I’m applying for political science.
Objective
SAT I (breakdown): 2350 composite (800 CR/770 M/780 Wr), 1570 CR/M
ACT (breakdown): N/A
SAT II: Bio M - 760, US History - 740
Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.79 as of junior year, if I keep my current grades then 3.82 at the end of 1st semester
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): school doesn’t rank
AP (place score in parenthesis): European History (5), US History (5), Calculus AB (5)
Senior Year Course Load: AP Statistics, AP Psych, AP Gov, AP English Lit, Honors International Studies, Computer Science
Awards: National Merit semifinalist, AP Scholar, language NHS, some school awards
Subjective
Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):
- debate team (captain senior year) very involved, received scholarships and multiple awards
- writing - published online in youth literary magazine
- research in the humanities - received a selective endowment from my school and am in the process of writing a thesis-length paper in the US history field
Job/Work Experience: worked with kids at summer camp (40 hr/wk) after freshman, sophomore years.
Volunteer/Community service:
- volunteer with elementary school kids: sports, school festivals, science camp
- weekly math tutoring for a 6th grader
- weekly mentoring for middle school debaters
Summer Activities: debate camp after sophomore and junior year, taught novice debaters after junior year
Applying for Financial Aid?: Y
Country (if international applicant):
School Type: highly ranked private school
Ethnicity: white
Gender: F
Income Bracket: 50k - 100k
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): no
If only interested in RD (though take Emory’s polisci program seriously, has lots of good programs affiliated with it, and plenty of money to throw around to undergraduates), then I would also apply to more stats sensitive schools. Your stats make you a great candidate, but the ECs are comparable to students with lower stats so there is no telling. You would have had a better chance had you applied by the scholars deadline and checked the box. However, as long as your essay is good, you should have a good chance.
@bernie12 thanks for your reply! I actually have already applied RD before the scholars deadline, and checked the box, if that makes a difference.
Out of curiosity, what do you mean by “more stats sensitive schools?”
Also what does “ECs are comparable to students with lower stats” mean?
Just wondering because I haven’t heard those terms before. Thank you so much!
@sunshine232
Your ECs are strong, but there are many applying to Emory that have similar EC strength that may yield easier because they have lower stats and may have less options or may qualify for merit aid. This is partially because Emory has an extremely strong writing and debate scene, so you’ll be competing with students with great EC profiles with similar and substantially lower stats.
Stats sensitive schools are those that clearly have a much higher emphasis on SAT scores than comparably and higher ranked schools. Some schools are relatively new to this group and some have been there. I generally consider them as those schools ranked below 10 (or even 15) on USNWR that have a bottom quartile of at least 1400 (and overall means near 1500/1600 M/V on math and verbal of “old” SAT), so places like Vanderbilt, Washington University, and maybe Notre Dame now. Sometimes these places have simpler supplemental short answer/essay prompts or none at all. They care about ECs but are definitely very interested in the scores. Even scholarship selection will correlate more strongly with scores than other highly ranked schools where pure EC strength and “uniqueness” (like Emory for example selects some for specialized scholarships in things like debate or music if not the Woodruff, and typically very interesting students are selected for something such as the Liberal Arts Scholarship) can contribute a lot more to potential success in scholarship selection process. I get the feeling that some schools definitely take into account rigor of HS and the curriculum in specific subjects (so SAT 2 and AP/IB) much more than SAT reasoning. This likely depends on who the school typically gets in high numbers.
For example, since Emory gets lots of applicants claiming pre-health or natural sciences, Emory will more likely have tons of students with AP/IB biology or chemistry credit (plus several years of exposure to biology in some capacity) who do not necessarily score near perfect on the SAT (usually mid-high 1300s/1600 to low mid-1400s). Some schools (like most or all Ivies) flat out require SAT IIs. Stats sensitive is typically an artifact of wanting a higher rank but may also be because other metrics have not typically been reliable at the school. Like at a school with many “specialists” (again like the “pres”) one can predict that a student will thrive and do lots of cool things in their area of interest if they have already demonstrated academic and EC excellence in those specific areas (so you may get the person with a nowhere near perfect SAT score with tons of research experience, several STEM AP credits, lots of other things whereas another student with high scores elsewhere may not have gone as “deep”). At schools where the distribution of majors is much more diverse or where students typically pursue majors that HS does not offer academic much exposure to (say education, psychology, communications. etc), SAT reasoning cherrypicking may be more sensible. Also engineering schools are often used to drive scores up, but to some extent, it is a necessity if the engineering unit intends to maintain higher than normal academic standards (relative to ABET standards).
FYI for later readers - was accepted to both campuses and currently scholar finalist @ Oxford
@sunshine232, I’ve looked at your posts from 2016 and I’m wondering where you ended up, if you don’t mind sharing? I don’t see that in your posts.