A thing to remember is that no one on CC or reddit is an admissions officer. Those that say you are certain to get into a certain school are only guessing.
I am not a fan of chancing people for Emory. Your academics are certainly strong enough but so are lots of students’. Emory is really interested in people who can demonstrate “why Emory.” I suggest you focus on showing why Emory specifically is the right place for you. Do some reasearch into the programs you are interested in and show why you want to be a part of it. Show why Emory should want you, not why you want Emory.
@TomSrOfBoston There are college reps registered on CC. I’d phrase it, “None of them will tell you your chances.”
Yep, lots of posters tell a kid that, with his stats and ECs (often not so perfect,) he’s a lock. Without knowing a bit about the rest of the app and, apparently, what holistic is about. Sheesh.
OP: There is no clear flaw or deficiency with respect to your qualifications. Of course, we do not have access to your essays or to your teacher recs.
What is WashUStL’s ED acceptance rate ?
And what is WUSTL’s overall acceptance rate ?
Consider asking a different teacher or teachers to write your recommendations if you have any doubts whatsoever about your current teacher recs.
OP, rather than ask us, you need to get rolling. (Top colleges are going to want that energy and savvy.) Then, when you have an idea what they look for and can answer, “why Emory should want you,” some here can discuss. You have to get this right. Do your due diligence. Or you may have next to no shot.
So, I’m an Emory grad too and have a kid there as well and let’s say it’s not in the city. Sorry, Druid Hills is a suburb to me. It’s close to the city, but not in. I suppose you can say “sprawl” is not suburbs, but Emory Village, Toco Hills, etc. isn’t city living and you need a car or access to one to get to Buckhead, Midtown, or Downtown.
My guess is you may get an opportunity at an interview or in your application if you have not submitted it.
I agree with Tom Sr above as well. Nobody should be chancing anyone for elite schools and nobody is a “lock”. There are too many factors.
Don’t know about easy 4.0 at Emory, but there are those opportunities. I do think Emory wants to know that your interest in Emory goes beyond STEM and that you believe a liberal arts base is important. I do think, that among all of these similar schools, the most important thing is fit. Emory can be a little quirky and it’s not for everyone.
Funny, Emory’s own website has this:
Emory College is located on Emory University’s Atlanta campus in the suburban neighborhood of Druid Hills. The campus is approximately a 15-minute drive from the downtown, Midtown, and Buckhead areas.
We should be clear on this. Prospective applicants should understand that Emory campus is not really located in an urban environment. It’s a beautiful place and close enough to the city, but it’s the suburban location and contained campus that stands out.
@Tyga1234 : Stop “hearing” things like reddit chance mes and rumors about how easy it is to get a 4.0 at a top school. It rarely happens, especially to those who take science classes and this:
“…Also I hear Emory is easier to get a 4.0 than WashU with its infamous “weed-out” classes.”
is a) not true. Emory has a lower average graduating GPA (as well as grades given per semester) than WashU and most of the courses besides maybe biology are strikingly similar in caliber and grade exactly the same at the lower division levels. If anything, they start grading easier in intermediate and upper division sciences than lots of Emory’s life sciences courses. B) This is not something you want to tell us is some magical plus and shows naivete about what you are getting into trying to do pre-health at a top tier institution that is ultra selective.
I’ll give you a hint. Places like Emory and WUSTL which take their life sciences undergraduate teaching and rigor very seriously have tons of professors who design their courses such that they don’t correlate with incoming ACT/SAT or HS GPA as much. They correlate with how hard you work and THINK critically when at those institutions. Getting a 4.0 is very unlikely and isn’t going to be easy or easier at either so get that type of stuff out of your head and find a school that is a real fit beyond those considerations.
@ljberkow : Only thing I disagree on is that you need a car to access those areas. MARTA is more than sufficient and even faster in many cases (especially if you take the train from Decatur for example). I think people really under-estimate that, especially those from the NE who have better public transportation systems, but MARTA is still solid (36 gets you to midtown and its station which is ultra convenient because it takes you through lower traffic routes and goes through VaHighlands and whatnot) in most of the city, and central and North Dekalb where Emory is… If we only count walkable as accessible, then I guess not. Also, the Highlands and Ponce area are pretty much around the corner. So while I wouldn’t call Emory in a city, I wouldn’t say you need a car to “safely” get to those major points of interest and nor would I ever promote using one to go to those places unless you are going somewhere very late night or something. Also, I think outside of Peachtree, it is just fair to say that Atlanta, even portions near the core still are quite suburban. Atlanta is a different type of city. And honestly, Dekalb County is more dense than Fulton. populationn wise. Go figure.
Nothing but Peachtree and Peachtree adjacent streets will fit most people’s conceptions of a fully urbanized core which is based on most of the denser cities in the NE and out west.
I think you will have a serious shot with your stats.
I was sort of in your boat with my grandmother, grade in my junior year went down. But college applications are never about the circumstances you faced in life, they are about the things you learnt from these circumstances. I used this point really well in my college app, so it helped me a lot.
Try not to complain about your maths teacher too much because a B in calculus is not terribly low, it is still within the acceptable range. No one can be perfect so don’t stress out too much.
Good luck!
@bernie12 I agree with you that getting into Atlanta can be done using MARTA or the Emory shuttles during the day. I know that within a few years, there will be light rail, connecting Emory more to Atlanta as well. Having access to a car is easier though. I think my main point was that it’s a suburban campus close enough to the city and that’s a nice thing and so is being next to Decatur and Dekalb County. Hopefully, most who are considering Emory for ED2 have already visited the area and understand to location well.
