<p>So after visiting UPenn, I was really impressed by the campus and just in general by the whole school, and it made me really want to get into an ivy. However, I haven't really felt that motivation up until this point in my life, and not to be pessimistic, but as a result I think right now I'd have little to no chance at making it into any ivy, especially after reading threads on here and seeing all of the rejections (I understand that everything on this site should be taken with a grain of salt, but I'm still surprised). I'm looking to major in either engineering, business, or something math/science related. I will probably only apply to a few ivies, and those will be my stretch schools. HYPSM are probably out of reach, and I think the ones I'm most likely to apply to right now are Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn ( I realize Stanford and MIT aren't ivies, no trolling). So to get to the point, I was wondering if anyone had any advice on how to improve my chances with constructive criticism. I will post a little (yeah no it's a lot) about myself below:</p>
<pre><code> I am a white male heading into the final term of my junior year. I go to a pretty average to upper end public high school (I don't think anyone got into an ivy last year) in Massachusetts. It is a very sheltered community with VERY little diversity. We take four classes at once, fitting normally full-year classes like math into half of a year. I have taken the highest possible level of classes available to me up to this point while unwillingly filling a few useless graduation "requirements" (people have gotten them waived in the past) and playing the oboe somewhat averagely in band class.
I have gotten almost all As with a few b+s, but this past term I have really struggled with my classes, getting only an a- with a b+ and two bs (I can hopefully still redeem myself this term and average those into the a range for a final grade, but still disappointing). I am taking three APs this year (APUSH Chem and Stat) and plan on taking calc AB calc BC and AP Lit next year. My school doesn't do GPA on a 4.0 scale, and the way they weight classes is completely ridiculous in that it has little to no effect on your GPA out of 100. They also don't do official rankings. Up until the beginning of third term, I think I had about a 3.7 uw and was in the top 10% of my class.
For ecs, I played freshman soccer and basketball, jv soccer, managed varsity soccer this year (injury) and ran two, presumably to be three years of varsity track. I ran at the league meet the past two years, but that's not that impressive. The soccer coach has hinted that I will be on varsity next year, and we are a state championship-caliber program. As for basketball, I switched to rec last year.
I play oboe in the band, I have gone on the school's music trip every year, and I joined the music honor society last year. I joined NHS this year.
As far as academic teams go, my school doesn't offer much, but I was one of the original five freshman that was a part of our first math team, and I participated on our first and second teams this year and attended the state math meet this year. I was in the top five in our division, but we are in the B division, and in general it's not much of an accomplishment and my scores compared to the rest of the kids in the A division are mediocre. An academic team was started this year, but I did not join.
I joined the recently started ping pong club this year, and did put a small amount of work into getting things going, but I'm not a co-founder, and in general the club has kinda crashed.
I have done scattered amounts of small community service and leadership along with 80 hours at a soccer camp one summer. I went through a CCD program and was confirmed at a Catholic Church last year. I stopped reffing youth soccer this year, but had been doing that for about three years. I have played town and indoor soccer for my first two years, and after recovering from my injury I am playing town soccer this spring.
For awards, I have only gotten a math competition award that at least a dozen more students in my grade got, and I got the Spanish award for my grade last year (I then proceeded to put of my third language class till my senior year).
For scores, the only confirmed scores I have are the SAT I's: 1370/2160 (700 M 670 CR 790 W) and 1400/2060 (740 M 660 CR 660 W). I plan on taking them one more time, and I hope to get an 800 M and break the 700 barrier in CR at least. I took the ACTS a week ago and feel pretty confident except for my reading score, which I definitely bombed; I'd estimate about a 32-33 if I'm lucky, 34 max, 30 or lower quite possible. I am going to take the Chem APUSH and Stat AP exams, and the chemistry math II and US history SAT II's.
I never really went to any academic competitions, which seems to me like something that could be detrimental to my chances. I plan on spending a lot of time on my essay along with getting help from colleges, but I can't see my recs beig much better than generic. That's about all I can think of...
If you're still with me here, thanks for reading, and if you have advice, thank you so much. In summary, I am looking to improve my slim chances at making it into an ivy, and I'm looking for some advice at how to best go about that. Thanks again :)
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<p>People I know it's long but please...</p>
I’ll probably repost this in a more summarized version. Sorry to be a scrub but what’s SCEA?</p>