<p>SAT Subject Tests:
U.S. History - 700
English Lit. - 740</p>
<p>GPA: 4.2 weighted
APs: Euro, U.S., English Lit, English lang, Government, Biology</p>
<p>Extra Currics School Related:
Model United Nations Team Member - 2 yrs
Editor-In-Chief of School Newspaper
The Young Philosophers Society - President and Founder (school club)
The Global Awareness Project (Amnesty International Division)- Co-founder (civil rights infractions awareness and education project within my school)
Head Editor of School Literary Journal
School Political Action Group - Democrat VP
Varsity Tennis Team member - 3 yrs
*8. Running for Student Council President</p>
<p>Extra Currics outside of school:
Boyle Heights English tutor - tutor kids in the underprivelaged area of los angeles free of charge
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles - consistent article contributor
TreePeople ongoing volunteer - environmentalist group volunteer
Ongoing Obama campaign volunteer
National Conference of Synogague Youth (NCSY) - VP Education</p>
<p>Summer '07:
TreePeople (environmental group) - summer intern
Bet Tzedek Legal Services - summer volunteer, probono law firm</p>
<p>Summer '08:
National Assocation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) - Summer Intern, Legal/Justice Divison
Don’t know what the second thing i’m doing is yet</p>
<p>Letters of Rec:</p>
<li>From Head of the English Dept. of my high school and he is the supervisor of my philosophy club - will write about my intellectual side</li>
<li>From Head of the History Dept. of my high school - he is also my Model UN supervisor and my Global Awareness Project Supervisor so he knows me very well</li>
</ol>
<p>What do you think my chances are for admission at yale? My essay will be great also…thanks - all feedback is appreciated</p>
<p>Just lie tell them you are a transfer from Columbia with straight A's.
You are also from Trinidad and they give you $31,000 grant because you can't afford it.(What a disgrace) New York Post 4/9/08.
Stop catering to certain people and admit Americans who truely deserve it.</p>
<p>I think alohasam means it's hard to characterize you in a simple sentence.</p>
<p>All good applicants have high scores and GPAs. Beyond that, I think students and parents assume (rightly or wrongly) that you should either be incredibly well-rounded or conversely, angular. You're kind of an angular round thing.</p>
<p>A summary sentence for you might be "political, civil rights and environmental activist with an interest in Judaism and the underpriviledged black community, who enjoys writing and tennis." </p>
<p>Any one of these interests, if taken as far as you can go, would be laudible. Trying to do (and talk about) them all makes you seem a mile wide and an inch deep. I'm not saying that you ARE, but that's the risk with a long list like this. </p>
<p>This is not a personal attack, just an explanation of why the chances response is what it is.</p>
<p>Yeah I agree, I mean I am going to apply there as well and have been perusing this site for ages, being in so many things doesn't define who you are and, as afore stated, we all have great GPA'S AP's etc. What really sets you apart and makes you stand out are your EC'S and you essay. Good Luck Though</p>
<p>right i see that...but hopefully in my essay i'll be able to pick out the ones which do make me special and really convey their meaning in my high school experience as well as my philosophy. I know ivys are all extremely competitive, but do you think i have a better chance applying early to columbia or penn?</p>
<p>I don't think anyone will dare guess. And the schools are quite different, so you might want to think about where you really want to be and apply accordingly.</p>
<p>I think part of the problem is that you have not presented your ECs to us in a coherent manner. It seems to me that most of your interests fall into some kind of vaguely defined political activism for young and/or disadvantaged people, so I would group all those together and perhaps use your essay to emphasize your interest in political action, and the time you have remaining to strengthen your interest in this area and pursue it as far as you can. Then I guess your secondary interest would be writing or environmental activism, so group those together. The rest are basically 'other'. You can put them down, although selectively missing some of them out would be an option, but I wouldn't focus a great deal of attention on them (unless of course your true interest is actually one of those things, in which case you need to work on making that a lot stronger):</p>
<p>Youth Activism (Special interest - civil rights and education)
- The Global Awareness Project (Amnesty International Division)- Co-founder (civil rights infractions awareness and education project within my school)
- School Political Action Group - Democrat VP
- Ongoing Obama campaign volunteer
- Running for Student Council President
- National Conference of Synogague Youth (NCSY) - VP Education
- National Assocation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) - Summer Intern, Legal/Justice Divison
- Boyle Heights English tutor - tutor kids in the underprivelaged area of los angeles free of charge
- Bet Tzedek Legal Services - summer volunteer, probono law firm</p>
<p>Writing
- Editor-In-Chief of School Newspaper
- Head Editor of School Literary Journal
- Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles - consistent article contributor</p>
<p>Other
- Model United Nations Team Member - 2 yrs
- The Young Philosophers Society - President and Founder (school club)
- Varsity Tennis Team member - 3 yrs
- TreePeople ongoing volunteer - environmentalist group volunteer