Also, Emory could fill it’s freshmen class with only those who score over 1500 on their SATs, but they don’t. WashU could do the same. It’s not all about the grades and scores. Those who chanced you for WashU ED1 aren’t on the admissions committees and their criteria IS SATs and grades.
@ljberkow : Interestingly, WUSTL used to try to lol. Looks like they’ve relaxed the score emphasis a little and as I predicted with this new SAT, you are beginning to see all top schools recruit students with the same scores, or at least similar to the point it doesn’t predict differences. Differences come from other characteristics that individual schools think are important. And of course, with the high application volume, there will be some so called “randomness”. No one should feel entitled to or expect an offer, even in the binding rounds, no matter how good they look on paper.
I wouldn’t think the randomness factor would impact the ED round as much as the RD round. With kids now applying to 20+ schools, it does make the RD round a bit of a portfolio investment. It is weird that ED1 applications dropped from 1,910 to 1,812. They did admit more into the Class of 2024. That could be because the Class of 2023 is a smaller class or could be a higher quality applicant pool.
I understand post #6 in that Emory University is not really in the suburbs of Atlanta as downtown & midtown are quickly & easily accessed by car or public transportation and Atlanta is expanding (literally in the case of Emory University as its current location used to be part of Decatur). So, essentially, post #6 is correct in that Atlanta’s urban sprawl has literally annexed Emory University’s campus.
@ljberkow : I don’t know if continued growth in early rounds should be expected necessarily. I know at some point, the number of applicants and matriculates was supposed to drop. Of course elites are usually immune from larger trends, but I don’t consider Emory a very classical elite because even after all the improvements and nuance added to the admissions process, it still doesn’t market anywhere near as aggressively as its peers. Emory’s first major bumps came after it was getting national attention from the E.Bola treatments. It’ll keep good levels, but I don’t know if consistent 30k+ overall is sustainable with the level of marketing Emory does. I don’t necessarily think it is a bad thing either as it is possible to get better students out of slightly smaller applicant pools than prior years. Also, subtle things can affect a lot of prospective students. Like I imagine many who would apply this round toured their junior year which is when that whole DUC area of campus was a mess and there essentially was no student center (no AMUC does not count as a full student center). Petty things like that can leave impressions especially among students who may be differentiating their options primarily based on things like amenities and “campus beauty”. Who knows?
I suppose it’s all semantics whether you consider Druid Hills to be a suburb. Emory does and I think most do. Druid Hills was never in Decatur, but outside the borders in what was considered unincorporated Dekalb County. This year, a deal was worked out, which made Emory officially part of Atlanta. It was important to get this done to get light rail to Emory. Before this past year, Emory was really never “in” Atlanta.
I know.
To me, the suburbs are Alpharetta & Forsyth County.
@ljberkow and @Publisher We can go on all day about this Atlanta thing lol. It is one of the most unusual large metros in the country due to the amount of counties (which are mostly really small), the loosely connected governments, and population density distributions (I think maybe both Gwinnett and Dekalb have higher density than Fulton, probably because a lot of south and north Fulton are still undeveloped or under-developed). Like, even with Emory, before annexation, if you drove up to Briarcliff Road, some of that stuff counted as Atlanta, formally and now some of that area is officially Brookhaven (which got citihood and expanded some. Before leaving for grad. school, a slither of Atlanta in Dekalb left Atlanta and became Brookhaven. It was really confusing).
metro Atlanta also has Gwinnett which will likely surpass Fulton (where Atlanta is countyseat) in population within 20 years It seems very rare for a county outside of the major city to surpass the host county in population. Furthermore, in march, despite its growth trajectory and awful public transportation (seriously, Gwinnett’s is a joke and won’t even really run most routes on weekends like…Cobb), it rejected joining MARTA. They must really love sitting in the parking lot that is I-85.
The whole area is just an interesting case study for all that is good and bad about America’s newer urban centers (and of course the core is trying to reverse its previous trends more rapidly than other places) in terms of infrastructure, public health, socioeconomics (very high income inequality in the city and increasing levels of suburban poverty as some of the suburban towns start to decline and the city grows again). i always felt that because of all this, and simple things such as this discussion, Atlanta is a really cool place to go to college especially if you are willing to wonder outside the bubble of whatever campus (Emory, Tech, Agnes Scott, wherever). So much to learn outside of the classroom beyond specific career and professional interests.
*Also very interesting how southerners like myself see the Emory area (I view it as its own little district I guess) differently. We recognize it as outside of financial districts or the most dense part of the core, but it also is too dense in comparison to other areas outside of Peachtree to call “suburban” (in a southern context- I think of homes that all look cookie cutter, not abundant Mansions along winding roads abutting a major thouroughfare very associated with the city of Atlanta, Ponce de Leon). Again, Druid Hills kind of looks like the Highlands area, Grant Park, and is in between the major Dekalb neighborhoods. We know that southern cities (minus South Florida) just look different as a whole. So yeah, there are semantics perhaps colored by our regional biases. Atlanta will make you question “what exactly constititutes city living” because its a post-car era city. Me personally, regardless of what parts we call a city, I just want metro Atlanta to keep as many of its trees as possible. It makes it really special for a region with its population.
I understand why Emory wanted to become part of Atlanta, but it makes me sad. Decatur was & is a special place.