***Vassar College ED I Class of 2019 Decision Thread***

wherezwallace
Sun, 14 Dec 2014 14:00:09 +0000

Decision: Accepted

Objective:[ul]
[]ACT: 31
[]Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.91 (4.25 Weighted)
[]Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 12%
[]AP (place score in parenthesis):APUSH (3), Language (3), World History(4) Psychology (4), Biology (3) (grrrr. She never studied for these. I guess I should let that go now that’s she’s in!
[]Senior Year Course Load: AP Calc AB, AP Literature, AP Government, Latin V, Physics
[]Major Awards: National Honor Society, National Spanish Honor Society, National Science Honor Society, National [li]Latin Honor Society, AP Scholar with Distinction [/li]
[/ul]Subjective:[ul]
[]Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): Club/Travel Soccer (Captain), HS JV soccer (Captain), Varsity, Math/Science HS tutoring, volunteering with local middle and elementary schools.
[]Job/Work Experience: Summer retail job 11th grade
[]Volunteer/Community service: County Democratic Headquarters campaign volunteer, Teaching soccer to underprivileged children that could not afford soccer instruction
[]Summer Activities: 11th grade part time job, summer school (Chemistry) 10th grade, medical internships in 9th and 10th grade.
[]Essays:
Common app was about microagression and self esteem issues and how she overcame stereotype of “good hair”. Very difficult as a parent to read it. Also submitted a powerful poem about her love of soccer and competition. The two essays either accidentally or intentionally described a typical “all american girl” who is trying to find herself in this world. People recommend that you expose who you really are in your essays. Well, our daughter wrote two beautiful essays so introspective it made her parents cry.
[]Teacher Recommendation: Not sure.
[li]Counselor Rec: They have an excellent relationship so I assume it was very good. [/li]
[/ul]Other[ul]
[]Applied for Financial Aid?: No
[]Intended Major (undecided is fine): Undecided but probably International Relations with a pre-med track
[]State (if domestic applicant): Virginia
[]Country (if international applicant): US
[]School Type: Public High School
[]Ethnicity: African American
[]Gender: Female
[]Income Bracket: >200k
[li]Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): African American [/li]
[/ul]Reflection[list]
[]Strengths: High GPA, Solid ACT, excellent essays
[]Weaknesses: Female applying to Vassar. Class ranking was outside of the top 10%, ACT could have been a little higher, not a lot of leadership.
[]Why you think you were accepted/waitlisted/rejected: See above.
[]Where else were you accepted/waitlisted/rejected: ED so N/A. Before she received her acceptance, she applied to USC, Berkeley and UCSD. She was going to apply to UVA also. At two of those four schools, she holds legacy status also. I was hopeful that she would follow her dad’s footsteps to one of those institutions. After touring Vassar, however, she told us “this is it!”

I often describe Vassar to people who haven’t seen it as " a place that’s a cross between UVA and Hogwarts.” When we left campus last spring, we all knew that this was her first choice and everything else was a distant second. So many all-nighters and years of studying and sacrifice paid off.

How did she celebrate last Thursday? she pulled an all-nighter because she had an AP Lit paper due the next morning.