To SCEA or not to SCEA

shyams
Sat, 25 Aug 2012 16:06:57 +0000

I’m a senior in a competitive public school, and I’ve pretty much established that Yale is my first-choice school. My quantitative stats are good, I guess (2380 SAT, 4.0 GPA with rigorous courseload, 2 800s on SAT II’s, all 5s on several APs).
I have one really important musical extracurricular that takes up most of my time, and I have a tight national/international performance schedule during the school year as well as summer vacation. I have a recording contract and am recording my first CD very soon. My love for music has also turned into a neuroscience project at a university as part of a research team.
As a result of all of this, my other extracurriculars are a little bit generic (president of this, VP of that, whatever).
Do you think it’s worth applying SCEA, despite not being an athletic recruit, URM, legacy, or fabulously rich development case?
I’m also applying to Columbia, Harvard, Penn, Duke, Williams, and some safeties.