Hi everyone,
Can you chance me for these schools?
NYU - business (Stern School of Business)
Georgetown - Political science (would I stand a better chance for business?)
UPenn - Huntsman Program (second choice is at Wharton)
Brown - Political science
Duke - political science
UNC Chapel Hill - business
UCLA - economics
UCSD - biology (for pre-vet)
UT Austin - business
UMich, Ann Arbor - business
Carnegie Mellon - business
Stevens - finance
My current SAT is a 2120 but I think I’m retaking it in December, since I feel like I need a higher score to even have a chance at some of these schools. My current GPA is a 4.2 (I’m at the 7th best high school in the country, and it’s #4 in the country for STEM education). I actually got two C+'s last year in engineering (the final pulled me down) and chemistry (again, final) - with this in mind, can you please let me know where I seem to stand a chance?
My EC’s are below too:
- Blogger for The Huffington Post
- Staff writer for online political science magazine, The Dawtor
- Yearbook Club editor
- President of GirlUp Club (a chapter of the UN Foundation Organization)
- Paid internship at a law firm in the summer of 2014
- Greenpeace 2015 Group Leader
- Newspaper Club
- Newspaper staff writer
- FBLA
- Model UN
- Debate
- DNA Research Club
- close to (or more than, some aren't in yet) 200 volunteer hours from hospitals, care centers, Greenpeace, programs for kids with disabilities, etc.
- Wrote up narratives for a non-profit (Ubuntu at Work) for their annual report
We’d need to know your UW GPA to chance you properly. I can say that a pair of Cs in your junior year are going to hurt your chances considerably at the schools you listed - your junior year is the most important for a lot of colleges.
Knowing your class rank would also help - if you’re in the top 5% at one of the toughest schools in the country, maybe grade deflation explains those Cs. If you’re ranked in the top 30% or lower, your chances are very iffy.
You can’t even list 14 extracurriculars on the common app, and a laundry list won’t help you. Which activities matter to you? Which ones have you put significant time into (involvement for a few hours a week over several years, or heavy involvement in a given year)? Where have you achieved something noteworthy?
Cut out the activities you did for 1 hour a week over less than a year. Cut out clubs where you just showed up - 90% of life is showing up, but colleges care more about the other 10%.
We don’t know our unweighted GPAs anymore, we only report the weighted GPAs to colleges (something was up with our class weights and a lot of things had to be changed for our GPA to be calculated properly). I figured they would hurt me a little, but they were also very borderline so I’m not sure if it’ll be that bad (do you know?). It’s especially strange because with our school, everyone’s grades usually drop during their junior year (we also got two new curriculums and our midterms were no longer administered - I really hope that doesn’t sound like an excuse, it’s just mere reasoning behind why I got the grades I got haha).
We also don’t have class rank because our guidance counselor has a policy against it. The only thing close to ranking we have is to determine whether we take AP AB Calc or AP BC Calc, and that is purely based off of math grades.
If I maybe pushed my SAT up to high 2200s or low 2300s, would that help more?
The GPA issue makes it dodgy to chance you, as I have no idea how colleges will view this particular situation. The context for your grades matters, but I have to wonder how much slack colleges with 30,000 applicants (and something like 5,000 4.0 students to choose from) will allow a student with a pair of C+ marks in her transcript.
The absence of rank at your school isn’t all that unusual - a lot of strong schools don’t rank, because that would make being in the bottom 50% at the country’s best HS worse (from an admissions standpoint) than being in the top 1% at a sink school. All I can say is that it’ll help if you’ve taken/are taking Calc BC.
Of course it would help if you pushed your SAT up to the top 1% range, but that’s never a good assumption to make. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.
And again, you need to narrow down your list of ECs and figure out which clubs fit with a business/econ/political science focus. I can tell you right away that it won’t be the DNA research club.
Yeah, I’m not sure either. All of our classes are at the honors level, other than the two APs we are given senior year (one of the calcs and AP British Lit). I’ve taken AP AB Calc because I learn better from the teacher that teaches it, although I could have asked to transfer to BC and may have gotten a chance to do so. I’m not sure if they would look at it a little differently in context of the school itself, as it is difficult to get an A in chemistry with the teacher that we have. I was really about a point off from hitting a B-. I’m planning on taking the Math II and Biology SAT exams - if I take it in January can I submit the scores to the schools afterwards as well?
I figured as much about the SAT, which is what I’m planning on doing until December. It’s strange because I expected a 2250 at least with the scores that came out of my Blue Book practice exams (all 2250-2350s).
I’ve put the following ECs on the Common App (DNA is on there because I’m applying as a biology major to UCSD, Penn State, and Rutgers).
- Blogger for The Huffington Post/ Staff writer for online political science magazine, The Dawtor (as one thing, under Journalism)
- Yearbook Club editor (previously staff for 3 years)
- President of GirlUp Club (a chapter of the UN Foundation Organization) - previous member for two years
- Paid internship at a law firm in the summer of 2014
- Greenpeace 2015 Group Leader/Wrote up narratives for a non-profit (Ubuntu at Work) for their annual report/close to (or more than, some aren't in yet) 200 volunteer hours from hospitals, care centers, Greenpeace, programs for kids with disabilities, etc. (Volunteering) - not the exact wording haha
- Newspaper Club (staff writer for 4 years)
- FBLA - made it to States the first year for a new topic, working on my second year (since we've only been active since last year)
- Model UN - 3rd year this year
- DNA Research Club - 2nd year this year
- Wrote up narratives for a non-profit (Ubuntu at Work) for their annual report
Your school’s curriculum is a little out there. As long as you aren’t applying EA/ED, January SAT II scores should be OK (check the latest test dates each school will accept, but this is my best guess).
If you’re applying for biology to a school or two, go ahead and list DNA research.
I’m not going to chance you, simply because I’d rather not say anything when I know this little about your school’s context. A bad chance is worse than no chance at all, and at this point I can’t say I’d be able to give you an accurate guess at your odds for most of these schools.
I’m only applying ED II to Stern, but they don’t really mind if you don’t have them (a lot of their testing requirements are individual, so if you want to add more things, you can).
Our curriculum is very out there - it’s hard to tell half the time what I have a chance for when I have two C+'s and a 4.2 (out of 4.0) weighted GPA. I looked at UCLA and it looks like I have a solid chance there, as far as their test score averages look - any opinions?
Hopefully I can push the SAT up a lot more in the next couple of months.
I do not believe your chances are good for UCLA and UCSD (though you should apply if you have great interest on them).
However, for more realistic chances, you better target mid-tier UCs instead.
I am really interested in both, but I think I can push my SAT up to mid-2200s by the December test. Do I stand a chance if I have that, the GPA, and an outstanding essay and ECs? I just want to see what I can do to fix it, since there’s been a lot of personal stuff (along with the new curriculums) that also contributed to my grades last year…
^ To answer your above question (and in the absence of clarity in your UW GPA), how many B’s did you get beside those 2 C’s?
Freshman year: 6
Sophomore year: 6
Junior year: 4
My mistake, I thought I’d gotten two C+'s last year, but I think the engineering teacher added our final project grades, so it went up to a B. The only other C+ is from freshman year and is a combined score from our intro classes for electrical engineering and civil engineering. But again, like I said before, the school is strangely rigorous and our workload sometimes rivals that of a college student. I suppose they’d take ranking and school type (STEM) into consideration as well?