
Mission trips cost money. It doesn’t really matter if you paid, an organization paid, or your D solicited donations. In the end the expenses put toward the trip would have been much more productive given directly to support the “deserving families.”
She should have been able to look around her own hometown to see “less fortunate” people. It shouldn’t take an international trip.
What about an essay about the “special circumstance” that lead to home schooling? Could that help her stand out? Otherwise her combination of grades/scores/ECs and the competitive NoVA address do not bode well for the selective schools you mention IMO.
My best guess
Williams
Amherst
Hamilton or Haverford?
Swathmore
Pomona
All tough admits, but particularly tough in the RD round. Many of these schools fill up to 50% of the class in the ED round with 10% of their applicant pool. That leaves 90% of the applicant pool competing for the remaining spots.
Do you go to Swat? I include Haverford in WAHSP. But then again, Swat BRAGS about rejecting Obama, so excuse me if Haverford doesn’t measure up to those standards.
I think you have too many high reaches on the list and not enough matches. Safeties are important, of course, but you might find some great colleges that are in between those reaches and safeties that your D might want to attend.
Is your D a senior? Has she already applied? Are you attempting to narrow down the list?
She will need SAT subject tests for some of the schools on this list. Also she will need one more recommendation from a teacher in a core academic subject.
Choose a different essay topic - maybe she could write about homeschooling vs. public school and how it has impacted her.