I recently attended one the Summer Residential Governor’s Schools in Virginia and am genuinely confused as to how I was admitted.
Within the time we were there, we conducted an anonymous poll to see the general stats of the people who came here were and what I saw blew me away.
My gpa from the prior year was a 3.6 which is pretty good until you realize the average is from 4.2 to 4.7 (my school doesn’t weigh for AP or duel though)
People were all in the top 10 percent - likely valedictorian of their class while I could assume I was hardly in the 25% range (my school doesn’t rank)
A lot of which also scored 1400-1600 on the sat and 33+ on the act (neither of which I took)
Personally, I have been the state champion of current events and internetworking twice. And work as a junior Network Engineer in a relatively large scale IT company.
I understand that the admissions must be holistic to an extent. But this much? The sheer brilliance of everyone there mad me in awe the entire month but i felt as if I didn’t belong there. It honestly felt bizarre for me, a merely above average student, to be standing shoulder to shoulder with Ivy League tier students.
Lastly, what does this mean for my college application?
Should I take the time to apply to top schools in state like W&M or UVA that say they have holistic applications given my admittance here (since it will be on my application) even though I’m technically unqualified as well?