Am I just dreaming..

<p>.. or do I have a chance?</p>

<p>-Caucasian male living in the metro Detroit Area
-Dual citizenship (Belgian and American)
-I was born in Michigan, but when I was 10 months old, I moved to Germany where I attended kindergarten and elementary school run by the Belgian army. I went to a German middle school and partly high school, and in 2007 my parents and me moved back to Michigan. Back in Michigan, I had to go to an American high school, which was difficult since I never spoke English before.
-Fluent in German, Dutch/Flemish, French and English
- I attended a full IB school, International Academy (ranked the 6th best high school in North America)
-All of my classes (8) are IB classes
-Unweighted GPA is 3.42, but weighted GPA is 4.55
-ACT score: 27
-Sports:I play Varsity football and fence with my church
-EC and leadership: I am Editor of the school newspaper, member of the German Honor Society and club officer of the German Student Association.
-Honors: I got multiple letters of recommendations of my teachers, awards for being excellent in both German and French/
-Approximately 50 hours of community service.</p>

<p>Thanks for the answers in advance</p>

<p>Certainly an interesting background which can be leveraged in your favor. The ACT score and the unweighted GPA is a bit on the low side though. You can remedy the former, but the latter is a little difficult now. But numbers aren’t everything, like I said, if you can leverage your experiences into great essays and recommendations and paint yourself as a unique applicant who can fill a niche at Duke you should give it a shot.</p>

<p>Edit: though engineering might be a bit of a reach.</p>

<p>0% chance if you don’t try. right?</p>

<p>any more feedback?</p>

<p>Ok, so you’re not taking the full IB diploma which can either be a good thing or bad thing. If you’re HL courses are the hardest possible (i.e. Physics, English A1, Mathematics, Bio, Chem) and outweigh the number of SL courses then its a good thing. </p>

<p>Also, is the 50 hours of community service from CAS hours this year or are they cumulative over a full high school career.</p>

<p>I say that you’ll be a pretty competitive applicant if you focus on your foreign languages.</p>

<p>no chance! i’m french and i speak spanish fluently, dual citizenship, valeditorian of my class(5.8 gpa and 3.9uwgpa) 32 act and 2100 sat with 580 hours of cs , class president, 9 APs etc… they rejected me! good luck!! however they accepted an average girl in my class ( average grades) (not even in the top 10%) because she already wrote a book!</p>

<p>zuitar, did you have any impressive EC?
If not there is your answer, the other girl had an impressive EC, she wrote a book</p>

<p>^I’m not trying to criticize you at all</p>

<p>yes, I do take the full IB program, and will earn a regular and IB diploma upon graduation.
How would this be good or bad?</p>

<p>Wait, 8 courses? Full IB only has 6 courses though. 3 HL and 3 SL, or if you make an appeal 4 HL and 2 SL (like i’m doing now). </p>

<p>Unless you count TOK, which is the only other IB course you can take, and even then its not the same as the ‘regular’ IB courses, because its simply a requisite to earn the diploma.</p>

<p>I am able to take 7 IB courses (7 is the max number of courses per year you can take at my school). However, my school is a AP/IB course. We have the choice to not do IB but still take all IB (I to a school that is pretty much 10-15 minutes away from the OP and I have friends that go to the OP’s school)
Like a schedule that is possible at my school is (I know somebody doing this):
Survey in Literature (AP/IB-HL)
Physics (AP/IB-HL)
Linear/Discrete (AP/IB-HL)
Contemporary History (IB-SL)
Latin V (AP/IB-HL)
Chemistry (AP/IB-HL)
Psychology (AP/IB-SL or HL) </p>

<p>Its a matter of which test you decided to take, some people don’t really follow the 3HL 3SL. Some to most of the students actually appeal (at my school). We are allowed to take as many IBs as we wants granted that we still follow the testing procedure.</p>

<p>i go to a full IB school, and will earn my IB diploma upon graduation.
I take a total of 8 classes:
IB1 History (will take HL next year)
IB1 Math Studies (yeah, i know)
IB1 English (will take HL next year)
IB1 French(will take SL next year)
IB1 German (will take HL next year)
IB1 Music (will take SL next year)
IB1 TOK (still counts as an IB subject)
IB1 Physics (will take SL next year)</p>

<p>That’s it. Any idea why it might be good or bad?</p>

<p>oh wow. that’s unusual compared to the typical IB diploma, but i guess your school has different exceptions. It looks good to me, though math studies might not be the greatest choice unless you struggle a lot in math. </p>

<p>Other than that, its a good thing. When I referred to it being bad, I meant students who took certificate, and usually just targeted the easiest classes.</p>