@TiggerDad My ACT spread was: R36 E35 S25 M23. I didn’t apply to engineering so it’s possible that they saw where my academic strengths are and disregarded the math and science scores. In any case my ECs included lot of leadership positions and were outside of the box. The only real “club” I was a part of was Mock Trial, the rest were all projects or ideas that I started pursued more independently. My teacher recommendations would have stood out, I believe. I go to a small school where we are given evaluations as well as optional grades that we have to specifically request (I did send in my grades, which were As since freshman year) and I think the long personal evaluations spanning four years from my teachers may have added some more “life” to my application. My school is small and very close knit and so these are teachers that I have dinner with sometimes, have been to their houses, call them by their first names, etc. So they know me very well and definitely advocated for me a lot. While I am African American my income bracket is upper middle class so I don’t know if that played a factor or not. No sports that were recorded on my application. I honestly don’t know how that differs a ton from other applicants- but I’m not complaining! Hope that helped somehow.
@Beatofopinion - Thanks for your response. Congrats to you and enjoy Columbia to the fullest!
@homerdog If you are a URM you can scour those particular forums for results threads, otherwise, select the forum for the college you are interested in and you will see threads titled something like “Harvard class of 2020 results” where applicants list their stats, and then whether they were rejected/waitlisted/accepted. You can go back for years and compile a lot of data. If you are looking for URM specific results, applicants will usually list “hooks” along with their stats.
I had about a 3.6 and got into vanderbilt. That said, I did very well on the SAT. I’d focus on schools that match your profile. If you’re really focused on the top schools, you’ll just have to put a ton of time and energy into prepping for the SAT. Some schools that value tests over GPA would be vandy and washu.
I got into Northwestern with a 3.4 UW GPA and 31 ACT. I’m an URM. As far as it being difficult to come into a university in the bottom 25%, I’ve done better at Northwestern than I did in high school with a highly competitive GPA.