Will "Average Work Ethic" hold me back from top schools?

letyor
Sun, 17 Apr 2011 14:18:17 +0000

I posted this in my chances thread but no one gave me a decent answer. One of my teachers really knows me well (english) and will write a good, possibly great recommendation about my leadership in the class and the impact I have had on the school. The other I have no idea how he will write it – he could say that I am a leader in the class, but I expect him to write about how I do the work required to understand the concepts at the A level but never do anything more. Many kids in the class spend hours every night studying Chem (the class I am talking about, but most nights since I totally understood the material during class, I don’t do any work - In chem there is no mandatory homework"). If he was prompted to talk about my work ethic I am positive that he would respond honestly and probably give me a 3/5 or about average ranking. Will this totally kill my chances at getting into Penn CAS ED? I have 2320 singe sitting and basically perfect 4.0 with a challenging course load and some better than average ECs showing some level of focus and “passion”. Your $.02?