I already KNOW I need to take SATs. I’ve already took one, which should implicate this.
One solid year of ECs will harm your application though. It will look superficial and look as though you are only doing these things for the sake of having something to put in your application.
You said the quality of my academics does not stand out from any - ANY - domestic applicant. I can’t bring myself to believe that my academics are worse than every domestic applicants’, considering I’m studying more subjects than has ever been studied in Scotland.
@NotVerySmart-> Nothing stands out with the OP. The lack of ECs would need to be compensated with a large sum of money ensure acceptance.
You are an accomplished student. Lots of accomplished students get rejected.
OP, are you sure you want to wait a year? You run the risk of having the quality of your letters of recommendation diminished. Your teachers may not be able to speak in detail about you after an entire year.
@CaliCash I don’t know whether the number of courses OP is taking really is exceptional. If he can get top marks in all 10 (which, with no offense meant, is never something to count on-it reminds me of a poster with a GPA in the 3.5 region saying that he “knew” he’d get straight A’s the rest of the way), then it could make him stand out. I’ve already explained why I don’t think it would count for that much, but who knows. I’m at least inclined to assume he still has a shot, for the purposes of discussion.
With regards to point #5, I suppose OP is right that we don’t have much knowledge of the Scottish education system. Maybe he’s even right that, because of that, we can’t make a valid comparison. What I want to know is why he would post on this site in the first place, if none of us can make a valid comparison except the tiny percetage of users who are also from Scotland.
I don’t think OP will harm his application by doing a year of ECs. I also don’t think it’ll help too much, especially as applications are due in November or December (depending on whether he applies EA/ED) and so it would be closer to 3/4 of a year’s worth of ECs. And, as stated above, the ship has sailed on some (e.g. the ISMTF).
I agree that waiting a year would probably affect the letters of recommendation he’d get.
Overall, I don’t think we can call OP anything more than a candidate with a chance. Not an above-average candidate, and certainly not a slam dunk.
@gravitas2 OP has suggested that Scotland’s system is different from that of the rest of the UK (which, presumably, includes Northern Ireland). I haven’t seen the word “A-Levels” once here.
If OP is in fact taking A-Levels, and believes that taking 10 of those will guarantee admission to top universities, I’m going to enjoy a quiet chuckle.
At the ISMTF (mentioned above several times), I spoke to multiple students who’d been rejected by Oxford or Cambridge despite taking something in the realm of 10-15 A-levels. And this was as a group of domestic applicants to UK schools, not international applicants to US schools.
Perhaps OP can clarify. Because in his first post he talked about getting grades of A1, while A-Levels have a top mark of A*, I assumed they were different systems. A bit of quick-and-dirty research turned up nothing very useful on Scotland’s system, but nowhere did it say it was the same as England’s.
As you see, American students don’t understand your academic accomplishments, so cannot fathom it. Sometimes American kids are very naive. But that’s your bad for posting a lame chances thread.
Athletics are a big deal only insofar as you can be a recruited athlete. Otherwise sports are just one type of EC, not necessary. What they want to see in EC are commitment to something outside yourself, leadership particularly, or great academic accomplishment in terms of research etc. At Harvard, everything is considered. So academic accomplishment alone could get you admitted, if they wanted, although it would not be the usual. MIT has some very good admissions advice in their admissions blog, suggest you read.
I’m inclined to think, from what I’ve heard, that American institutions take into consideration applicants’ achievements compared to their PEERS and their BACKGROUND - in other words, if applicants have made the most of what is available to them, how the compare to others with the same opportunities, if they are in the top 5%, top 1% of their class/school etc - and this makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
Using an example that will probably be more familiar to you both: picture student A, whose school offers, say, 3 AP classes, with the average student from his/her school taking 2 AP classes, and student B, whose school offers a huge range of AP classes, with the average student from his/her school taking 6 AP classes. Both students take 4 AP classes. Now, in this case, it is clear that student A is pretty much an exceptional student - he/she has made the most of, and exceeded through self-teaching, what is offered to him/her. Student B, on the other hand, is underperforming. In the end they have took the same amount of classes, but student A is UNQUESTIONABLY better. The point is this: applicants do not all have the same opportunities. And admissions officers realize this! It would be utterly stupid to consider all applicants in the exact same fashion, and that simply isn’t what happens. Therefore applicants are considered CONTEXUALLY. In other words, the admissions process is HOLISTIC. Both Harvard and MIT use this word when describing their admissions processes.
