<p>Hey I was wondering if you could chance me for Columbia Engineering RD?
Stats:
SAT: 2060, 650 R, 730 M, 690 W (ouch?)
SAT II: 780 Math 2C, 710 Physics (retook Jan 2011 hopefully 800...)
UW GPA: 3.87
W GPA: 5.1+ (AP/IB/Dual Enrollment 6.0 for an A)
Rank: 9/317
Senior Course Load: All IB and AP including Diff Eq and Matrix Theory
ECS:
4 year varsity swimming (small awards)
3 year varsity waterpolo (small awards)
Junior Engineering Technical Society TEAMS Comp (ranked nationally)
National Grant for team engineering project
2 community outreach activities (many hours)
Mu Alpha Theta (some regional awards)
Little bit of web design
Awards:
National AP Scholar
Harvard Book Award
Grant (as mentioned above)
Regional prizes for engineering project (team prize)</p>
<p>It’s going to be a tough sell with that SAT score unless you can get recruited as an athlete. Otherwise, bring up that SAT score by 200 points with some studying, and your chances will go up accordingly.</p>
<p>20-28% chance</p>
<p>Are you a boy or a girl? Because that actually plays a very significant role in the engineering school. Your SAT scores are pretty weak. Don’t worry about the writing, though-- no colleges take it seriously. Most colleges only look at your middle score. I got a 650 on writing, and I was accepted into SEAS.</p>
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<p>Thank you for that absurd opinion.</p>
<p>^ colleges definitely look at writing (especially for public viewing purposes lol) but they do realize its just a memorization game for a big part of it and take it less seriously than math + cr</p>
<p>Your EC and GPA is decent, but your SAT is pretty weak. If you can improve that SAT II Physics score, it will help a little bit, but your admission chances into Columbia don’t seem very likely. However, anything can happen.</p>
<p>@collegeftw, how is the writing section a ‘memorization game’ at all? it’s grammar… it tests your knowledge of the english language, and your ability to write and understand it. i think the opinion that it’s insignificant is baseless. sure, math and cr are probably more heavily weighed, but the writing is certainly a valued factor</p>
<p>^ well, the first part may be a little bias, but
- personally, I scored a 650 on grammer the first time, bought a book and went over all the common grammer errors that occur on SAT, memorized a lot of the rules, adn scored 780 2 month later. Same thing happened to a lot of other smart people at my hs</p>
<p>2) I conceded that writing is important, but a lot of schools (like UChicago) admitted taht they don’t even look at the writing sections, and if you do a little research, theres tons of websites that question admission officers from prestigious colleges, and a lot of these officers also gave the hint that they don’t take the writing as seriously as the combined math + cr.</p>
<p>If you want to disagree that’s fine, but I have my sources and I believe in what I said. A lot of schools during college fairs will only put up their middle score range. Why? The writing score pales in comparison to math and critical reading. I had a college advisor (who, btw, spends his life getting kids into college) and he told me not to worry about my writing score at all (I got a 740 in math, a 710 in critical reading, and a 650 in writing). </p>
<p>"Scores on the new writing portion of the SAT exam have no influence on admissions decisions, said 32 percent of the college admissions officials who were surveyed. "</p>
<p>That is a very, very large statistic. The writing section is too new to be taken seriously. Colleges don’t know how it determines a student’s future success just yet, unlike their experience with the math and critical reading sections. The SAT is used to predict success in college. A lot of colleges just view the writing section as too young to be taken seriously. And the other colleges don’t hold it to such high esteem as the math and critical reading, </p>
<p>If you are deluded into thinking that the writing score is just as, or more, important, than be my guest. However, I stand by what I said.</p>
<p>^What you said may be dandy and true, but the point of the matter is, the SAT Writing portion does have an influence on college admissions. Its regard in college admission is up to debate (as is evident in this thread), however. But in the end, we all know a 800CR 800Math 800Writing looks much better than a 800CR 800Math 700Writing.</p>
<p>I’m not actually sure what Columbia wants; I scored pretty low on my SAT I Math by SEAS standards and I didn’t really have that many math/science related extracurriculars, but I was admitted. Your ECs are way better than mine, but I had a higher GPA/Rank/SAT score. And I’m a girl, if that helps.</p>
<p>tonerre:
what were you stats?
i don’t have a very high sat score or a near perfect gpa…but i also come from a boarding school…</p>
<p>Thanks for the opinions. I realize my sat is pretty crappy, but I am hoping that my other areas make up for it.</p>
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<p>Writing was found to be the best predictor of college success.</p>
<p>Yet colleges don’t take it as seriously.</p>
<p>I agree with collegeftw. The writing section is a joke and it’s fairly easy to get most, if not all, the grammar questions right as long as you spend some time memorizing basic grammar rules. It’s not surprising that colleges don’t take it as seriously as they do the other sections.</p>
<p>thanks for the chances bros…</p>
<p>I received an 800 sat physics on the jan. test if that makes any difference…</p>
<p>wongtong, the general statement that writing ability is an accurate indicator of college success is undeniably true. however, at issue with the sat writing section is how accurate a metric it is for writing ability. all sorts of studies have questioned the credibility of the sat essay in particular [for instance, the finding that pure essay length is a powerful predictor of what score you’ll and the fact that graders have about 2 minutes to grade a single essay (really, 2 minutes to project the quality of a handwritten essay onto an inflexible 6-point scale?!)]. maybe it’s just my bias/wishful thinking as someone who got every multiple choice correct (actually i got one wrong on reading but i guess it was curved up or something) and a relatively measly 8 on the essay, but i’d tend to agree with collegeftw.</p>