<p>Glido is wrong. Work experience is extracurricular, and “counts.” Heck, if you suck your thumb and derive benefit from it and can write about it, then it too is an “extracurricular.”</p>
<p>Do not retake the ACT. A 2400 is enough, and a 35 is not a bad score by any means even if you had no SAT score. Since you’ve already taken the SAT multiple times, retaking the ACT, even if you get a 36/36/36/36/12, will hurt you as colleges will think you’re obsessed with testing.</p>
<p>Yes, work counts as an extracurricular.</p>
<p>I know work counts as an extracurricular activity, but is it a significant one? Working at the restaurant has been taking up time where I’d rather be doing other things, like working out, hanging with friends, playing tennis, or volunteering. One of the main reasons I’m working here is so I can add another extracurricular to my application… So I guess what I’m saying is, is this job worth keeping?</p>
<p>By the way, I’ve called some colleges and pretty much all say they don’t even consider work experience…(I really don’t think this is true, though, because College Board says that nearly all colleges do in fact consider work experience). Still, if this is the case then I need to re-think working at this restaurant.</p>
<p>I can accurately predict your chances: You will get in at least 1 top tiered school. At least somewhere with admit rates <10%. </p>
<p>All these people on here say that “NO. Ivies are reaches for EVERYONE” are either trolling or ignorant. Human talent is not equally distributed yet people seem to believe it is. “Everyone is equal.” “Men are women are the same.” “Everyone has the same chance: 6.4%” etc etc. No. Everyone are not equal. You test score alone increases your chance by 2-3 times. There was a statistic way back by Sakky on the effect of perfect scores on admit rates.</p>
<p>If you got a high SAT score, I trust that you have the common sense to be either be active in your high school or pad it “creatively.”</p>
<p>-Source: 2380 SAT, better EC, accepted at Yale, Columbia, and Penn. Likely letter at Yale (they were recruiting science students this year lolzzzz. I is da lucker).</p>
<p>Princeton rates 2300-2400 at admit rate of 21% and so I guess 2-3 times 8% is a good number. It still means 80% got turned down in this range. Brown accepted one out of three perfect ACT scorers.</p>
<p>Yale accepted under 15% of perfect SAT scorers. CCSniper: how you can still say a school like Yale is still not a “reach” for a 2400 scorer is hard to argue.</p>
<p>And Yale (and others) do send a hundred or so likely letters to some non-Athletic scholastic superstars. Is the OP one? Who knows?</p>
<p>To be blunt, when I applied many years ago, HYP acceptance rates were around 16%. That means my statistical chances were better back then than the 2400 scorer today – and I definitely didn’t get a perfect SAT.</p>
<p>And working CERTAINLY counts as a very strong extracurricular – much better than a dozen hours at the Yearbook or newspaper. Gildo is plain wrong. Good luck to you.</p>
<p>Of course they consider work experience. It’s often a kid’s chance to work alongside adults, handle responsibilities. But, you stated 5 hours/week. </p>
<p>Glido is right that activities at hs beyond sports would round you better.</p>
<p>You guys look at it as if the OP only has 1 shot. </p>
<p>He has 7. Assume an extremely pessimistic chance of 30%, well below what is predicted for SAT score, GPA, and EC (harvard accepts around 40-50% of 2400’s). His chances of not getting into a single top 7 school (HYP, Columbia, Stanz, MIT, Penn) are .70^(7). This is 8%. If we could clone 100 OP’s, I’d estimate 92 of them would end up at the best colleges lol.</p>
<p>@T26E4. Can you dig up that statistic? It is to my knowledge that HYP accepts close to 40-50% of perfect scorers. They accept 20% of kids in the 2300-2400 range sure. But the increase in admit rate as you move from 2300 to 2400 is exponential. The guy with like 5000 posts from my year did a statistical study with common set data or something.</p>
<p>Working does count, especially if you did that on top of your great grades and scores. Schools do count this as an extra curricular because they don’t want to exclude kids who have to work due to finances. They realize that a rich kid who doesn’t work can spend more time on private tutoring, studying, and perfecting lab reports and projects, so they have to accept kids that have to work (or choose to work) as an extra curricular if they want diversity on their campus. If you’ve worked at the same place for a while and get moved up to shift leader or some other leader-type role, then spell that out as well. Working at a fast food place may not be glamorous, but it does show that you can handle yourself in the adult world. </p>
<p>That said, there will be kids who work and have great scores/grades and also have some other significant extra curricular (State-level prize for jazz trumpet; top 10 in state cross country meet) so that’s why some who are responding keep telling you nothing is for certain in the admission world.</p>