Can you please chance me???

Colleges and Universities A-Z Northwestern University
1

<p>Info:
Grade: Junior
Race: African American
Gender: Female</p>

<p>Academics:
Sat and Act: I have yet to take them but I study about an hour a day :]
GPA: 3.5 UW, 4.1 W
(Low I know but there is an high upward trend in grades <em>3.0 to 4.0</em> and school is competitive)
Rank: School does not officially rank
College Courses: 3
AP's: 13
Honors: 8
Foreign Languages: Spanish (4 years) and Self teaching myself French and German (taking the subject tests)
I have received a lot of academic awards</p>

<p>EC's:
-Volunteer work at hospital and Salvation army regularly (100+ hours)
-Vice president of Student Government (for a year)
-Part of Student Council (2 years)
-National Honor Society
-National Art Honor Society
-Founder of Book Club
-Founder of a Recycling organization around community
-Goalie of Varsity Soccer Team (4 years)
-Varsity Softball team (3 years)
-Track (2 years)
-Have a job throughout school
-Part of 6 different clubs
-Play the Piano and Guitar for for 5 years</p>

<p>Other Factors:</p>

<p>-Biological father did not go to college
-family income is over $120,000
-I would apply EA if I did not want to raise gpa</p>

<p>Other Schools I plan on applying:
Dartmouth
University of Chicago
Georgetown
Cornell
Notre Dame
University of Maryland</p>

<p>Is there anything I can do to help increase my chances???
Thank you so much :D</p>

2

<p>Your ECs are very broad and somewhat laundry-list, but that actually may help you out by showing your well roundedness.</p>

<p>The thing that’s missing to this is the meat and potatoes of the matter: some great numbers to go with those “side dishes”. You need to have NU-average ACT/SAT scores to counter balance the low GPA. The upward trend is nice, but you definitely want to have the standardize test scores to validate that upward trend.</p>

<p>Your interest in language is impressive, but that too will have to be substantiated with good scores in the subject tests as well. If you get sub par, mediocre scores, that kind of shows that you’re good at doing a bunch of things, but you’re not good at doing them well. Similarly, if that what you present your EC’s to be like (example, little involvement, not a lot to show for it) then it could generate an unintended backfire by making everything that you do to be well rounded look weak and fluffy.</p>

<p>Your list of other schools is a good mix as well, but I’d recommend adding another strong safety school. </p>

<p>What exactly do you mean if you didn’t want to raise your GPA? Doesn’t everyone want to? do you really chose not to? And too, NU doesn’t have EA, but rather, ED.</p>