Therefore I shall provide you with some further context regarding Scottish education, and my school:
I’ll repeat this: in Scotland, ‘exceptional’ grades for someone of my age is obtaining 5 As at Higher.
Now, I’ll provide you with a neat little statistic. 3% of students taking at least five Higher courses in Scotland achieved 5 Highers at grade A. In other words, 5 As at my age is the equivalent of being in the top 3% smartest in Scotland (these statistics are from the most recent year I could find, 2012).
I’ll also repeat what I’m studying: 6 Highers and 4 Advanced Highers. So I’m sitting double the amount of exams (all of which I am on track to obtain an A) that the top 3% of students in Scotland do.
My school is an ordinary state school and offers no sport activities, other than a basketball team and football team that rarely actually play. There are no clubs whatsoever. Therefore I couldn’t POSSIBLY be expected to participate in school sports etc.
Hardly ANYONE in my school achieves 5 As (or rather, is in the top 3% of Scottish students). Last year, for example, ONE person out of ~150 achieved 5 As - yes, my school is pretty shitty.
My school does not even teach several of the subjects I am studying.
The typical destination after school for most of the school’s students is work/apprenticeships, NOT universities (or colleges, in the US). Even when they do go to university, they go to SCOTTISH universities, which are arguably easier to get in to for Scottish applicants (but that’s a whole different story). No one in my school has EVER been to Oxford/Cambridge.
The above factors would be taken into account by Harvard and MIT, I believe.
@gravitas2 I am studying 4 Advanced Highers - these are the ‘equivalent’ of A-levels (they’re actually slightly harder)
Keep in mind I’m studying these a year EARLY. I can easily stay on in school another year and do 4/5 more lol, totalling to more than 7. AND I won’t have the pressure of the 6 Highers I’m also studying.
In case you think I’ll be at an advantage in the sense that I’ll be doing 4 Advanced Highers (or ‘A-level’ equivalent courses) in one year, then 3 in another, keep in mind that the 6 Highers I’m doing more than compensate for the 3 additional A-levels in terms of workload.
@NotVerySmart A-levels are studied in the last year of English education and Advanced Higher in the last year of Scottish education. I’m in the second-last year of Scottish education, when Highers are studied normally. A* is the highest grade available for A-levels. An A1 grade is an ‘A Band 1’ - it signifies achieving 85% or more in the exam and is the Scottish equivalent of A* or A+ in the US, though universities, besides Oxbridge, usually disregard the difference between an A1 and a standard A. Hope that clarifies it.
I'm still wondering if these A's are any different from A-levels. Can you clear that up?
Overuse of caps lock tends to reduce the usefulness of the responses you get on most sites
You're far better than the 3%? Congratulations. Only part of the 3% in the US even bothers applying to Harvard or MIT. Internationally, those who apply are a tiny fraction of the 3%. Those who apply and get in are the 2-3% of very few students from among the 3%.
Put another way, there are about 100 million 17 year olds in the world. 3% of that is 3 million. Of the 3 million, only about 6000 or 7000 apply to Harvard. That’s 0.002% of the 3%. Only 2-3% of the 6000-7000 get in (Harvard doesn’t release the exact rate, but it can be extrapolated based on an estimate of the # of international applications and the number of international students accepted). So you’re competing to be part of the 2-3% of the 0.002% of the 3%.
Does being much better than the 3% seem to help much now?
Yes, US admissions are holistic. They take your school into account. They also don't want to hear that you couldn't do any extracurriculars because your school offered almost none. They accept the "my circumstances didn't allow extracurriculars" justification if you're a Syrian refugee who taught himself multiple subjects while living in a refugee camp 5 kilometers from the border. No clubs at your school? They would expect you to start one. No sports at your school? They would expect you to play with a local team or go to the nearest dojo/gym/pool/etc. for individual sports.
If your school is "pretty ****," I can't see how that would be an advantage. In fact, contrary to your example above, doing worse at a better school is often considered preferable. A student who's in the top 10% at a top-5-in-nation school will be infinitely better regarded than one who's the best at a textbook-case sink school.
@BrownParent -Some of us aren’t naive Americans. Some of us have lived abroad for many years, and understand the effects of globalization, which have made almost everything in this world more competitive. Hence our skepticism when a student believes, on the basis of being the best student in his school and having a heavy workload, that he’s a slam-dunk at Harvard.
