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<p>Seeing as no Indians placed in the top 12 on the 2009 and 2010 USAMOs, and both the Indians that placed in the top 12 on the 2007 and/or 2008 USAMOs graduated by 2008, the post seems to be falsified. Also, no Indian students from America have won a gold at the IBO in the last two years, and possibly longer.</p>
<p>"I know D+ and C- are very bad for top colleges, and yet I still chose to take the classes because college is not my primary focus, learning is. "</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Colleges say the transcript is your most important document that you can provide. </p></li>
<li><p>If you had bad grades early on, they forgive you if you are on an upward trend closer to graduation.</p></li>
<li><p>You dont have to take class and get bad grades to learn. You can do it on your own.</p></li>
<li><p>You are interested in college and asking people’s opinion in a public forum. So how do you justify your statement about not studying to impress colleges?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Here is an excerpt from an email from Berkeley. You still think the colleges don’t care about your GPA?</p>
<p>First and foremost, you need to be prepared. Take a look at some of our admissions statistics:</p>
<p>Berkeley receives more than 50,000 freshman applications each year.
We typically admit 1 out of 4 applicants.
The average unweighted GPA is higher than 3.9.</p>
<p>^I think you misunderstood me. I know that grades are of the utmost importance at colleges. And yes, I am interested in going to a good college, it’s just that that is not my #1 priority in life. Yes, I could learn on my own, which is what I do. I feel like I have a very good understanding of the material, as evidenced by my good scores on AP tests / Subject Tests when applicable, it’s just that I often just really don’t have time for the immense amount of work that many teachers assign. Any of my teachers would tell you that I am very involved in class discussion, very attentive during lectures, and do well on tests. It’s mainly the homework that I have trouble coping with, but the actual learning is not affected. Also, the fact that I go to an ultracompetitive high school means that my 3.45 is equivalent to around to a 3.8 or higher at most other high schools - the counselors say that most kids with 3.0s in regular classes at my school would have no problem getting a 5.0 at almost any inner city public school.</p>
<p>Edit: and also, an earlier poster mentioned that somebody with a 3.2 and EC’s comparable or weaker than mine (according to the poster) got into Berkeley out of state. I’m in state and my GPA is higher than his, and EC’s at least comparable, so it seems reasonable to assume that I have a shot at Berkeley.</p>
<p>Yes, perhaps you have an excellent shot at Berkeley, Rohan, but your original posts asks about your chances at ivies, and I fear your 1st semester 11th grade will really hurt your chances there.</p>
<p>If I can partly explain them, would that help?
Would it have been better for college apps if I was in some high school in a poor area where the average SAT is 1200/2400 and got a 4.0? If so, that’s just ridiculous.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any advice as to how I can improve my app? I am doing all I can in Extracurricular, I think. (Does speaking languages count? I speak fluent Hindi, Telugu, English, French, and Spanish, and am literate in Latin, which reminds me I am also president since freshman year and founder of the Latin Club at my school). Of course I will aim to get good grades from now on, but is there anything else? How much do interview and essays help? I’m pretty confident that I can do amazingly in both.</p>
<p>Also what is the point of upward trend? Does that mean I should have slacked in my freshman and sophomore years so that they were worse than my junior year? If so, that’s also stupid.</p>
<p>BE CAREFUL! Schools, top tier schools especially, might reject you because (if not other things) one big thing you mentioned: DEPRESSION. Including depression on a college app could be a killer (pun seriously not intended, but oh well). Especially since all of these schools are sooooo hard, they will DEFINITELY worry that you could become depressed again from the pressure. They’d rather not admit you than run the potential of you committing suicide at their school (even if you know that would never happen).</p>
<p>I’ve talked to some family friends on admissions committees at some top tier schools, and they’ve said that while some disclosures such as depression, behavioral problems, etc. <em>shouldn’t</em> matter, they unfortunately <em>do.</em></p>
<p>Rohan - you will get into colleges, and probably very good ones at that, but Ivies have been unpredictable lately with the best of the candidates out there (There are people out there who have been turned down from all Ivies whose accomplishments are mindboggling). If you have to take the adcoms seriously, here is what they claim:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You will be judged against your own environment/peers on how you made best use of what was available to you. Do you have classmates who have a 4.0 unweighted GPA, if so what happens when both of you apply to Stanford or Harvard or wherever else?</p></li>
<li><p>Class rank - Most of them present their admittees in terms of top 5% or 10% of their graduating class and suggest a large percentage belongs in the top 10% of their graduating class. Does your GPA still let you be in the top 5-10%?</p></li>
<li><p>Do you have a way to explain doing badly in the first semester of 11th? I am just another parent trying to get you to think about how to put it in context. I dont buy an explanation that goes I do it for the learning and not to impress colleges. You do ECs for fun but you Always take classes for credit to impress colleges. So figure out a way to put it in context and at the same time make sure you compensate for it in this semester and next. If you have the slightest inclination you are not doing well in a class in fall, figure out a way to drop it or downgrade the level.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If their was a cheat code to life called “excel at everything you do”, then I would suspect you have used it. It’s impossible for someone to balance all of this and still have time for school. You’ve literally achieved the highest level of awards in almost every field available. Kudos.</p>
<p>Or you’re just a ■■■■■.</p>
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<p>Well that’s not good to hear. It wasn’t from the pressure of school though, it was more family issues (my parents nearly divorced, and several deaths of people close to me occurred in short succession) and a few other things I won’t go into. This plunged me into a clinically depressed state for a while (which I am now out of) even though I’m not supposedly the type of person that is prone to depression. Trust me, if you went through the kind of stuff I did, there’s a good chance most people would also be depressed for a while.</p>
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<p>Lol I’m not a ■■■■■. And no I’m not just naturally supertalented at everything, I do work very hard (although talent certainly helped, especially in music). I have played sports from a young age so getting good at them was easier as well. As for academics, I’ve always read a lot, including science journals, etc, and math has been one of my passions for a long time as well. The thing is, these activities, as I’ve said before, do not leave me much time for school. I normally have only an hour and a half or [usually] less to spend on homework which is my grades suffer (at home; I do some on the car ride to/from school and at lunch).</p>
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<p>1- We send a good amount of people to Ivies and the other top schools I posted that I was interested in each year. There are people with a 4.0 unweighted, but it’s not common, and most of them are not in many hard classes. I think the highest weighted GPA is a 4.91/4.0 unweighted, followed by a 4.87/3.98 unweighted (these are estimates, but it’s around there).
