SAT I: 2180 (760 CR, 690M, 730 W)
SAT II: 700 USH, 650 Lit, 610M (youch!!)
GPA: 3.75ish UW, but this is self-calculated due to it being unprovided. So, I’m projecting just a notch under 3.8. (slightly downward trend) Also, my school has silly 8th grade year grades on my transcripts… colleges aren’t going to take those seriously, right? I have two B+s from 8th grade that “count” and that’s just obnoxious…
APs: USH (4) Lang (4)
School doesn’t offer a ton of APs. There ARE APs I didn’t take (or intend to), but it’s like two. I explained that I’d have ideally taken more, but my school didn’t offer many, and my schedule didn’t fit all the ones the school did offer. (As in, some AP classes met a single period, and I already had that period scheduled elsewhere)
Senior year: AP Psych, AP Lit, AP European, rest are non-honors courses (I have an A+ in every non-honors course except Calculus)
Rank: (in both rigor and GPA) about 10%. I’m right on the bubble, tho my school doesn’t send official ranks so they’ll just see that I’m near the top, but I’m not the top grade-wise. Typically we send about 5 kids to highly respected schools and this is a school of around 100 per grade
Kids who take “the most” APs take about 7 here. I’ll have 5 by high schools end, but I did try to reach that 7 threshold–school’s weird requirements messed with that a bit.
ECs:
Write online, 100 articles published for a decently well-known website, 200k views in total
I’ve won a national history day award
4-year athlete (not actually good though, but I try rly hard and have received awards)
I’ve done other things, but let’s focus on those, which are my largest accomplishments
Essays:
CommonApp was amazing until the final paragraph, which in retrospect wasn’t the best (but wasn’t terrible either! and half my schools got an edited version w/ a better ending anyways)
Supplements were all creative, to say the least. “Love them or hate them” type essays bc I’m absolutely not afraid to take risks, lol. My “why this college” essays tended to be more conventional, though.
Additional info:
White male
First-gen college (mother and sister didn’t even finish High School!)
Father currently works as a laborer
Not LOW income, as in not in poverty, but money is tight (let’s estimate 60k?)
US Born, US Citizen, etc
Feeling like I should have elaborated on the whole first-gen thing more in my app because it’s unusual to, atop being first-gen college, having only one immediate family member who achieved a proper high school diploma.
Applying as social science/humanities majors, so things like English, Political Science, or Psychology, depending on college
My college list ranges from those around 10% (NOT HYPSM) to 30s in % (I’m not including safeties in this post because I don’t need my chances there, lol)
So, low-tiered Ivy or similarly ranked school chances? Perhaps Penn? Emory chances? Emory Oxford? Highly selective public schools as an OOS chances?
To summarize for all:
Strengths: ECs, Background (First-Gen), Essays (hopefully)
Weakness: GPA, Class Rank, Course Rigor, SAT Subjects
Neither here nor there: SAT