Applicants post here every day believing they’re slam dunks at Harvard. For the most part, it’s wishful thinking.
@barankarakus1 -Here’s a link to an applicant who I think has a decent shot of getting in at Ivy League schools. Perhaps this will serve as an instructive example of the sort of extracurriculars you need.
OP, you are not understanding me. Your success within the Scottish system is great. You will be compared to your peers, yes. But your success in the Scottish system is pretty much the same as someone’s success at a bad school in the American system. And those students get rejected all the time.
So simply being a great student is not nearly enough to get in. You need more. You need ECs and a few BS ones you throw together in one year will do nothing for you. What have you been doing at home? Do you babysit? Are you part of any program? Do you know how hard it is to be involved in one EC? Do you actually just go to school, go to wrestling, and then go home? You don’t do ANYTHING else? And don’t blame your school. That’s what I like to call an excuse. You can volunteer and join programs within your community. You can get a job and yes, make clubs. Do you think professors are going around making clubs on campuses? Do you think it’s the parents making a club? NO. It’s the students. They want students who can lead and take initiative. They want students to be active in the school community and classroom.
If you're referring to the difference between Advanced Highers and A-levels, the former is imply the Scottish equivalent of the latter, that's it (though it is actually harder. See http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1002149 ).
I used caps for emphasis, but I struggle to see the relevance of me using caps.
LOL so you're proposing an international student has 0.03/100 * 0.002/100 * 0.03/100 = 0.00000000018% chance of getting into Harvard? Please back this up with statistics, because your estimates are, needless to say, ridiculous.
I'm not going to use such excuses. But they will take into account the vast cultural differences between the US and UK and will not, as you suggested, consider me as a regular domestic applicant and expect a full range of ECs. And they will certainly not expect more of me regarding ECs than domestic applicants - that's another useless claim on your part, unless you can find a credible source stating it.
OK I really don't think you're grasping this. Let's use another example and maybe you may be able to see sense.
Student A attends the best high school in country X. The school offers every single course available in the education system of country X and has the best facilities, the highest teacher/student ratio in the country, the best teaching in the country etc. Student A achieves 15 As in his exams.
Student B lives in poverty. He attends a sub-par school that only offers a select few courses and has a very low teacher/student ratio. The teaching is, needless to say, not as good as it is in Student A’s school. Student B achieves 15 As in his exams and has self-taught himself several of the courses he took as they were not taught in his school.
Now, whose exam results were most hard-earned? Student B! Why? Because he was disadvantaged!
The fact that I am studying 10 subjects, something that has never been done in Scottish history, in a below average school, where about 1% of the students are in the top 3% smartest, rather than a private school, where >40% of the students are in the top 3% smartest, is blatantly advantageous for me. That’s simple logic.
(Not to mention I’m self-teaching several of these subjects)
Regarding extracurriculars, I’m not at all worried. Admissions officers are not idiots. They know to take my background into account. I’ll just aim to achieve more 800s in SATs and hope for the best.
If you’ve already decided what you want to hear, then what was the point of posting a chance thread? Especially since your situation is so unique that none of us can understand anyway.
You need SAT or ACT scores, possibly SAT II’s. Internships will not just make up for lack of E.Cs. They look at volunteer work, clubs (Book Club, Science Club, etc.), and dedication to stuff like sports, theater, etc. You just cannot simply make up for E.Cs in one summer.
The mere fact that you have the opportunity to have your parents pay thousands of dollars to send you abroad speaks to how “disadvantaged” you are. And going to a bad school doesn’t make you disadvantaged. Going to a bad school doesn’t stop you from making clubs. Going to a bad school doesn’t stop you from volunteering in your community.
Stop making excuses. Where is your accountability? Don’t get defensive because we aren’t riding your coat tails and because you getting called out for riding your laurels.
OP - To clarify, you need to take the SAT (scored out of 2400) or ACT (scored out of 36) to submit as part of your application. You have taken one SAT II subject test but that is not the same as the SAT. The SAT has three sections (math, reading, and writing) and takes approx. 4 1/2 hours. The SAT II subject tests are one hour in length and only test one subject (e.g. chemistry).
@barankarakus1 -I’m not sure why, but that link you posted isn’t working for me.
-Didn’t see that you posted the difference between A’s and A-Levels before posting my own comment. That would’ve been useful.