2- My school ranks by 5% increments; I am in the top 10% currently for weighted, but will probably move up to top 5% if I get all As and a B in spanish according to my counselor, and top 20% for unweighted but will move to 15% if I get those grades. So i guess if I do well gradewise this semester my ranks will be 5% and 15%, which averages out to 10%?
3- Yes I do, see the explanation above. As far as classes go, I take hard classes to be intellectually stimulated by the increased depth into which the teachers go into material as well as the generally smarter peers. It’s really not about college; if I was tailoring my schedule solely to impress colleges I would have dropped some APs to take an easier course and do better, as I have said before. I should have dropped AP US earlier though, it was my mistake. I did not like that class or the teacher (and I was only a couple points off of 69.5%, which would have been a C-, and when there are 500+ points each in 4 equally weighted categories, that’s less than .1%… yet he didn’t bump me) I should have dropped during the drop period but I thought I could do well, then more stuff started happening and, well, yeah. I like my Honors teacher though.</p>
<p>Does anyone else thing the ECs may need a little more “focus?” </p>
<p>I’ve heard before that this is essential to ECs, but seeing as the OP has leadership positions in most of them, does it matter anymore?</p>
<p>Your GPA is low, and it is one of the most important factors, even though your test scores and and EC’s are out of this world good. With the competition these days I would say rejection at all Ivies/Most Top Schools. It’s quite a shame because if your GPA was higher I would be saying the exact opposite. However, I might be wrong since schools of this level are really unpredictable, and maybe the competitive level of your high school will get your low GPA disregarded.</p>
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<p>I don’t think so as it seems that OP has mastered at least math (USAMO is very tough to get), music (ABRSM Diploma is Juiliard-level: OP, Are you going to do Art Supplement?), and tennis (top 500 in the nation is very good). And then, he’s going to Nationals for Debate and World Champs for Robotics… definitely shows focus there.</p>
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<p>Again, I doubt it’s the GPA (a 4.5 is good and a 3.5 not horrible) but the C’s and D. Still, I personally think OP has a good chance at all except Harvard, and maybe Stanford, MIT, Yale. With the amount of kids with unweighted 4.0’s getting rejected and the amount of kids with sub-2000 SATs getting in, academics doesn’t seem to be the deciding factor.</p>
<p>@bobtheboy</p>
<p>My comment was referenced more towards the small little clubs listed, like the latin club and student government, as well as the jv basketball/track stuff. </p>
<p>Does this make any difference?</p>
<p>Rohan - have you explored the need for tennis players at the Ivies and go there as a recruited athlete?</p>
<p>I think that if you can show an upward trend in your grades from first semester to second semester and have your guidance counselor explain in a letter of recemmendation how you suffered from depression due to family issues which caused your grades to slip, but got through it and came out a better person, you still have a good chance due to your impressive test scores, course load, and ECs. </p>
<p>Also, don’t colleges only look at the grade for the whole year, not each semester?</p>
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<p>I don’t know of any high school that grades on a yearly basis. Colleges only look at semester grades, not quarter grades, nor year grades (if they exist).</p>
<p>at my hs, they dont let you graduate with a D (or maybe its an F)…have you thought about retaking history at the college and having your new grade substitute for that D+? they let students do that at my school. I think that would help your chances a lot</p>
<p>I dont think the OP can get recruited for ivies for tennis…from what I have heard its really hard to get recruited; you usually have to be top 100 in the nation to get recruited for ivies or stanford (especially for stanford. ive heard that people playing on stanford tennis, at least for women, are good enough to go pro) but i could be wrong…</p>
<p>Stanford plays division 1 highly competitively. They provide scholarships. etc.</p>
<p>Ivies field teams to play with each other and not that competitive outside of ivies since they dont provide athletic scholarships.</p>
<p>My high school only puts year grades on the transcript, so I guess it just depends</p>