<p>Female, Caucasian junior from suburban Detroit; $175k income; top public school; intended engineering major at McCormick</p>
<p>31 ACT (will get this up to 34)</p>
<p>4.3 W 3.7 UW GPA (most rigorous courseload possible; would be a 3.9 without freshman year)</p>
<p>Yearbook Editor-in-Chief
Varsity Forensics
FIRST Robotics
Varsity Ski Team
JV A Tennis
NHS Treasurer
Freshman Mentor Program Captain
Detroit relief program Leader</p>
<p>Great essays (will acknowledge sincere dual engineering/journalism interest), great recs</p>
<p>As it stands right now, your ACT may be a bit light. If you get it up to a 34, you’ll be in the pool where most acceptances come from. This being said NU gets more qualified candidates than it can accept.</p>
<p>What if I work really hard and get like a 35+, and 750+ on my SAT subject tests (Math II and Physics)?</p>
<p>obviously as your scores increase so do your chances of admission, but there are no guarantees.</p>
<p>Obviously there are no guarantees, but am I competitive with these stats (including projected scores)?</p>
<p>Yes you are competitive.</p>
<p>yes, your projected scores give you a good chance of gaining admission.</p>
<p>I would think you would be competitive but do not discount the weight of your essays. My son was accepted RD with a 35 on his ACT and 760 on Math II. He also had a 4.0 UW GPA. He spent a good few weeks honing his essays with some expert feedback (i.e. national pub writer).</p>
<p>P.S. That’s publication not a bar ;)</p>
<p>^ well based on those numbers alone I wouldn’t think he needed the best essays NU adcoms had ever read! 
but really, I’m a good writer. plus I think they’ll be interested in this inner-city community service program in which I’m a leader and volunteer almost every day in the summer. I think it’d make for an interesting topic. Plus, I’d like to use the Why NU essay to really emphasize why NU’s perfect for me (excellent engineering as well as journalism programs). I want to go into engineering as a major, but I’d still like to pursue my journalistic interests, whether it be being on the yearbook or newspaper (I’m involved in my HS yearbook, and I do Broadcasting in Forensics). I’m really glad colleges have essay requirements so I can get these points across!</p>
<p>don’t be so keen that solely numbers will get you in. I know two kids from my school, one with a 35 ACT and one with a 2390 SAT, who were both waitlisted.</p>
<p>At NU? What were their GPAs/EC involvement?</p>
<p>NU may waitlist people who have a better chance of getting into a higher ranked school, just to see if they are interested in clearing the waitlist. They waitlisted 9 or 10 people that were invited for an interview to the combined medical program but were turned down. Apparently, this has nt been the case before since it is the most sought after combined program in the country and people who make the interview round are considered to be the best (you have to apply for an application, they send it out to only 800 people or so out 3-4k applicants, and then interview only 125-150 candidates for 40 or so seats). So dont go by the waitlisted people because they may actually be better candidates than admitted people. Find others who have been admitted to your field of interest and compare your credentials.</p>
<p>I have heard that before. ^</p>
<p>Do I seem bad enough to get admitted?</p>
<p>@texaspg: But then, there are many, like myself, who got admitted, not waitlisted, with a 35 ACT. (Mine includes 2320 on SATI.) </p>
<p>OP, NU ‘recommends’ three sat iis. If you can pull that off, it can raise your chances.</p>
<p>There are at least a few who were either rejected or waitlisted with 34’s so don’t assume stats alone will get you in or you might be in for a shock. Just peruse the RD thread and you will see that applicants with both high test scores and GPA who did not get in.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/northwestern-university/1109499-nortwestern-rd-results-class-2015-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/northwestern-university/1109499-nortwestern-rd-results-class-2015-a.html</a></p>
<p>Here’s one below that was rejected:</p>
<p>Objective:</p>
<pre><code>ACT: 35 Composite 36 Math 35 Reading 34 English 34 Science 12 Essay
SAT II: 800 Math II 730 USH
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.96
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): top 5% (Highest rank given)
AP (place score in parenthesis): 5 BC Calc 5 APUSH 5 Lang and Comp 4 Physics C Mechanics
Senior Year Course Load: AP Comp Sci, AP Psych, AP Latin Virgil, AP Lit, AP Physics E&M, Newspaper
Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.):None. Other Awards: Young Leader Scholarship, Student of the Month for 2 organizations, Rotary Youth Leader award, Student Achiever award, NMF, etc.
</code></pre>
<p>Ahhhh, I only signed up for two in June! If I’m doing RD will I be able to take another in fall?</p>
<p>And Kdog, I know I know!</p>
<p>texaspg: There’s virtually no communication between the HPME application process and the NU general application process before the days directly before decision date. HPME’s heavy focus on research based opportunities create a different paradigm through which applicants are evaluated, and to say waitlisted candidates may actually be better candidates than admitted individuals just on that basis is poor judgement. </p>
<p>Two holistic application processes are going to end up choosing two different groups of people (see the somewhat low degree of cross admits at HYPMS for that phenomenon), and when one of the holistic application processes has precedence over the other, you’re just going to find rejection of candidates that could have been admitted. It happens and it passes no judgement on the quality of candidates on the waitlist vs the admitted.</p>