"Holistic" reviews

betweenthetrees
Sun, 01 Dec 2013 18:50:21 +0000

I’ve applied early to William and Mary and UVA already and I plan on applying to UNC Chapel Hill, JMU, U of Richmond, Virginia Tech and either Vanderbilt Notre Dame or Rochester. I am supposed to receive my decision from W&M this week so hopefully this post will be irrelevant in a few days, but nevertheless…

I’ve been looking around on different websites and most of them are preaching the whole “We look at everything, your test scores are important but they will never be the deciding factor,” motto. Does anyone know how true this is? Because I have strong grades

4.23 GPA taking 4 APs this year (Spanish, English Lit, Government, and Environmental Science). top 8% in class

I’ve got leadership/ECs
attended numerous leadership conferences; President of class junior year; secretary of class sophomore year; NHS President; Lead Student Ambassador; Recipient of William and Mary leadership Award; founded non-profit to donate toys to victims of Hurricane Katrina; SCA spirit coordinator; summer camp counselor; member of track team 10th-11th grade; Chamber Orchestra 10-12;member of National Spanish Honor Society; member of younglife

But my SAT is weak at 1780 (640 reading 530 math 610 writing)

I’ve been on this website a lot and it seems as though everyone discourages people to apply to schools if their SAT isn’t in the 2000s and that just doesn’t seem fair. so my question is, do colleges really incorporate a holistic review process or will an average SAT really kill my chances at top schools? How holistic is the review?