<p>What are my chances for the Carroll School of Management at BC? I’m a rising senior white male in the 180-200k income bracket.</p>
<p>91 unweighted/96 weighted GPA (downward trend)
2240 SAT, 720 CR - 780 Math - 740 Writing
Class ranking: top 5-7%
SAT II: World History- 700, Chemistry- 690, Math II- 710</p>
<p>AP classes: 10th grade- AP World=5
11th grade- AP English= 4, AP Chemistry= 5, AP US History= 4
12th grade- AP Government, AP Calculus, AP Literature, AP Physics</p>
<p>Sports: Varsity Volleyball 10th 11th 12th (captain 12th)
Varsity Swimming 9th 10th 11th 12th
Varsity Track & Field 10th 11th 12th
Club volleyball team 9th 10th 11th 12th (At least two practices a week plus a lot of weekend-long tournaments all over the country)</p>
<p>Other EC:
History Club member 11th 12th
NHS probate 11th, member 12th
Various service events all years (not a lot, but a decent amount)
Homework club (I go to the middle school and help kids with their homework)</p>
<p>My teacher recommendations probably won’t be too great, as I typically don’t build deep relationships with my teachers.</p>
<p>Dear PrettyAwesome27 : Your essay will need to express how you will add to the Boston College community. Typically students with tremendous backgrounds such as yours that use handles like “PrettyAwesome” will construct essays which are very inwardly focused. These types of essays will talk about all of your achievements and how you would really want to attend Boston College for all of its great features. Understand that Boston College already “knows” that it is great; you need to convince Boston College that you too are great.</p>
<p>Let me advise you to think about your essay as follows : By all means highlight your strengths and leadership abilities. If you can, offer a few thoughts as to how you made others around you better or improved the “team’s” performance. Most importantly though, explain how you ADD to the Boston College fabric and make the campus with you better than the Boston College campus without you.</p>
<p>On the recommendations, you need to be able to trust these implicitly. If you have any doubt as to the recommendation that will come from a key mentor or AP instructor, have a very frank conversation with that teacher before asking for a recommendation. Weak teacher recommendations, despite your overall academic performance, could hurt your application.</p>
<p>Finally, be sure that this downward trend is eliminated. You are clearly taking tough courses in your senior year. Now is not the time to pull your foot off the throttle.</p>
<p>All of the pieces seem to be coming into focus with your application. We suspect that a strong essay will certainly seal the deal for admission. Good luck.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. I am definitely planning on reversing my trend the first half of the year. Does BC flat out deny EA applicants or is a deferral the worst thing that could happen? Oh, and I’m not as egotistical as my username may imply lol</p>
<p>Dear PrettyAwesome27 : The general EA acceptance/deferred/rejected ratio is about 35:35:30. While it might sound positive to say that 70% are not-rejected, the fact is that the deferred pool which is then moved into the regular decision round meets up with a brand new group of competition, sometimes deeper, than the EA round.</p>
<p>Think of of it this way : suppose BC gets 6,000 EA applications. This means that about 2,000 acceptances EA are issued (which at 35% yield) which result in about 700 enrollments. You then have about 2,000 students rejected. That leaves the deferred pool; if you are deferred, you are among the 2,000 that role forward.</p>
<p>Now come the tougher numbers : BC will now get another 24,000 regular decision applications on top of the 6,000 EA applications. So, there will be 26,000 students (24,000 new, 2,000 roll overs) bidding for one of the 5,000-6,000 remaining offers (7,000-8,000 less 2,000 EA offers) which will fill the final 1,550 enrollment spots.</p>
<p>The point is that the competition if you have already been placed into that midtier bucket from the EA round will only get tougher.</p>
<p>I’ll chime in on recommendations because it is the hidden land mine in college apps in general, and the place where you have the least control once you pick who will write it andyou hand them the form to fill out. From a crop of perfect SAT scores, your rec can make or break you. Pick someone who KNOWS YOU, and can write about you in a way that shows some bond between you in terms of their respect for your abilities or what you have done in HS during the time they have known you. The teacher who gave you the A+ in History class, but who writes “Joe is a good kid. He did very well in my class. I know he will do well in college. As far as I know he has never killed anyone…” is doing you no favors. Look among your prosepective rec writers, and fnd the one who will say “In my 25 years of teaching Chemistry, I can safely say that Joe’s inquisitive nature is above and beyond that of any other student I have ever had the pleasure to teach.” of “I and my colleagues wonder how Hoover High School will survive once Joe graduates; under his leadership, his class has been one of the most engaged and productive we’ve seen in years.” This goes not just for BC but for all of your schools. You don’t need to find the cure for cancer or wni a Nobel Prize , but by now I am sure you have made some major impact somewhere, and your job now is to find out where and capture that in a bottle and share it with your prospective schools.</p>