Jarett your ECs are far from standing out. You do a few clubs and play piano. No sports, no research, no unique activity. If I were you I would seriously reconsider applying to Chicago and Columbia. They are super reaches
Listen, you’re mad right now because no one is agreeing with you. You are beyond help even though everyone around me is agreeing with me. Think you what you want. Attacking me won’t hurt me and won’t help you. I know I’m good. Words couldn’t explain unique activities or my background. That is what the essay is for. I tried to help. Obviously help for you is only help when people agree with you. Sorry buddy, I’m done arguing with you. Keep up your solid academics I guess, but just know that if the only thing you can give me are grades, then you have nothing to you. Goodbye.
The problem is OP did not put all the information in the original post. I don’t see any sport or potential recruitment there.
RPI, NYU, and Vassar are safeties for basically nobody. A safety means you are near guaranteed in the school. Having stats above the median does not make the school a safety. SOMETIMES it can actually work against you. If you fail to demonstrate interest in the school and the school thinks you are simply using them as a backup, they will deny you point-blank.
The fact that you think CMU and Georgetown can be thought of as semi safeties means you know nothing about holistic admissions, and probably think way too highly of yourself.
Ivies (yes even the lower ones) are not matches for anyone.
I hope you grow some humility over the college process and learn to not be so defensive over people that are just trying to give you advice.
You probably will get into a good bit of the schools on your list, but you are extremely overestimating your chances and your attitude here is extremely off putting. I hope you don’t come off this way in your essays.
Dartmouth accepts 10% of applicants yearly. Go look at dartmouth results thread. Tons of kids with 2300+ get rejected on a yearly basis. Your ECs are good but not spectacular, and as my counselor would put it you are not a rockstar. In that case, dartmouth - an ivy league school - is in no way a match for you.
You can be in all the denial you want, but you need to rethink your categories. Also, it seems like you went on US news rankings and picked the top 15 schools and top 3 LACs and put them on your list. I am quite hypocritical when saying this but dont be so prestige obsessed.
To be fair though I think you will get into a couple of them, so good luck with the process.
None of these are safeties. Most are reaches or high matches. Maybe NYU and RPI are true matches.
If a “match” means you have a 40-60% chance of admittance, and you are looking at a bunch of schools with admit rates under 20%… those highly selective schools are simply not going to be matches.
Perhaps your perception of “match” and “safety” is different than the rest of us! You need to read more of others’ stats to conform with the general definitions of those terms in this site.
I doubt anybody who commented believes you are not an excellent candidate. However, you are overestimating yourself.
I have read thousands of posts during the last few years on this site, but to be honest with you, I seldom seen anybody as assured of himself as you are! It is good to be confident but it is safer to be realist in this difficult process of being admitted to collage!..and I am not another kid who you might think am just jealous to your stats! I am a father whose kid has already pasted this stage which you are in now!
No @JoeSmith15 you are completely mistaken about the admissions process.
As an Asian male who had slightly better stats (but schools really dgaf after a certain point) than you & different ECs. (your ECs are stellar!), I’ll try to leave some constructive criticism for you.
-
Grades and SATs will not get you into your schools. They are the baseline requirement. These schools have literally thousands of kids just like you with 2250+ SATs, good SAT IIs, and musically + athletically decorated students. @ClarinetDad16 makes a good point–why should a school select you? Trends are not indicative of everything that goes on inside admissions; admission are volatile from year to year.
-
Get better teacher recs. If you can’t sell yourself/impress your teachers, how can you impress the admissions committee.
-
It’s not nice to attack @jarrett211 when he’s trying to help you. Accept criticism with grace even if you don’t fully agree with it. Diplomacy is a learned skill, and admissions committees can discern pretty well what kind of a person you are.
-
I wish people would stop hating on his list. I agree that his definition of “match” and “safety” may not be the same as yours, but he’s clearly a qualified candidate for NYU; thus, he believes that he is a shoe-in there. This was a very common sentiment in my high school. For me, Berkeley was my match and UCLA was my safety (admitted to both with regents). Dartmouth was a “high reach,” (admitted) and HYP isn’t really a safety/high reach for 95% of the people who apply to those schools.
HOWEVER, judging by your stats, I would bump Vassar to to match/low reach (it’s a difficult school to get into!), CMU to match, Dartmouth/JHU to reach. Northwestern and GTown are unpredictable especially if you apply RD.
- What do you want from a school? Do you want a preprofessional education? Do you want an academically rigorous education? With siblings at HYP and friends at MIT, I can tell you right now, it seems as if you’re just applying to the top cut of schools. Not every one of those schools will satiate you as an academic or a person! Dartmouth, Amherst and Northwestern are pretty different from Yale, UChicago and Swarthmore. Ask yourself what you want from a school and cross of schools that don’t make that cut.
Many students only notice the scores and GPA in admission stat but not the admission rate. Even one get over the 75th percentile in test scores and GPA of certain school, it does not mean you will be accepted. You just have a better chance than others with lower score/GPA assuming everything else are comparable. For example, Northwestern has an admission rate of 12.9% last year and many rejected applicants have better stat than OP.
When applying to CMU you need to apply to specific colleges/schools. CMU is not a safety for anyone, no matter their intended major, and is a high reach for anyone applying to the School of Drama (3% acceptance rate) and the College of Computer Science (5% acceptance rate).
http://admission.enrollment.cmu.edu/pages/undergraduate-admission-statistics
Your safeties are matches and your semi-safeties and matches are reaches, by the pure % and competitiveness of applicants.
@itworks that’s a great link. Look at the 3% acceptance rate and the high yield for Drama versus the 50%+ acceptance rate for architecture. That’s crazy . . .