- TreePeople (environmental group) - summer intern </p>
<p>Your scores are OK, though maybe the math is on the low side, but everyone has good scores, so you need to work on showing that there is something special about you, that you have done something different and you have done it very well and with a lot of committment and purpose.</p>
<p>Don't apply to schools just because they are in the Ivy league. Think about what you are really interested in and where would be the best place to develop that interest.</p>
<p>The good news is that what I think has absolutely no weight with the Yale Admissions Committee. The bad news is that your chances for admission to Yale University are not good. Your SAT I score of 1350/1600 is low even if you were a sought after URM. Your ECs, while laudable, do not show any real accomplisments--just curiosity.</p>
<p>I don't usually engage in chancing, but I already crossed that line a couple of posts ago, so I'll add a couple more ideas. </p>
<p>I think icy is saying what we're all worried about: even with tli's excellent reorganization of your list, we still see a person going a lot of directions at once. A couple of these things must be the ones you really care about, and end up spending the most time on. If you truly are able to contribute in a meaningful way to many of these groups, hopefully you have a GC and/or teacher who knows all about you, loves you and can write compellingly about the effort and hours you put in. </p>
<p>My D1 is kind of like you, and when she wrote her applications this fall, some of the activities just fell off the list because of lack of room. Also, as she wrote essay drafts, it became obvious that those essays weren't going to be effective if they became an expanded laundry list. To truly shed light on her own character, she talked about events not even related to the EC list. </p>
<p>In spite of icy's doom and gloom, your scores don't condemn you, but your essays and letters of recommendation need to persuade the admissions office that you are so much more than your scores. There are lots of posts on CC from kids with high scores and few ECs/community involvement who didn't get in, and others with lower scores, and an ability to portray themselves in the rest of the application, who are in.</p>
<p>I was like riverrunner's daughter and cut activities from my list and didn't use my essays to talk about them as I think, on the whole, essays on ECs tend to be difficult to write really well. But I think you need to work with what you have, and what you have is a bunch of ECs showing quantity but not a lot of evidence of quality, which we know to be very important. My concern about just putting all these ECs as a list and not elaborating on them, is that with such a diverse list, and without many concrete accomplishments, awards and so on to credentialize them, whatever quality there is does not shine through.</p>
<p>So I wonder if perhaps you do need to use an essay to try to show exactly how there is quality, or perhaps integrity, in your list - focus on just some activities and show why they were important to you and the people involved, and why, if your interest is in a particular area, it made most sense to pursue it in the variety of ways that you did. Left to make their own judgement on a list of your ECs, there is a danger, even with a shortened list, that the adcom's thoughts, like ours, are going to drift towards 'shallow dabbling in many things' whereas if you used one of your essays to try to bring some explanation and coherence you could perhaps nudge them toward 'structured portfolio of activities to meet particular aims'. </p>
<p>I am assuming here, since you mentioned you had a 'philosophy', you do actually have some reason for what you did. I'm not suggesting that you should fabricate some kind of story or post-event rationalization.</p>
<p>well, one thing i don't completely agree with you guys on is the idea that i'm spread too thin. If i write my essay about a philosophy of life that i've engineered, based on the works i've engaged in throughout the course of my philosophy club which involves the commonality of human experience (which then translates into my strong passion for civil rights, environment which both pertain to the welfare of everybody) - it hopefully will show that yes, i've dabbled in a lot, but the things i've dabbled in i have taken strong leadership roles in and that shows my character perfectly.</p>
<p>--for example, i go to a private jewish school. I had to argue for hours with our Rabbi principal to let me start the philosophy club. This will go into the fact that my pursuit of intellect isn't merely reflected in grades but rather in social action and an honest zest for knowledge as well.</p>
<p>adman, it sounds like he might be an interesting person to have write a rec for you. If you've looked at the common app, you will see the format for ECs which asks for hours per week. As long as 1. it is physically possible for you to have particated in all these activities, and 2. the hours you can claim are somehow commensurate with your emphasis on them in your essays, then you should be fine. </p>
<p>Having to think about and defend what you do in your spare time now will help you write a good essay soon.</p>
<p>I think you need to have a realistic list of schools. It's not absurd for you to apply to Yale, but your statistics make it a long shot, especially your test scores. I also assume that a weighted GPA of 4.2 means that you don't have an unweighted 4.0. When making your list of schools, you need to consider Yale as a high reach. Schools like Tufts, WashU, etc. will be reaches as well. Something like NYU is probably more of a match.</p>