Not your typical chance...

Magius7
Mon, 06 Dec 2010 04:36:56 +0000

Hi,

The main things that makes this thread somewhat a-typical is that though I’m a US citizen, I’m from Israel.

This mainly affects two elements of my “chance” stats: the GPA/high school record and my ECs.

GPA: The Israeli matriculation system is very different from the US one. The main differences:

1. For each subject, students choose to take between 1-5 units, where 5 units is generally considered equivalent to AP or honors (my school had no actual AP or honors courses). Universities give special emphasis to 5 unit tests and give bonuses to the grades on those tests, giving what could be considered a weighted average.

2. Grading is on a /100 scale and there is no grade curving whatsoever.

4. From what I understand, tests are as a rule harder and grades lower than in the US.

Question: how much do you think they’ll take into account the rigor of my course load? As I wrote on the application, I literally took every possible course the school offered, and at the highest level, excluding only two which conflicted with other courses. Also, the number of units required to graduate in Israel is 21; the average number is 27; I took 51 (I’ve never met anyone with nearly that amount), with a quadruple major in Arabic, Computer Science, Physics and Literature, in addition to taking 5 units in English, Talmud, Bible and Math (English, Computer Science, Literature and Arabic all above 95, the rest in the 83-90 area).

My unweighted matriculation average is 90.2/100. Using the Hebrew University calculator, my weighted average is 109. Does this grade alone deal near-fatal damage to my chances to get to the top schools?

ECs: my school was extremely low-budget, so there were virtually no typical ECs (apart from debate). Here’s what I wrote:


I have written three op-eds for The Jerusalem Post, two of which are related to ColumbiaU: one on racism in Israeli schools (written in 2004), one defending Lee Bollinger’s decision to host Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia and one about Jeffrey Sachs and the Millennium Villages project. Also published a version of the latter in Hebrew on ynet.co.il.
-I wrote a senior thesis paper titled “Genocide in the twentieth century” which won the national Zalman Shazar award for outstanding senior theses.
During my senior year I took two university courses (not for credit) at Haifa university in History, and on two tests I took got a 94 and 97.
I’ve been playing the flute for 6 years.
I was in a debate workshop in 10th grade, won 4th place in a Rotary club competition and that summer went to a summer debate workshop.
I’ve been volunteering for around 4 hrs a week over two years, helping disadvantaged children with their matriculation exams.
During one summer I worked as a freelance writer for one of the Jerusalem Post’s local magazine.


SATs:

SAT I: 2320 (CR 760, M 780, W 780)
SAT II: World History 760, Physics 730, Math level II 760.

Planned major: Economics (Developmental Economics)

Recommendations: excellent.

Essays: I’m hoping for the best obviously, I like them, particularly "Extracurricular activity (fascination with Arabic and Islam) and “Why Columbia” (Columbia supplement).

Applications:

Columbia (ED, by far most important! Any chance beyond “well, you never know…”?)

University of Chicago
MIT
Ivies
NYU

Thank you!

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