<p>first of all a big best of luck to all indians who are appearing for the board exam in march. I hope all of us are studying hard. </p>
<p>I wonder wether I could make a surmise from my experiences. Well admittedly I will make no secret of the fact that I had outstanding EC’s for an Indian(or anybody else). I applied to Carenegie Mellon and got rejected.I had high 600’s SAT 2’s(which is bad).I had a good school record with rank 5 of 96 and all A1’s etc…</p>
<p>Point i would like to make:If you are an international- especially Indian/chinese or come from a country which is overrepresented then there SHOULD BE NO HOLE IN YOUR APP. Admission officers are looking for a reason to reject you and will reject you at the slightest reason they might find.This becomes all the more important if the weakness in your Application is academic. However if you are not an international then things change. The rest of your application will be considered and if you have very good Ec’s etc…then you will be considered and you might get admitted-like the millions of people who have got admitted with low SAT’s. Bottom line : at most schools your academic scores are MOST IMPORTANT. as an international you should not have a weakness in your APP. especially academic. I say especially academic because a friend of myne got amditted to CMU with perfect SAT 2’s and average SAT 1’s and BELOW AVERAGE EC’s. he is also from India.
Think about it.</p>
<p>Now i am talking out of experience with ONE COLLEGE. This might not be true for other colleges -especially some of the ivies. Now i want to know how right/wrong i am. Otherwise I wouldnt have posted this.</p>
<p>I know of at least 2 people who got into CMU ED with SAT scores just like yours and GPAs more in the 80% range. Why did they get accepted and you didn’t? They were internationals as well.</p>
<p>See, you can’t look at your experience and then think that this is what happens to everybody. It doesn’t. </p>
<p>When you posted your stats a couple of weeks ago, I told you that your application was shady at best. Because certain things just didn’t add up. I don’t remember which, but there were a few.</p>
<p>Well I dont know much about because I am new myself but I must agree with Lakshya M There are loads of people who get accepted on thier EC’s. I have a cousin who didnt have very good academic records but had really awesome ECs and loads of recommendation letters. Result? He is at Stanford now.</p>
<p>I dunno I maybe wrong, but I guess Universities look at the whole picture, and not just one speck.
btw didnt u have any safety colleges in your mind?</p>
<p>after reasearching I have come to the conclusion that Universities need that you state Max. 5 EC activites on theri forms. So i guess EC’s dont play an important part do they?</p>
<p>The CommonApp has space for seven. They just want to know the one’s you’re most committed in. It doesn’t matter if you’re a member of 250 clubs but didn’t do anything in any of them.</p>
<p>Karthiksmart, Indians, Chinese, Koreans and Taiwanese are at a disadvantage. Indonesians and Malaysians may also be at a disadvantage. That’s because students from those countries apply in great quantities. But applicants from the remaining 150 countries of the world aren’t at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>ECs do play a huge part especially for the top-25 admissions. It’s the only way you could distinguish yourself from the thousands of other applicants. Yes, there is a limited amount of space on the common app for ECs, but that certainly doesn’t justify for its insignificance. To show your unwavering commitment in certain activities, you can always accompany a more detail “Activities List” along with your application. I think there is even more space for expanding certain ECs in countries like India and China than here in Canada.</p>
<p>Not really. Most U.S. colleges view Canadians without interest since Canadian applicants will not contribute to the “diversity factor” each university is desperately trying to keep up. Since Canada has virtually been conquered U.S. culture, we do not reserve any diversity advantage, plus we are expected to do equally well on the SATs. So in all these years of college prep, I’ve always fanatically been trying to prove that I’m a “true, native Canadian,” not the usual “Americanized” type…</p>