Just wondering...

<p>what can i do to increase my chances??</p>

<p>SAT 2090
4.3 GPA, 3.9 UW
Class rank is 12/623</p>

<p>Varsity Swimming 9th-11th, varisty tennis- MVP 9th-11th Nationally ranked, finals at states</p>

<p>Volunteering, Honors Scoeity
Spanish Club, STUCO, Equations
Work every summer</p>

<p>5 on AP Stats and Calc AB</p>

<p>Keep swimming, whoooooh! Although academics are so much more important!</p>

<p>anyone else?</p>

<p>put careful thought into essays, schedule and interview, visit campus, show interest</p>

<p>Retake the SAT</p>

<p>im planning on taking it tomorrow… what score would be “good enough” for northwestern? 2150 + ?</p>

<p>Write a really long essay on your SAT’s. There was an article in the paper yesterday that said that the length of kids’ essays corresponds with their score on it. Now whether or not that is the only thing that justifies a high score, propably not, but hey why not?</p>

<p>Here’s the article:</p>

<p>From the NYTimes:
SAT Essay Test Rewards Length and Ignores Errors
By MICHAEL WINERIP </p>

<p>Published: May 4, 2005</p>

<p>IN March, Les Perelman attended a national college writing conference and sat in on a panel on the new SAT writing test. Dr. Perelman is one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology…</p>

<p>“It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the longer the essay, the higher the score,” Dr. Perelman said…</p>

<p>“Because M.I.T. is a place where everything is backed by data, I went to my hotel room, counted the words in those essays and put them in an Excel spreadsheet on my laptop.”…</p>

<p>He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. “I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one,” he said. “If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you’d be right over 90 percent of the time.” The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade.</p>

<p>He was also struck by all the factual errors in even the top essays…</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html?[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html?&lt;/a&gt;
(need to register for free)</p>

<p>joshb110: “im planning on taking it tomorrow… what score would be “good enough” for northwestern? 2150 + ?”</p>

<p>There is no such thing as good enough. Kids averaging above 750 on each section (2250-2400) have about a 50% acceptance rate as do valedictorians. Your current scores and grades probably put you in the range of the average candidate to NU (~30% acceptance rate). If you want to bring yourself up to 66%, It will take about a 2340 (the equvalent of a 35 ACT).</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/freshman/facts/[/url]”>http://www.ugadm.northwestern.edu/freshman/facts/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>wow, that article is horrifying…I am SO glad I had the opportunity to take the old test!</p>

<p>well, when i took the SAT, my writing score is what brought me down. What I wrote was written well; however, there was not much of it. I didn’t realize that 25 minutes was virtually nothing, and so i didn’t write a conclusion or anything else. So I am hoping to at least score a 2150-2200ish.</p>

<p>yea, its crazy how they grade the new SAT essay section! and how they only want “formulaic” essays</p>

<p>Get recruited as a swimmer or apply ED and you’ll probably be in</p>

<p>Josh, i think leadership was a huge factor for me getting into NU…are you going to be swim captain next year? oh, and i have to agree with hormesis…no such thing as a good enough SAT score…be satisfied with your best! =] good luck!</p>