2280 SAT (800 CR, 730 M, 750 WR)
800 & 780 SAT II (US History & Lit, respectively.)
4.0 GPA (But home schooled)
ECs: Intern w/ Obama Campaign in 2012, Intern for Solar Development Company, Treasurer of Psi Beta.
Awards: (I’m not even sure if these count as awards but this be the closest thing I have) SOAR at Rice, Windows on Williams at Williams.
State: PA
Ethnicity: White
Income: 30k~ (Has been closer to 20k~ for most of my life.)
Hooks: Nope, not first-gen or anything.
I think I’d be at least mildly competitive at Brown (because the home schooled thing might fit the ethos of the school) and relatively competitive at Penn & Cornell (because I think my stats are good enough for them to at least read my application) but I’m unsure if Dartmouth, in any serious way, would be in the cards for me. Thoughts? Should I even apply?
How strong is the Dartmouth student body? I’ve seen a lot of results threads that makes Dartmouth acceptees look almost identical to HYPS acceptees.
Strong Home school applicants to competitive programs have strong outside, objective rec letters. Your SATs help your case – but to really make you viable, you need outsider academics (instructors, research mentors, etc.) to vouch for your academic ability.
The ethos thing is straw grasping.
Dartmouth students are among the best in the country – thinking otherwise only imperil you.
There’s a specific home-school forum – lots of students and parents post there. YOu should browse there for tips on enhancing your applications. Good luck
Omitted it from my original post but I’ve taken four classes at a local community college. A’s in all of them, two of them were honors section classes. My Professors for those classes will be the ones writing my recommendations.
And, eh, you know it’s not the sort of thing that’s bankable, but, I’ve seem some RD results threads where a really borderline candidate is seemingly admitted on the strength of something superficial.
Not disparaging Dartmouth here, just trying to understand with some level of delicacy how the Dartmouth student body compares to other schools of similar caliber. It might not be a huge difference, but there’s an appreciable level of difference between how hard is to get into HYPS and how hard it is to get into Dartmouth – I was hoping to get a sense for what that distinction is.
I’ve lurked through the home-school forum and a lot of it isn’t relevant to me. I don’t see many posts on there that deal with admissions to competitive colleges and when there are posts that deal with admissions, it’s usually not really usable or interesting stuff.
Dartmouth is still extremely difficult to get into. At that kind of selectivity, you can’t really say which school is easier to get into.
Plenty of kids get into HYPS but not into Dartmouth and the other way around. Each school is looking for different things, so they accept different people. On paper, perhaps Dartmouth looks like it admits ‘worse’ students, but they are among the best and brightest students in the country.
For results threads, you can’t see the essays and recs, two extremely important factors for competitive applicants stats-wise. Why the student thinks he or she got admitted is not necessarily the reason the admissions officers admitted him or her.
Is there anything you do besides interning or does the internship take up a lot of your time? EC’s seem a bit light, granted you were homeschooled, but were you involved in any community organizations? Any hobbies that you have developed?
Internship I do is about 20~ hours a week so along with community college classes and regular schoolwork, that eats up most of my time.
And my ECs /are/ really light. It’s a weak spot in my application, for sure. I grew up really poor, so I ended up splitting most of my time between either studying or trying to scare up enough money to buy books, materials, pay for community college classes et cetera.
But, honestly, I don’t think that being poor is going to make-up for having bad ECs; most colleges seem to only give hardship applicants a bump if they’re either a) URM or b) First-Gen and sadly I’m neither.
If you’re poor, you can apply through Questbridge. It gives economically disadvantaged applicants a boost. It might be too late if you’re a senior but check out their website anyway. Otherwise, colleges generally won’t know your financial situation so perhaps talk about it in an essay.
If you were working or whatever to get money, then that’s an EC as well.