Interested to hear about kids who didn’t start a non-profit or study boll weevil larvae for fun and still got into a very good school.
my school doesn’t offer any AP’s, just honors courses. I had good EC’s but not “amazing.” I got into some good LAC’s with a low GPA and decent ACT scores.
what qualifies as a “good LAC?” Amherst, Albion?
How selective are you looking for? Son got into NYU and UMich without remarkable ECs. Very good test scores and gpa did it, along with terrific essays.
Agree with onceuponamom, I don’t really know what your definition of selective is. I got into Bates, Colby and Holy Cross with 2110 SAT, top 10% of class and playing a couple of instruments and writing for an online newspaper but no insane ECs. However, if by selective you mean the Ivies, I never really had a chance at them with my comparably boring application. Luckily I prefer the environment of an LAC better anyway, but I digress.
Son got into Case Western, RPI, Northeastern, WPI, SUNY Buffalo and Stony Brook (honors both SUNY schools). Was offered substantial merit aid at all those (we did not seek need based aid because I was confident we would not qualify for enough for it to be worth while to do the paper work). Wait listed at CMU. And that’s all he applied to. Are those “very good”? Everyone has his or her own idea about that but I was surprised – based on what I had read on CC – that he got into pretty much everywhere, with money. Actually I didn’t think he would get into CMU at all, so the so-called priority wait list thingy was cool, but he’s not going to go that route.
Big public school in NYC. His SAT’s were very good. His grades are very solid, though he had a low math grade from sophomore year (it was a notoriously hard class but dunno if the colleges find that sort of thing out). Everything else was good but not super amazing. He took one AP class in junior year, though he did self-study for a second AP. He took three AP classes senior year. No “leadership” ECs, just sort of typically stuff though clearly skewed toward engineering (which should be obvious from the list of schools). In short he is a bright kid, happens to be really good test taker, wrote a pretty sweet essay, but he is not an athlete or musician, never invented anything, and generally is kind of quiet.
@greeninohio I got into Connecticut College, Hobart and William Smith, Bowdoin. I had solid recommendations and essays. IMO, I interview really well and a very easy person to get along with. I don’t know if that is what did it for me, I sure would like to think so as my grades and test scores certainly did not help!
The reason these schools are selective is because they only take special students.Expecting to get into a selective school without either a high gpa , good test scores , or great ec’s is insane.
I got into UW Honors, Emory, William and Mary, and UC Berkeley without supermega ECs or AP classes. My high school offered very few advanced classes so I couldn’t really take many. As for ECs I didn’t really get involved until like Junior Year (Kinda sophomore year).
I didn’t mention grades or test scores in the OP, I assume those are necessary to even get into the pool of potential admits, let alone be chosen.
If you count honors colleges as selective, I got into Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College with a high SAT I, lackluster SAT IIs, and fairly run-of-the-mill ECs. Took five APs (school offered eight or nine, IIRC?).