The Uneven Student

mathmom
Fri, 18 Feb 2011 11:43:11 +0000

There are lots of kids with that profile and they get into lots of well known colleges. Her EC and ethnicity will be a big help. My younger son had the opposite profile - high verbal scores, medium math scores, low B’s in Chem, Latin and various sorts of B’s in English (but an A senior year!), mostly B+s in Math. I don’t think anyone on CC would have thought his grades were good enough for either Tufts or U of Chicago, but he was accepted at both. Both schools look at more than grades. I believe he had excellent teacher recommendations (even from a Math teacher who understood why his grades weren’t as high as some others in the class.) Both Tufts and Chicago have some quirky essays in their supplements which I think enabled him to shine. His regular Common App essays were pretty good too.

I agree about the math contests. You don’t have to study for them (though it probably helps!) They are just half a day during school hours (at least that’s the way it works at our school) - she should do the AMC 10 or 12 and if she qualifies the AIME. They aren’t time consuming, but they really show math ability beyond what the SAT can show.

Math/philosophy makes me think Chicago, but there may be other better choices. She’s only a sophomore, plenty of time for her to do her research! At the end of it she may still like Barnard best - I know at that age I was dying to live in NYC. I ended up doing in grad school not undergrad, but I remember that was one of my top considerations.