-35 ACT
-14 AP classes—All’s As
-National Merit Semifinalist
-I played 2 high school sports
-little community service
-no research
I feel like i’m good academically but I haven’t cured cancer or done any amazing research. is it worth applying?
gpa?
If those are your only EC’s you may want to aim below the Ivy League.
Ivies and equivalent are reaches for everybody. You are competitive for a Top 50 University or Top 50 LAC. A lot depends on how much you and parents can pay vs how much merit money you may get.
Without community service? Probably really really difficult for ivies. I would say you have a good chance for anything not in the top 20 since the top 20 tends to weigh ECs much more heavily. If you want to maximize your chances, I would write an essay about any leadership you’ve done, possibly in your high school sports (obviously leadership isn’t a title). Either that or any challenges you faced in your life, because based on what you gave your application isn’t very interesting to a top 10 admission officer.
You are competitive, assuming you are least top 10% (better top 5%) of your class (but everyone is a reach). The importance of having a “community service” EC is way overblown. At what level and commitment do you play high school sports? Even if you are not a recruitable athlete, there is a difference between participating in 2 sports for 4 years at the varsity level for at least 2 of them (and also playing club ball for 1 or both in the summers/offseason) and being a freshman/JV benchwarmer participant for a couple of years. Colleges don’t make admissions decisions because of the type of EC’s you participate in (aside from athletic recruits and maybe some rare talents), but by what your participation in EC’s signals in other desirable attributes, such as leadership, commitment/perseverance, curiosity, ability to collaborate, etc… Further, if you work (job) or have to provide home care, colleges wouldn’t expect the same level of “upper middle class EC’s”.
If you’re in the top 10% of your class, than yes, you are competitive for Ivies. But the difference maker for unhooked applicants is often found in ECs or essays. As the poster above said, community service ECs are not very important.
On another note, have you considered schools like UVA or UMich? Top state schools would like to accept applicants with high stats like you
That is absolutely false.
95 plus percent of accepted students are in the top 10% of their class.
Depends on what we mean by competitive. The vast majority of HS Grads (98%?) have zero chance of getting into an Ivy. Even is OP is competitive, that is maybe a 5% chance? And that would be a 5% chance across all of them, plus Stanford, MIT, Chicago, etc, not applying to 10 and hoping for a 50% cumulative chance.
@cccmccc I believe you are genuinely wondering and realistic. JHU, CMU, Tufts, Michigan, Williams, Swarthmore, Carleton and the like (none of these guarantees either, but admit chances way higher) would be equally great schools.
If your essays are strong, and your teacher recs are strong, I think you have a decent chance at Cornell.
I also think you would have some chance at Dartmouth, Penn or Brown.
@TomSrOfBoston I meant if the OP has a 35 on the ACT and is in the top 10% of his/her class, he/she is competitive enough to apply to the Ivies. His/her application won’t be thrown out because of low stats. It will at least get looked at.