-I am not trying to argue that you don’t have a strong academic profile. I am not trying to argue that you don’t have an exceptional academic profile. I’m simply suggesting that maybe it isn’t a top-50 or top-100 profile when your sample includes every 17 year old among the 6.7 or 6.8 billion people who don’t live in the US.
-I did indeed find a small error in my calculations above. I reached the figure of 0.002% by simply taking 6000 applications and dividing by 3 million in the “top 3%.” That needs to be multiplied by 100 to give a percentage. The resulting calculation is now 3%0.2%3%, or 0.2%(3%)^2. That’s 0.002(0.03)^2, or 0.0000018. In other words, 0.00018%. This seems reasonable enough to me. That puts the odds of any 17 year old student not living in the US being accepted at Harvard at 1 in 550,000. When we consider an overall population of 100 million, we’d expect something in the range of 200 acceptances at that rate. Which is quite close to the actual number of international admits.
So the odds of any given 17 year old being accepted at Harvard are 1 in 550,000. Encouraging.
-I’m not sure where I stated that US colleges would expect you to have more extracurriculars than domestic applicants. I don’t feel that’s a “useless claim” that I need to provide a source for, because I’ve claimed no such thing. If a US applicant told schools like this “My school doesn’t offer any extracurriculars, that’s why I haven’t got anything outside of my academics” that wouldn’t help him/her. I don’t think playing the “cultural differences” card will help. Let me repeat an earlier point.
My school’s guidance counselor is paid, and well I’m sure, to know about such things. She tells me that US universities expect international applicants to be just as active in extracurriculars as domestic applicants. The standards for internationals are higher overall. Nothing to suggest that a lack of extracurriculars will pose no problem in your case.
I understand that you think you’re unique. So does every person who ever lived. That doesn’t mean you’re a strong candidate at Harvard. Unless you’ve been invited to receive the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Stockholm in the next year, your extracurriculars will remain a weakness of your portfolio. The only way to overcome that is by having the academics of a genius. You appear sure that this is indeed the case for you, and I won’t bother trying to convince you otherwise, but I disagree. This is all I’m going to say on the matter.
@dreambig2018 I know that, thanks anyway for informing me though.
@CaliCash
Firstly, I never said I’m disadvantaged, though it may have been implied. I used the example of a student attending a sub-par school to highlight my point that me attending a below-average school works for me, rather than against me, in my application, which was disputed by NotVerySmart.
Secondly, my parents are not rich. They cannot afford to pay for English universities’ tuition fees, never mind Harvard’s. The sole reason I’m even considering applying to MIT and Harvard is, in fact, because their admissions process is ‘need-blind’ (or at least, they claim it to be).
And I’ve volunteered for 4 months. I’ll take your advice, and start volunteering again. Also, I’ll look into starting a club. A teacher has recently suggested I start and run a ‘Science Club’ for younger students, leading them through science projects.
Thanks for your feedback. It’s been helpful.
@austinmshauri I meant that, in my experience, in Scotland, it is a rarity for someone to be self teaching themselves courses. Of course there are many, many people out there teaching themselves things.
This entire thread is the epitome of the worst of College Confidential. 10/10 blew air out of my nose after reading all this BS.
Special shoutout to @ZBD5421 , a parent I might add, who has nothing better to do but bash some Scottish kid on the internet and brag about his/her son in order to find some sort of validation for being deferred from MIT.
Guys, OP is truly a once-in-a-lifetime type of student - the kind that teachers have to say he’s “off the charts”. If he were preparing 5 highers, getting A’s, he’d be in the running for HYP due to the school he’s attending. Right now, what he’s doing places him along the lines of the 14 year old prodigy who got into Caltech or an international chess master or the homeless-to-Harvard kid. No one’s a shoo-in for HYP, but if only one from Scotland get into HYP the year OP applies, my money is on OP. Preparing that many Highers and Higher Advanced is unprecedented.
OP: since you’re a year early and American universities won’t necessarily reward you for that, I’d advise you spend one more year, securing those A1s, then preparing a couple more highers/advanced, but most of all focus on an EC. Try to seek out a professor. Present your current achievements. Work out an idea of something you’d like to research and ask for their guidance. Or offer to help around labs. This is most likely to work out for you.
Universities will take your background into account, but if all you do is go to class and study, it WILL be held against you because you could show initiative outside the academic realm, even if where you live there’s not much going on. They always consider you could have initiated something. Obviously, if you live up in the Shetlands and all you could initiate is pony races, they’d take it into account.
