<p>yo how’s everyone doing?</p>
<p>Hey everyone, I’m a JC-2 student and am thinking of applying to some of the ivy league schools like UPenn and Cornell. But my grades for last year was terrible, I mean really terrible as in I failed 3 out of 5 subjects. If I work really hard this year and, ideally, get all As for my prelims, is it still posssible for me to get into UPenn or Cornell?</p>
<p>I’m taking my SAT tomorrow and hopefully will score at least a 2100.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of your help!</p>
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<p>Why you so eager to play for an athletic conference hor?</p>
<p>^ Well, what’s wrong with aiming to get into those schools anyway? They are fantastic schools - whether they have the Ivy League moniker or not.</p>
<p>snowcrush, You don’t need to get all As for prelims, just get predicted straight As for your A-level scores. I hope your O-level scores are fine, as you will definitely need to submit that to the schools.</p>
<p>Do you have any awards/extra-curricular activities etc that you are really good at/proud of? That could boost your chances.</p>
<p>Well, he should probably look deeper in the schools he’s applying to. The fact that some of his application choices will be members of the IV athletic conference should be a coincidence, not a causative factor in the decision to apply to them.</p>
<p>After application season is over and he gets his financial aid packages in April, reality will start to kick in where he realises it’s all about the fit and the cost-effectiveness and not about the overly-romanticised dream.</p>
<p>Worse, he doesn’t realise this until he enrolls to find that the school he enrolled in because society told him to isn’t actually a good fit for him.</p>
<p>eh, I don’t know if good predicted A level grades are good enough… I read on another forum that US schools consider real A level grades the most, predicted grades are supposedly not fair to other candidates or something</p>
<p>Just thought I should share my experience. Applied to Wellesley College, a top 3 liberal arts college. O level 10, predicted a level grades: ABB. Applied ED and got completely rejected, not even considered for the waitlist. So maybe you should consider other colleges that are not as highly ranked, but still pretty good :)</p>
<p>There are too many factors to say exactly what got you rejected. I suspect one of the reasons was the big gulf between your prelim grades and predicted grades. Wellesley is a good school, but I get the impression it doesn’t get many SG applicants, so they take BCU -> ABB to reflect more badly on the applicant than your typical Singaporean would. It probably looks fishy to them.</p>
<p>I mean every school has these stories of Legendary Senior who got OOOO (or SSSS as the case may be) and D7 for Prelims, and AAAB and A2 for the A Levels. But there is not a chance that a school would accept you with prelim grades of SSSS no matter what the predicted grades are (and your teachers wouldn’t dare to predict anything either). Of course this is an extreme case and BCU is nowhere near SSSS, but I don’t think Wellesley took very kindly to the U-that-is-supposed-to-become-a-B.</p>
<p>One of my friends got accepted into UC-Berkeley with predicted straight As (or AAAB, can’t remember) and two Ds for prelims (but I think one of them was in a H1 subject). So the colleges do try to maintain some perspective, I think. But it’s also hard to tell what they think a certain grade means in terms of college preparation.</p>
<p>(I also think many people would take you up on the contention that Wellesley is a “top 3” LAC 
- without a doubt Amherst and William are “top 2”, and I hear Swarthmore and Middlebury named as the third far more often than Wellesley. But nvm.)</p>
<p>snowcrush: any idea WHAT you actually want to study?</p>
<p>do you just want to go to these schools for the prestige? or do you have a real basis for your decision?</p>
<p>If I could find a rational basis for his decision, I would say that Snowcrush must be an awesome athlete and that’s why he’s applying to schools on the basis of their membership in an athletic conference. :)</p>
<p>Trying for the Olympics, Snowcrush?</p>
<p>I don’t understand how Princeton’s application numbers increased by so little this year. I thought we had the best financial aid program in the country and would totally own during these times!</p>
<p>Well, my prelim grades were quite bad (BBDD) but I simply didn’t send those grades to the schools I applied. They didn’t think it was a problem.</p>
<p>Just had my Princeton phone interview and i think its quite bad T__T
Lasted about 30 mins, so i didn’t get to say half the things i said during the yale interview. There’s no visible facial expression so that kinda unnerves me a little, like I didn’t know whether i should go on or just stop right there and then because i was boring him… </p>
<p>I didn’t send in my prelim grades either which was against the official instruction from my school. They weren’t bad in Singapore terms (AABBA) but i thought will make me look like crap against the 4.0 GPA American peeps.</p>
<p>There’s really no need to worry since interviews don’t matter much anyway. So if you got into Yale it’s on the basis of your profile and you still have a good chance at Princeton. Where are you now, how come you had a phone interview? </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter now, but your prelim grades really really don’t hurt, not even against American applicants. Admission officers know how to put grades in context, and your grades are fantastic! I personally have never been able to spell ABBA with my prelim grades before. :)</p>
<p>“They weren’t bad in Singapore terms (AABBA) but i thought will make me look like crap against the 4.0 GPA American peeps”</p>
<p>Well, once you’re in the US, you’ll realize that your grades are much more superior compared to those 4.0 Americans. The high schools in here don’t have standardized final exams. So, it’s like prelim exams. Plus, they’re only tested for materials that they’ve studied in the past 4/5 months, not 2 years. And it is very possible to get 100% in any exam in here… unlike in Singapore where almost all teachers like to make their students feel bad and make them think they’re so gonna be screwed for A level after seeing their prelim grades.</p>
<p>swewitlah and bearcub: You havent heard the not so nice part of my prelim transcript 
I dropped 44 percentile for chemistry (apparently everyone improved because it was an easy paper and I deproved drastically). The worst part is i got a “Pass” for guidance curriculum because i skipped school too much… lol</p>
<p>OMG, and you got into YALE!!! hahaha…jk
That’s the beauty of American education. It doesnt only look at your grades…it sees you as a person. Unlike local unis where we have cut off points for engineering, business, etc. Also UK has minimum number of As in the A level to be considered as a candidate to their top schools. =)</p>
<p>confused_vnese: how long did yale take to receive all your stuff? they still haven’t received my ct’s letter ><</p>
<p>hey, do you guys know how many singaporeans applied to harvard/yale/etc this year? just curious, cos i once heard applicants from singapore to harvard were like 250, and i think that’s pretty crazy, considering the fact that i know only 6 applied from malaysia last year?! is it really 250 applicants or … 50!!!</p>
<p>Quite possible that 250 applied to Harvard.</p>