Don’t know class rank but in running to be salutatorian/valedictorian
800 SAT Chemistry, 790 Math II
GPA 4.0 unweighted, don’t know weighted GPA but all final course grades have been 95+
5 APUSH, 5 APBIO, 5 AP Psychology (self-studied), 5 AP Spanish (self-studied)*
NHS President
Debate club President
MUN Vice-President
Newspaper Secretary
Math club
Piano 10 years total of private study
Graphic design intern for local company (also volunteered here)
Engineering volunteer for local project
MITES
Major awards: National merit finalist, NHRP, Harvard book award, a few MUN awards
URM (Hispanic), Upper middle class, not first generation
*Most rigorous courseload as highschool doesn’t really offer APs until senior year, will do more next year
A couple of the schools I’m interested in applying to:
If you apply to any of those schools ED, you have a legitimate shot. Keep in mind, there are 30 to 50K applicants with similar resumes and they accept ball park of 2000.
I would visit all those and identify your favorite. Apply ED and use BU and Tufts as back ups.
I dreamed of going to JHU for years, but when I visited I was quite disappointed it wasnt a good fit for me. I was more than blown away by Michigan and Northwestern.
All those are great schools and you will be happy to attend any of those.
I would most likely pursue likely an engineering major, although I’m not sure yet as to what branch of engineering, but am interested in pursuing art-related hobbies (writing, graphic design) in my free time
Objective stats-wise, you have definitely cleared the hurdle. It’s all down to the more subjective elements, LoR’s, how you present your EC’s and your app essays. ED does give a boost at many schools, but you potentially limit your options (school selection and FA). IMO, EA is a better option for you. If you can get your app in good shape, I’d EA Princeton if that remains one of your top choices.
@Kadel1023 , I don’t know why “use BU and Tufts as backup” should be a foregone conclusion. Tufts is similarly competitive to Cornell (in fact Tufts’ accepted students’ stats are higher), and for a given student Tufts could be as worthy a first choice as Cornell or the even-more-competitive schools cited. And Tufts has an ED acceptance rate that is more than double the overall rate. If this student were my kid and Tufts seemed like a good fit, I would encourage them to consider it seriously as an ED school. The need to be somehow validated by a single-digit acceptance rate a problematic way of thinking. Princeton, Duke, Cornell and Tufts all have very different campus cultures, physical environments, and undergraduate experiences, as well as different areas of strength. (BU… fair enough - it also has its merits and areas of strength, but I’d say it would be more unusual for it to be a first choice over the other four, other than for certain specialty programs.)
OP, on the face of it, you have a reasonable chance at all of these schools. To the best of my knowledge, Tufts is the only one of the five that hosts diversity overnight events. Since you’re URM, this could be a great opportunity to test the waters there before making a final decision about an EA/ED school: http://admissions.tufts.edu/voices/voices-home/
@aquapt Apologies, didnt mean to down phrase Tuft by any means.
I simply used Tuft as a “back up” along with BU not because they are considered any less competitive, I was under the impression they were the ones offering EA. Others were ED or single action EA.
Sorry… I think @Kadel1023 got it right if the OP is looking to go into engineering. I know the OP stated that afterwards. I think those two are his safeties and I would add a few others since tons of high Stat kids are being rejected or wait listed.
Tufts and BU don’t have unrestricted EA either - just ED1 and ED2. But it’s true the ED2 could be a “back up” option if OP applies ED/SCEA to a different school.
Anyhow, I have no skin in the proverbial game vis-a-vis Tufts (I went to BU, actually) - just don’t want to reinforce the all-too-common assumption that the hardest school to get into should be the first choice by default. If I were 17 again I would personally choose Tufts over most if not all of the others on this list, but that’s a matter of personal preferences and interests. (That said, the Tufts info session and tour I took my daughter on were… underwhelming, to put it kindly. I suspect that a much more meaningful impression could be gained at one of the URM overnights.)