Do I even have a decent shot?

juventus
Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:41:16 +0000

My dream school is Stanford. However, for the last couple of months the people on this forum have persistently and systematically left me feeling hopeless. I plan to apply there SCEA but I think it might be useless:

Other Schools I will be applying to:

Reaches - NU, NYU, Wash U, Duke, Notre Dame

Safeties - UW Madison (legacy), Marquette and Tulane, small christian colleges (Wheaton, Northcentral, etc)

Senior
Male, Caucasian (did anyone notice how easy it is to avoid mentioning this on applications)
Location: Extremely small town, Wisconsin
School: Public, top students go to Madison, a few in the past have gone farther
Financial Aid: Yes

Academics - this is where uncertainty settles in my gut

UW GPA - Around 3.9

W GPA - Don’t know, did max AP course offered at school and 12 credits at local university

Rank: 5of100, will be better at the end of this year


Noteworthy: Will have taken 2 UW Extensions courses (Latin, Hebrew) and 4 classes at local university (2 semesters of English and Philosophy)


Scores - ugh

ACT - 32(C), 36(R), 34(E), 31(S), 29(M) - retaking this month, will be better

SAT II - Took Math 2 and Lit this month, expecting good for Lit, bad for Math. Everyone here seems to get 800’s, I sucked it up, maybe 700, if lucky. My friend, who’s much better at math than me, got 35 on Math ACT, also did badly. Is it our school? We’re both in Calc, which is the last class of the most challenging math schedule our school offers.
AP - US Hist - 4, Land and Comp - 4, Lit and Comp 3 (sophmore yr), Will take AP Calc test this June. Those are all of the AP classes offered, and my scores aren’t even good.

EC’s

4 year FBLA Member - held officer positions

4 year varsity soccer, 3 years competitive club soccer, 1 year wrestling

3 year Math team, 4 year Classics Club, International Club, Spanish Honor Society

2 year (max allowed) National Honor Society

Also: City-wide Robotics team, Companion Program (needy kids), Youth group, significant mission trips, many hours of community service, started church ping pong club

Employment - hook?

Own and maintain successful web design firm. Have gotten significant local recognition, plenty of commission. Life-altering commitment, I madly enjoy it, probably will be the subject of an essay

IT assistant at school, work during the school day, made website, etc

Honors and Awards - bit meager here

Won State for FBLA Competitive event, Top 20 at Nationals, fully expect nationals again this year, hopefully in Top 5, other lesser FBLA awards

Dozens of stupid sports awards (letters, scholar award)

School does department awards at the end of the year, bound to get at least one

High Honor roll, school achievement awards

Homecoming court? just kidding

Recs and Essays

Recs should will be as good as possible, English teacher that is like family, History teacher that loves me, maybe a business teacher, and hopefully one from my college Philosophy professor

Essays should be good, I’ve written competitively before and my dad will help with editing, he has lots of published work

Other - English is a second language (since 3 years old, does that even count?), fluent in Italian, spoken at home. Consider myself thoroughly Italian, often visit relatives in Northern Italy. Both my parents are methodist pastors, my faith is big part of me. Also, like I said, my dad publishes work, maintains a popular(among Hebrew scholars) blog, and is deeply ingratiated in the university community.

So, is Stanford out the window? I am greatly thankful for any help.