<p>male caucasian junior
top 10-20%
very competitive public high school
southern california</p>
<p>Academic</p>
<p>-GPA 9-12 projected = 3.66 unweighted; 4.23 weighted
-SAT 2150
-CSF scholarship qualified, but moved out of state
-Honor roll several times
-8 AP courses!</p>
<p>I had a rough sophomore year because my family (single mom, father committed suicide many years ago) went through a financial crisis and we were basically undeclared homeless for months. We stayed at a family friend's home. Sometimes I did my homework in our car full of newspapers, where I would then sleep. this brings my GPA way down, otherwise I have always been a straight A student...</p>
<p>(My junior and senior years, I carried complete straight A's, so my grades went way up.)</p>
<p>EC's</p>
<p>-Cross Country 3 years, "MVP" as a freshman.
-Track 4 years. 1600m, 800m, long jump.
-Fluent in French. I have Corsican + Persian + American ethnicity
-French club 2 years. (president)
-FBLA club 1 year. (went to state)
-Debate Team 1 year</p>
<p>-I educated a 9 year old autistic child during all of 10th grade on my own time twice a week. I taught him how to speak correctly, write, think and express himself. Over the year, his family saw improvement, and I am very proud of this. In my essay I want to compare his obsessions with an elaborate train-set he built, to my obsessions of constantly thinking of how I could better teach him during my daily life, and help him "build" himself, and then connect this to my new-found desire to possibly major in cognitive science.</p>
<p>-I single-handedly made a website (e-commerce!) for someone else's product. you can see it here if you like.</p>
<p>-This summer I plan on going to Ghana and helping for a few weeks over there. I will take pictures with my dSLR and create a portfolio/story and maybe get a photography scholarship.</p>
<p>I’m not sure if Cali means take it off of this site or leave it off your app, but either way I disagree. Nothing wrong with it, and in fact it could make for a very compelling story of triumph over struggle. Note that Columbia only gives you 250-500 words to write your essay, so if you want to write about the autistic kid then be sure to have your counselor or someone you know well go in depth about the family struggles in a recommendation letter.</p>
<p>thebeef: my counselor does not not me very much, and many classmates at my school believe and can testify that she is very racist (she is african american)
what can i do? can people outside of school give recommendations? family friends? relatives? what’s the rule on that</p>
<p>cali: i just looked into it, and it seems there’s no direct way. when the time is right i’ll email the webmaster and ask for a deletion, hopefully that’ll work.</p>
<p>back on topic, anyone think i have chances to columbia?</p>
<p>You can’t delete anything but I wouldn’t be worried. Colleges don’t waste time doing silly stuff like trying to match users on college forums with applicants… and yes, I asked an admissions officer this. </p>
<p>As for your question you can include supplemental recs if you want from anyone.</p>
<p>I think you would be a very competitive applicant to Columbia, and also to Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. Your extraordinary life experiences and your very personal commitment to this autistic child are real hooks. Your essay idea is killer; but you should also write an essay about your rough sophomore year and how you adapted to it, because it would give the adcom an insight into your character (and character is very important to Columbia and to HYP).</p>
<p>The reason I’m so encouraging is because I have had similarly rough life experiences, wrote about them in vivid detail, and got a likely letter from Columbia. Granted, I am African-Canadian, have slightly better stats (4.0 GPA uw, 2210 SAT, rank 1 out of 180), and got a gushing recommendation from a professor in my prospective major field, but as long as you get superb teacher recommendations and write killer essays, you will have a better shot than the average applicant.</p>
<p>thanks for the support, i will definitely look forward to whatever happens, but i still think that harvard and yale are beyond my reach. i will most likely apply to Columbia but not HYPS unless my SAT scores improve by 200 points. thanks again</p>
<p>Well, it wouldn’t make much sense to apply to Columbia but not to HYPS on the basis of your SAT score: Columbia is just as competitive as the others. And with all four schools, you’re SAT score puts you in the middle 50% of admitted students. So I’d go for it even if your test scores don’t improve that much. And remember, test scores and grades form only part of the criteria for admission to any of these schools.</p>
<p>applying to 1 extra school takes how much extra time, considering the essays will be similar? if it does not take up that much more time, i will apply to tons schools; the fee will not be a problem. only time would keep me from a “shotgun approach”</p>
<p>Flyingllama, I think you’ll be a very compelling applicant. I really don’t have that much more to add to what others have already said, but I’ll say this: why don’t you write a generic personal statement, incorporating your sophomore year struggle, teaching an autistic child, etc–keep it at about 700 words, and then adapt it according to what each school wants? </p>
<p>In the end, they all want a personal statement of sorts, with varying degrees of specificity.</p>
<p>cerberus i’ll definitely get up on that; ill get a head start in writing my personal statement soon, thanks
hopefully this will work out somehow!</p>
<p>1) Your stats will not keep you out of anywhere. A 2150 is a perfectly respectable score, as is your GPA. Hopefully the AP exam scores can testify to the fact that you really know your stuff with the best of 'em. But don’t hold back an app because you think you’re underqualified. Frankly, I got into Columbia with a much worse GPA than you.</p>
<p>2) Both your personal backstory and the autistic kid tutoring story are tremendously compelling - I like how you flesh the details into even your forum-post descriptions. If you can write that vividly, your essays will really shine. I can hardly muster a strong opinion one way or the other on which one you should emphasize.</p>
<p>Perhaps the best approach for you, given that both events happened at the same time, is to weave a storyline where the work you did with the kid helped you realize your own situation could improve too, and kept your spirits up. (hopefully with a less corny and more hard-hitting conclusion about yourself, but you see the idea here is to connect the two).</p>
<p>3) Thinking that putting your story online will lead to trouble with admissions is lunacy. Threads come and go by the dozens on this site and admission officers have much better things to do with their time. Don’t give it one second of further thought.</p>
<p>4) One thing I’m confused by, reading your profile - how did you go from “so poor you had to do homework in the back seat of your car”, to “going to Ghana with your pricey digital camera”, in the space of 18 months? Did your parents win the lottery? (or less sarcastically, maybe you won a scholarship, I don’t know - but it would raise an eyebrow with a careful reader)</p>
<p>Interesting case - I usually don’t post in chances threads.</p>