Have I got a chance??? :)

Denzera
Tue, 01 May 2007 13:10:22 +0000

dude, when you’ve been in the MechE lab for 10 hours straight, and all you want out of life is to see some hot college chick walk by, you’ll understand :)

More seriously, to the OP, you have a good chance. Don’t retake the SATs, there is no functional or impression difference between your score and a 2400. You’ve beaten the test, you’re smarter than the test, the adcom knows this from your current score. that’s all you can try to say.

As for what you should do, the answer is be extraordinary in something. Something you’re already good at, work hard and really try to shine or win something. Over the summer,

But the real difference, as VV said, is the essays (and interview, if you get one). You want to impress with your maturity and character, not just your vocabulary and resume. You want to show that you’re capable of deep thinking, not just hard work. The difference between the people i’ve interviewed who got in vs those who didn’t was a spark you could see in them when they got talking about what really excited them. I could challenge them with off-the-wall questions and they would stay calm, focused, and give me a thought-provoking answer. Not all of those who fit that description got in, and not all of those who got in fit that description, but the correlation was pretty strong.