EA or RD for my little brother?

shellzie2006
Fri, 10 Sep 2010 18:26:30 +0000

So my little brother is currently a senior in high school and is trying to decide whether or not to apply EA and I am not quite sure what to tell him. I’m kind of thinking RD, but I wanted to get some other opinions first. Here are his stats:

GPA: 3.68 UW (I think that puts him in the top 15%, but school doesn’t rank)
SAT: 1990 (700+ for both Math and Verbal, but in the 500s for writing…)
ACT: 29 (don’t know the breakdown here, but I believe Math and Science were 30+)
APs: 3 US History, 4 European History, 4 Calc AB
Course load: a lot of advanced classes, will have 6 APs by the time he graduates I think
School: One of the top private schools in Minneapolis

ECs: He has been very involved in Boy Scouts with several leadership positions and is about to become an Eagle Scout. He has also been very involved in acting and doing tech work for school plays throughout high school. He has one of the main roles in a current production. He attended a National Youth Leadership Conference a couple years ago and went on trips with People to People student Ambassadors twice. He was also an editor for the high school literary magazine and has a fair amount of service work as well. He also plays guitar.

Research: He has been doing chemical engineering research 40 hours/wk at the University of Minnesota this past summer and will be entering his findings in several science competitions this fall.

Awards: He has some Spanish awards, AP scholar, leadership awards from when he traveled with People to People, made Honor’s List or Dean’s List every semester (I think these are top 20% and 10% respectively), and lettered in drama/stage tech a few times. He’s also won some car show awards for a classic car that he and my dad built. I don’t know if that’s worth anything on a college application, but I think he wants to mention it.

He will have excellent recommendation letters (his teachers love him) and his essay should be decent. I am the only one in the family who has attended ND before him (just graduated this past spring).

That’s all I can think of now. Please let me know what you guys think!