ACT: 33
GPA: 4.3 / 4.0
I go to a Catholic, semi-prestigious high school
Varsity lacrosse for 2 years / JV for 2
Girl Scout Gold, Silver, and Bronze Award -Recipient
NHS Executive Board Service Project Coordinator
Eucharistic Minister
Gardening Club / Faith Group / Recycling Club
NHS member for two years and Spanish Honor Society Member
Vacation Bible School Leader
And I also did club lacrosse and was a floor captain for volleyball one year
If you live in Indiana you’re pretty much guaranteed a spot. If not you still have a very good chance. Good luck!
Your stats are right in the middle. They have about a 20% admissions average, so there’s going to be an 80% chance of rejection. It’s going to be a reach school no matter how good your numbers are. It’s definitely worth an application, but be sure to put some good affordable safety schools on your list.
Does your school have a track record of sending kids to ND? I believe ND’s middle range for ACT scores is 33-35. Any way to bring that score up?
I think you have a shot. Make sure you carefully craft the ND-specific essays.
As mentioned above, Notre Dame’s acceptance rate was 17.7% last year so it is a reach for most. Your ACT is at their 25th percentile, so if you’re able to test again and bring up your score a little, that might be helpful. But my understanding from a recent post somewhere on CC (prob the ND page) is that ND recently said they are putting less emphasis on test scores now in favor of a more holistic approach, so hopefully that’s the case.
See links below for ND class profile and Common Data Set. You’ll see that ND particularly notes stats re students with leadership credentials. It looks from your ECs that you have a fair share of that, so that is in your favor. The Catholic school part won’t be particularly helpful, as only 38% of students come from Catholic schools.
If you look at their Common Data Set, the single most important thing they look at is rigor of high school course load. From your weighted GPA, it looks like you’re probably taking advanced classes, which is good. Do you know your unweighted GPA?
Agree with suzy100 that ND essay is VERY important. Do your research and have specific examples of why you want to go there – what ND can offer you and what you would bring to the school. (That’s really true for all your apps). Good luck!!
http://admissions.nd.edu/apply/admission-statistics/
https://www3.nd.edu/~instres/CDS/2016-2017/CDS_2016-2017.pdf
Do you have access to Naviance? You can see on there the track record of kids applying to ND by looking at the scattergram. My DS’s school has a 35% acceptance rate at ND (prestigious Catholic school). I disagree with @waitingmomla in that coming out of a Catholic school is generally more advantageous than a public or other secular private school. However, I do agree that you need to try to get that ACT score up. Even at my son’s school, not many with a 33 get in and if they do, they have very high GPA. I would definitely work on more prep work for the ACT and retake. Good luck!
@WineLover You could be right. On one hand - there are certainly far fewer Catholic schools than there are non-Catholic schools, so maybe the 38% is more meaningful than I initially thought (although I don’t know how much of it might reflect a higher app rate vs a higher acceptance rate). On the other hand - Notre Dame does say on their FAQ page (see below) that they don’t give preference to type of school. I would be curious to know if there are stats on this.
In any event, if memory serves, I believe your son will be beginning the application process this year. Good luck to him!
https://admissions.nd.edu/apply/faqs/
"Am I at a disadvantage if I go to a public high school versus a Catholic high school?
When reading an application, we do not put any preference on the type of school a student attends. Rather, we look at the strength of the school. To get a feel for a school’s strength, we look at its graduation rates, the percentage of its graduates who go on to two-year and four-year colleges, the types of classes offered, and the average SAT and ACT scores of the graduating class, among other factors. For the class of 2022, 44 percent of students attended a public high school, 38 percent attended a Catholic high school, and 18 percent attended a private or chartered high school."
"Are there admissions quotas by region, state, or high school?
We don’t have quotas per region or state. We judge students on the merits of their academic and extracurricular talents rather than where they reside. If we have more students from one state over another, it’s simply because we receive more applications from that one state. For instance, we receive more applications from Illinois than from 10 other western states combined; it makes sense that we have more enrolled students from Illinois than from those other states.The same holds true for high schools. There’s no guarantee that we’ll admit the same number of students the next year from a particular school or state, as the quality of the applicants may change."