<p>I just applied to Cornell College of Human Ecology as a PAM major.</p>
<p>I am a student from a California Community college with a 4.0 (more than 60 units).</p>
<p>Cornell is the only well known school I have applied to… and I messed up all my essays by writing them today in a few hours (3 essays)… because of personal issues but I guess I should not try to find excuses.</p>
<p>In my essay, I mostly talked about being latino and living in compton, CA. and working as a maintenance worker for a residential building, then going to a community college far from my place to meet people from different backgrounds that you don’t see in compton etc. </p>
<p>I am really mad at myself for not preparind those essays way before the deadline. I am almost certain that I won’t be accepted now but it sucks cause I love the PAM program…</p>
<p>It feels good to talk to people that can relate to the stress of a college app. I feel like I am the only person in the world applying to college sometimes.</p>
founded service club, organized 100+ hours worth of volunteer projects in two semesters serving local museums/historical societies
volunteer docent at local museum for more than a year and a half, 300 hours committed
curatorial intern at an anthropological museum, 25 hours a week
worked for 2 months, 25/week as a paid docent (12.50 an hour) at traveling Titanic exhibit in world class casino
conducted independent research project on local history topic
gsa member</p>
<p>was bullied in high school over my sexuality and was depressed/suicidal, getting good grades was the last thing on my mind. i dropped out for a year then re-enrolled at another high school, graduated year 2009 when i should’ve been in class of 2008. all this i talk about pretty briefly, in response to the ‘explain why you took a gap year, etc’ prompt.</p>
<p>my main transfer essays are all about me as a student today and how i want to be a curator and how the profession requires a research-intensive education. talked about the fact that brown has a renowned museum directly on campus with volunteer/internship openings, of course.</p>
<p>im hoping my turnaround from hs and my sort of unique passion will be impressive</p>
<p>good luck to everyone, i hope we all get to be ‘cc success stories’ :)</p>
<p>EDIT:</p>
<p>@Johnny - you sound REALLY compelling. im glad ur not applying to any of my schools haa</p>
<p>I just applied to Cornell to CALS. I have my cc degree and will have at least 74 credits when I finish.</p>
<p>Extracurriculars:
vet intern
president of ptk
animal shelter volunteer
habitat for humanity
homeless coalition
certified tutor: I tutor bio I/II, Intro Chem/Chem I, A&P I, Microbio, Pre-Calc, Comp I & II, and humanities.
works at student services
I play piano now and then for the church/nursing homes</p>
<p>Stats:
GPA: 3.7 UW (a little bit on the lower end for an ivy, I need to pick it up).
HS GPA: 3.64 UW (took challenging classes towards the end of hs and went from a 3.3 to a 3.6, also made staright A’s junior/senior year).
I guess I can be considered as a minority since one of my parents are from south america.</p>
<p>I’m applying to USC Marshall for Fall Admission 2011. My intended majors are Business Administration with a Concentration in International Relations and Computer Science. Maybe I’ll minor is philosophy or something of the sort. </p>
<p>HS Stats:
3.2 GPA
4 years basketball
3 years MUN
etc.
Nothing too fancy.</p>
<p>College Stats:
4.0 with 18 credits, but I’m hoping to maintain that GPA throughout my second semester. I’m currently taking 21 credits and will finish all the pre-reqs.
Phi Theta Kappa, Small side business having to do with laptops, Volunteer Trip to India to help the homeless in New Delhi, some environmental clean-ups.</p>
<p>This is the only school I applied to and if I don’t get in then I’ll stay another year and try to transfer to Berkeley or something of similar rank.</p>
<p>Can anyone chance me? I’m looking for a spring transfer to Cornell, Boston Uni, Georgetown (fall only), Tufts, GWU, and other top schools. I’m a business major - here’s my info.</p>
<p>High school
GPA - 2.0 (yep)
SAT - 1740
EC’s - participated in shooting, directing, and producing about 500 tv productions at my high school, track and field soph year, and a shot a community service documentary my senior year - overall, I was not a very good student in high school.</p>
<p>CC Stats
GPA - 3.9
EC’s - VP of fundraising for PTK, Treasurer of my business club (running for VP in the Fall), raised $1000 for the American Red Cross for the Japan Earthquake victims, spearheaded a ton of PTK stuff, currently interning at an insurance company in lower NYC (for about year now), deans lists, math honors society, recipient of a scholarships, and maybe more.</p>
<p>Essay for college - started my Cornell essay which i REALLY like so I might have an edge with that. Thoughts? I think comparing my high school stats with cc will be a huge plus as I’ve grown so much as an individual over the past two years. Thanks!</p>
<p>You have a decent chance for all the schools you listed. You can try retaking the sat, but I doubt it will make much of a difference if you already have 30+ college credits. I would worry more about being able to pay for those colleges.</p>
to those of you looking to transfer to the extreme end of the list: as somebody who has done this (stanford), the major piece of advice I can give is to apply to as many places as you can, just short of spreading yourself too thin and weakening the applications due to lack of time. you need to put blood sweat and tears into each one, but the reality if you are aiming for the very top of the top is that you are going to get rejected from at least almost all of the places you apply to (most likely just all of them), so don’t get tunnel vision on your dream school.
