Harvard vs. Princeton SCEA

redrabbit23
Mon, 12 Oct 2015 01:54:37 +0000

Hi,

I’m currently having a bit of a dilemma with early action deadlines looming up ahead concerning which college to apply REA to. Harvard has always been my goal school- not just for its academics, but for its atmosphere, proximity/ location, campus, student life, ect. I also visited Princeton this summer, and absolutely loved it, but although it is a close call, I would have to say I prefer Harvard over Princeton.

I was originally planning to apply REA to Harvard, but I realized that there will probably be 15+ people from my school
(class size 410) applying to Harvard including some of the people in the top 1-2% grade wise while there will probably be significantly fewer people applying early to Princeton. I don’t know if this is the appropriate way to approach this, but I felt that if I applied early to Princeton and then RD to Harvard, I wouldn’t have to compete with those in my school applying to Harvard EA.

Curious if anyone has advice on which path to take and also on my chances at these two schools- I know its a toss up for everyone and the acceptance is so low that even highly qualified people get rejected. I wanted to post just to see other people’s opinions and thoughts. Thanks~

Here are my stats for reference:

GPA: 4.2 (W), top 5%- our school uses a histogram with GPA ranges for bins, there are 33/410 in the 4.1+ (highest) bin
ACT: 35 C, 34 E 36 S 35 W 36 M 10 Writing
SAT Subject Tests: 800 Chem, 800 Math II, 760 Literature
APs: Stats- 5, Chem- 5, APUSH- 5, Music Theory- 5
Senior year Courses: AP Bio, AP AB Calc, AP Euro, AP Lit, AP Psych (haven’t taken the hardest possible classes for all four years, but very close)

Chinese Female on the east coast, public high school that usually sends a couple kids to Ivies (most Cornell, a couple Harvard/ MIT/ Princeton here and there)

ECs:

1. Competitive Dance- 10 years -Selected Dancer for the US Dancesport Team -1st place female soloist at the 2015 World Show Dance Cup in Olbia, Italy -US Team Captain at 2015 World Show Dance Cup - a bunch of Top 3 Placements at National + Regional Dance Competitions in the US

2. 2016 Distinguished Young Women of (State)

Scholarship organization for high school students

invited to speak at TedX(town)

3. Miss (State) Teen America 2015 and Miss (State) Junior National Teenager 2014

4. Piano- 10 years

Performed at Carnegie Hall 3 times as 1st place winner of International Crescendo Music Competition

Gold Award in the International Music and Arts Society 2015 Talented Young Musicians Competition

Silver Award at another national piano competition that I currently can't remember the name of- lol

Selected to attend the Portland Conservatory of Music 11th International Piano Festival

Paid pianist at events- weddings, showers, accompaniment, other events...

5. HOSA- Treasurer for 12th grade, 10th, 11th, 12th

2nd in the (State) Leadership Conference (actually a competition)

Qualified for the National Leadership Conference

6. Future Educators of America Club- President, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th

relatively unknown club but had to put in a lot of work this year because our teacher adviser got a new job at a different school and the principal who coordinates the volunteer work for the club members left and theres a new principal who doesn't know the first thing to do

7. Writing

Teen blogger for HuffPost

MissHeard Magazine Teen Adviser

Honorable Mention in 2015 (State) Scholastic Writing Awards

Selected for a Journalism Camp hosted by a fairly reputable newspaper (quite an extensive selection process)

8. Art/ Drawing- 10 years

Gold Key in the 2013 (State) Scholastic Art Awards

3rd runner up (State) Congressional Art Competition

2 time best of show winner in local art competition

9. Intern at the Office of Congresswoman (of my district)- 4 years

youngest and longest intern at the office, great relationship with all of the other employees, some of whom I have been at the office longer than they have

10. Volunteering

Teacher's Assistant at local elementary school- 4 years

organized piano performances at local nursing homes regularly throughout the winter/ springtime

miscellaneous stuff

About 350+ hours total

11. Organized English Studies Program for students in China, actually planned the whole thing out by myself with some limited help from parents, went to China for 2 summers during high school and taught a whole bunch of Chinese students English

Recs
Teacher 1 & Teacher 2: have a decent personal relationship with them, participate a lot in their classes, both well known around my school for writing excellent recommendation letters, one of the teachers in particular knows my personality quite well
Counselor Rec: don’t know her personally that well, but the college app process at our school requires us to share our resume and highlight the things we want her to talk about specifically

Essays
Common App Essay: Writing about my dance competition experience in Italy and how strangers from different countries across Europe all stood up and cheered for me during my dance and came up to me afterwards congratulating me in all sorts of broken English and different languages- very touching moment that made me appreciate the “universal language” of dance

No hooks, legacies, anything of that sorts
Will be applying for FA

Also if anyone wants to give me chances for…
-Yale
-Columbia
-NYU
-UPenn
-Tufts
-Dartmouth