Hi All,
I am a rising senior and was wondering what my chances were @ dartmouth either ed or rd.
I have a fairly nice upward trend 3.6 freshman year 3.72 sophmore and 3.95 junior. My weighted gpa as of now is 4.2 and finally, I recieved a 34 on my act. On top of that, I have a 770 math sat ii, but have yet to take my second sat ii.
My Uw Gpa is around 3.77 and W is 4.2
I took one of the most challenging loads junior year (compared to my classmates) , bumping up the difficulty immensely. My courseload included: Ap Calc BC, Ap econ, Honors Bio, Honors Spanish 4, Ap art history, and regular english.
All this said, I was wondering if I was ACADEMICALLY QUALIFIED for Dartmouth Either Ed or Rd due to my upward trend, challenging junior year courseload, and great standardized test scores. Thanks so much!
Also if I were to apply would it be viable to wait for good first semester senior grades to have a better shot at dartmouth?
I think that you overestimate your test scores a bit. A 34 is good, but not outstanding by any means. Your junior year course load was mostly challenging (at least by Dartmouth standards), but was not anything out of the ordinary for an applicant to an Ivy League school. Your upward trend is important and you demonstrated significant improvement. The one area of concern I have is that you have a 4.2 weighted GPA (if this is out of 5, then that is quite low), I would say that you should probably work on that by continuing an upward trend. As for waiting it out, I’m not entirely sure how that would work. I imagine that Dartmouth accepts more students ED as a measure of commitment (you can correct me on this), and if that is the case, I think that you should probably apply ED. Just know that there are lot more parts to an application than grades/test scores, and from what I can tell, those will probably be the deciding factor in your admission/denial. Please chance me back! http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1796275-what-do-you-think-of-my-chances-are-at-these-universities.html#latest Good luck!
@jarrett211 thanks for the chance! I agree with you that the 4.2 may look low, but at my school that is one of the higher gpas (top 10% around). I hope to raise this further with my senior year. The valedictorian typically gets a 4.4 or so
@anxiousdartmouth Oh! I didn’t realize that. Be sure that that comes across in your guidance counselor’s rec because that would be unfortunate if an admission’s officer was unaware of that fact.
Also just realized this, you shouldn’t apply RD because you could just end up being deferred from ED, and then you could send in your grades anyways. If they deny you ED, then they will definitely deny you RD.
It bothers me when people say that a 33 or higher on the ACT isn’t outstanding. If you’ve scored a 33 or more, you’re in the top 1% of ACT takers, and that’s definitely something to be proud about. From Dartmouth’s Common Data Set (2014-2015), the ACT scores of the middle 50% of enrolled freshmen were 30-34, placing you at the top of that range. As long as you’re in the top 10% of your class, I’d say you certainly have a shot based solely on academics, but it’ll take something outstanding in your EC’s or personal statement to really turn the tides in your favor. But like the rest of the Ivies, Dartmouth’s admissions can be unpredictable and seemingly unfounded, so you can’t rely on anything. Good luck!