The Illinois colleges that I would be happy to get into are University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Loyola University, and DePaul University.
I will most likely graduate high school with a 3.2 unweighted GPA, or a 3.1 if I don’t get straight A’s this semester. Not much difference anyway. In addition, I also have an ACT score of a 28 (converted SAT to ACT because of simplicity).
Do you think I have a chance? I’ve done community service a couple of times. Also, I am the alderman of the student government. My extra curriculars aren’t sexy in all honestly, though. I’m also getting 18 college recommendation letters that are good, and 5 of them are absolutely amazing. Also, I had C’s and B’s in my freshman year with all regular classes, B’s in my sophomore year with all regular classes, and A’s in my junior year so far with semester 1 full of regular classes and semester 2 full of honors classes. It is clear that for each year, I grow tremendously. I will talk about that in my college essay, and I will also talk about how I’ve lost many of my loved ones in my freshman year which honestly did cause me to be depressed, which caused me to be lousy in school. I can prove that those grades don’t reflect me as a student because I did really well later on over the years with even more advanced classes. Also, I’m definitely going to talk about how I was bullied by a few teachers in freshman year, which actually did happen. For some reason, my parents dont believe me.
My principal thinks all of these may help me get accepted. I’m not making all of this up. I’m 100% being real.
I’m not an expert on Illinois, so I can’t really help with that, but there a few things I’m wondering about:
- 18 college rec letters? Colleges usually won't want more than 2 or 3.
- I'm sorry if you think you were bullied by your teachers, but honestly, colleges will most likely think you are making excuses. It doesn't seem like a good idea. It would be much better to focus on the challenges like the passing of loved ones when it comes to your rough freshman year. Colleges will likely be more understanding of that.
They won’t want to see 18 recs. Even 3 is often too much; it makes it a little too hard to really see you. I think it’ll make it harder to get in with that many. UIUC is definitely a big reach.
@LeopardFire Alright. I’ll limit myself to 2 or 3 recommendation letters. And thanks for the heads up on the bullying thing.
Don’t tell about being bullied by teachers. Even if it’s true, anything that’s a criticism of your teachers will reflect badly on you. Anyway, losing loved ones freshman year is plenty of reasons for feeling sad and confused and not focused on school.
Select 2-3 letters of recommendation.
You have a shot at Loyola and Depaul. Apply to Elmhurst for a safety (they’re likely to be sympathetic to your situation freshman year). SIU -C would be another safety. UIC too. Miilikin, Wartburg for matches.
For more urban matches, St Thomas, Augsburg and Hamline in Minneapolis.
For larger schools with sports, UIowa, UNebraska, Mizzou.
Run the NPC on all these colleges and bring the results to your parents to see which net costs they can afford.
Okay! @MYOS1634 I am also wondering if it is bad to ask 2 of my sophomore teachers for recommendation letters? I heard colleges prefer recommendation letters from senior and junior year teachers. The thing is, I was extremely close with 2 of my sophomore teachers last year, and they’ve seen the ups and downs of me and they think extremely highly of me. I feel like their letters would really surprise college admission officers. I want to ask them for 2 recommendation letters next year, but it would be kind of bad if I have 2 letters from 2 sophomore teachers and 1 letter from 1 junior teacher.
You need two letters from junior or senior year, and you can have one from sophomore year. You could ask two teachers and when you assign letters choose one or the other.