<p>Furthermore, my scores are terrible as of right now. (650 CR, 490 M 640 W) </p>
<p>I just finished my Junior year with an unweighted class rank of 1 and a weighted rank of 2. I’ve been a part of “The World Cultures Organization” at my school for 1 year, and I took 2 classes at the local community college. I have twenty hours of community service. I’m also attending a pre-college program at RISD this summer.</p>
<p>I feel like an idiot for not taking the SATs earlier and for not being a good high school citizen.</p>
<p>Lets say my rank stays the same, I bump my math score up to 600, and I join Newspaper and SADD my senior year. I get the feeling that my last minute involvement with school is just going to look like a cheap gimmick to most admission officers. </p>
<p>I’ve wanted to apply to Carnegie Mellon for a while, and it seems like a long shot now. I regret realizing all of this a bit later than I should have. Should I bother applying to schools with acceptance rates of 30%-40%? Is there much I can do to save myself…or am I going to have to attend the University of Rhode Island and transfer later?</p>
<p>I disagree with Borb. I’ve found that CC has a tendency to make the situation out to be a lot more dire than it is because of the hypercompetitiveness of its students. This is the only place I know where a 3.7 and a 1800 are considered subpar.</p>
<p>As far as the SAT goes, your CR and W scores fall solidly in the middle 50% of CMU’s enrolled students. (Their middle 50% of math + CR would be anywhere from a 1290 to a 1500, so I have no idea where this notion that you have to get at least a 1400 comes from.) Your math score, however, leaves a lot to be desired; however, have no fear. It’s only June and you have around 3 months to study. Math is the easiest section in which to raise your score. Pick up a prep book from the book store (or 2 or 3) and discipline yourself to do some heavy preparation to increase that math score. A lot of students take the SAT in the fall of their senior year. Also, as Borb suggested, you might want to try the ACT. A lot of students do better.</p>
<p>You never said what your GPA was. The vast majority of the students (73%) at CMU have a 3.5 or higher, with a large percentage (45%) having a 3.75 or higher. Hopefully you have a GPA that is a 3.5 or higher, preferably in the upper reaches since your SAT scores are admittedly at the low end of their middle 50%.</p>
<p>You don’t have to be in a zillion clubs and organizations to get into a top school, but it is best if you show interest in more than one. The pre-college program and the community service will be good, but likely not enough. And yes, last-minute involvement for one semester in your senior year is very much going to look like a cheap gimmick to admissions officers at the top schools, especially compared with students who will have pioneered through their high schools for 3-4 years.</p>
<p>Don’t look so much at acceptance rates as where you fall in the student body. There’s a thread somewhere else that points out that acceptance rates don’t always match up to the prestige and caliber of a school (Mount Holyoke’s acceptance rate is over 50% for example, whereas Paine College – a small four-year college in Augusta, GA, where the middle 50% of SAT scores is 350-440 on each section, has a 40% acceptance rate). Match up your stats to those of the student body. I think that you have already accepted that CMU is a reach school for you. But don’t knock it off your list; just put it in your ‘reach’ category.</p>
<p>Look for places where your SAT scores fall in the middle 50% (for that math score, I’d look for places where the math score range is maybe slightly higher than yours – like 500-550+ – but where your other scores were solid) and where your grades are solid. You might want to look at large public universities – they are no less good than private schools, but they may be more forgiving of your low student involvement since admissions is based more on numbers. For example, look at University of Pittsburgh.</p>
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As far as the SAT goes, your CR and W scores fall solidly in the middle 50% of CMU’s enrolled students. (Their middle 50% of math + CR would be anywhere from a 1290 to a 1500, so I have no idea where this notion that you have to get at least a 1400 comes from.)
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<p>Let’s not take it too far, here. The 25th percentile for CR and W are around 620 for each of the schools in CMU. mustgetin is at the bottom of the candidate pool in this criterion. But that can also be somewhat misleading, because I’d wager many of the people who are at the lower end of this criterion are quantitatively gifted people who more than compensate with their math scores and abilities. mustgetin doesn’t have this caveat currently. And I don’t agree that it’s easy for one to improve math scores by 150-200 points (just to get to the 25th percentile of CMU). </p>
<p>Not to discourage, but I think it’s better to be realistic. </p>
<p>Anyways, I wouldn’t bank on CMU, but you have a fair chance at various other schools, especially ones that are test score optional…</p>
<p>must - I wouldn’t worry about EC’s at this point. IMO your biggest problem is that Math SAT score. Find the CC thread on the Xiggi Method and work at that until you’re confident of getting 650 the next time you take the SAT.</p>
<p>Also, you might look at Worcester Polytechnic.</p>
<p>Thank-you all for your input and suggestions. I appreciate it ! I am going to be looking at larger public universities. As ignorant as this may sound, I’m kind of nervous about/adverse to applying to score optional schools. I feel like applying to a score optional school would be giving up in a way, and I’m afraid that I’ll end up with a bunch people who applied to a certain school because they wanted to avoid something they found difficult…though I guess that analysis could be a bit melodramatic.</p>
<p>Test optional schools are not “a step down” or anything like that. They’re just different, and they attract people who don’t have great scores but are great in other ways. It’s so you can get into a school with quality you wouldn’t have gotten if admission was based just on scores. </p>
<p>And I don’t see a need to aim for unnecessary difficulty. St. John’s College would’ve probably killed me, but I didn’t feel like I was ducking a challenge by not going there. Rigor is good, but not when it doesn’t give you anything useful.</p>