Consider the odds involved. At many of these schools there is about a 2% chance of acceptance. Treating the application status as pure luck (which is a BIG part), with numbers that low applying to additional schools almost scales your chances linearly - applying to five schools makes you almost five times as likely to be accepted at at least one. I applied to five (cornell, harvard, yale, stanford, u chicago). I don’t think I could have done more. I started my applications months in advance and worked on them constantly. you really need to go all in on the parts you can control if you want this to happen.
At the same time, you need to apply to non-elite schools with less arduous admissions processes that would still be a great fit for you. if you are submitting moonshot applications and truly believe they might work out, these excellent non-elite schools should be very easy to get into for you. I had berkeley (should have been UCSB), UCLA, UCSD and UC Davis. For god’s sakes do not treat any top 20 school as your backup. I was politely no-sirred by 4/5 of my private choices and I can’t emphasize enough how easily it could have been 5/5. I was talking to one guy who could have gone to any number of wonderful schools and instead he applied only to Yale with Georgetown as his backup. Please do not take that kind of gamble.
I strongly suggest that you assume it is not going to work out. I was very much on edge coming up to the notification date, I made a video of myself opening the emails (to send to my mom), had a bottle of cheap champagne ready just in case, etc, but really everything I had done was orienting myself to go to UCLA, which I had already been accepted to. I thought of it as my top school, was figuring out what my course load would look like, applied to their scholarships, and had scheduled a trip from northern california to LA to look at housing.
As far as classes I took etc, I really do not have much to say except that I pushed myself very hard and showed academic initiative, not just ability to get As. My extra credits were negligible but my essays were good. I don’t really think I have good advice on what code to enter to make your application successful, so I’d rather not dispense any more than that.
@UniversalSnip Thanks for that paragraph, it’s extremely encouraging and motivating.
I’m in the midst of starting to prep for fall transfer next year (I am a rising sophomore in a CC in VA), and I was considering throwing my hat out to both public and private Ivy schools. I have a couple of questions I’m hoping you have a chance to answer:
Do you think the fact that you went to a CA CC helped you more-so than coming from an Eastern CC?
I suspect that as far as community college students, these schools do favor region. Among the schools I applied to, Stanford and Cornell particularly have that reputation, and it just makes sense that they would be the most familiar with the reputations of community colleges that aren’t across the country. I’d say it most likely hurt my chances of getting into at least one of these schools, but improved my chances of getting into my top choice… so… that worked out.
As far as chancing you: I have no idea why they let me in, so this is going to be about as valuable as a random person chancing you. But I don’t mind doing it.
I forgot to mention in my post that I think non-traditionals are considerably stronger applicants, because it’s harder for traditionals to come up with really compelling reasons they didn’t follow the usual tracks into these places. However, I would be a little suspicious of your story outline as presented, because you blame working for your poor high school grades, but you are still working full time in CC and doing great. You need to present some positive change in yourself as a consequence of all this.
Again I would caution you to cast your net wide. I don’t know McIntire and Stern, but Stanford is always going to be a long shot (fifteen transfers this year, <1% I think), and you have some strikes against you with Berkeley. First, Haas is much harder to get into than the rest of Berkeley. Second, you will be competing with California CC transfers, who are favored over out of state transfers. I have a friend who had a 4.0 at my California CC and was soundly rejected from Haas. Truthfully your application looks pretty awesome to me, but get backup schools you will really be happy with picked out anyway.
If they appeal to you, you should certainly be looking at harvard, yale, and so on as well. The odds and benefits are pretty much the same as at Stanford, so if you’re convinced Stanford is worth a shot it would be irrational not to try these. Like I said, don’t get tunnel vision.