Chance Me For Ivies (Junior)

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

4.0 UW GPA, 4.15 Weighted, If senior year is counted will probably be around 4.3

Classes of note are as follows (school does not offer honors classes outside of math). I have never received any marks other than “A”. I am confident this will not change.

Freshman:
Honors Algebra 2

Sophomore:
AP Euro History
Honors Pre-Calc

Junior
AP Calc BC
AP English
AP Biology
AP US History
Spanish Three
Physics

Senior
Multivariable Calculus
AP English
AP Government
AP Chem
AP Physics
Spanish 4

SAT: 1590 (1st Attempt, fall of junior year) 7/5/8 on the essay, but could retake (didn’t study)

Three Year Varsity Rower: Made Grand finals in two national championships (one for a summer club and one for scholastic team), medal at state championships, second place at prestigious international race in Canada. Team Captain as a Senior. Not fast enough for recruitment to the very top schools, but would make a capable walk-on and coaches might be interested.

Eagle Scout: Had many leadership positions, assistant senior patrol leader in a troop of 50 scouts. Crew Leader on 14-day trek at Philmont Ranch and participated in many other trips.

Certified SCUBA diver with over 20 logged dives

STEM Club

Harvard Model Congress

Art Club

Two Years of Orchestra (Had to quit to fit AP sciences into schedule). Still actively play the cello and guitar. Have played at a couple of parties in the neighborhood for money. Might do something musical this summer.

Legacy at Dartmouth and Two-Generation Legacy at Chicago.

If I Applied to all of the Ivies + MIT + Chicago, how many could I hope to get into? 0? 2? 5? Yale is first choice, Harvard/Columbia second but obviously these three are ridiculously challenging to get into.

2

There is no way to predict OP acceptances at these to schools unless you are recruited. Your stats are very strong but be sure you have match and safety schools on your list too.

3

please read “how to be a high school superstar” by cal newport. no one on here can tell u if you’re getting in or not! congrats on your stats though!

4

“If I Applied to all of the Ivies + MIT + Chicago”

The problem that I see here is that all of the Ivy’s plus MIT plus Chicago covers a huge range of schools that are in some cases quite different from each other.

If you are applying to Dartmouth College, and someone asks “why Dartmouth College?”, then you need to have a good answer. Ditto for Columbia, MIT, and the other 7 schools on your list.

I think that you chances at getting into one of these schools will be much better if you figure out what you want in a university, and then concentrate on applying to the subset of these schools that matches what you are looking for.

5

If your rowing is good enough for MIT sports recruit, then your chance for MIT is high

6

If your rowing is good enough for MIT sports recruit, then your chance for MIT is high

7

Forgive me for just responding to the rowing portion of your message, but that’s the only portion I can speak to:

Chicago doesn’t have a varsity rowing team. Dartmouth certainly does, with better results than they’ve had in quite a while for the heavyweight men, while the lightweights just re-hired a coach who had led them to some excellent results several years ago (you don’t mention if you’re heavy or light - or male or female, so forgive me if I’ve assumed incorrectly). Either way, if you actually want to row in college but are worried you’re not recruitable at the very top programs, you might still be recruitable there, and you might really enjoy it. So you should definitely reach out to the coaches there.

Also, while coaches are looking to recruit the best rowers they can recruit, regardless of legacy status, they may offer you a letter of support - one that carries some real weight, even if it is not a formal “recruiting slot” - if you decide to apply to Dartmouth in the ED round. This kind of procedure can be great for both sides: the coach gets a good rower with excellent academics, which boosts the team’s Academic Index, all without using a formal “recruiting slot”. For you, the combination of a strong support letter + legacy status + your strong academics and other extracurriculars, all in the ED round, puts you in a very strong position.

But of course you should not just apply to Dartmouth because you’re a legacy; it’s a unique place, and if it works for you, that will be great, but if you would rather be in Manhattan, you will probably not be happy. Also, given your aptitude in math, you definitely should look at MIT. Their recruiting standards are about 15 second off the pace of the top Ivy programs (again, for both heavies and lights), so you might even find that you are recruitable there - indeed, given the results you mention, you probably would be, even without knowing your 2k time. MIT’s recruiting works differently, but as u/EESSLL notes, it can give you a major boost - especially if you the kind of student who got an A in BC calculus as a junior.

Top academics can also help a lot with recruitment at Columbia, which you also mentioned. Their heavies and lights are in very different places at this point, but of course the main reason to go to Columbia is to get an Ivy education in New York City, not to row.

PM me if you would like; happy to discuss further.

8

The previous poster is much, much more knowledgable about this than I am, but I’ll try to add a little more, what little I can.
My understanding is that even though DIII schools don’t give athletic scholarships, coaches are given a certain number of “slots” in which to recommend admission to specific students. These kids may even be at the low end of the school’s normal admission scale, but if they fill a need on the team or squad, the coach can make the pitch and is given deference. This came to a shock to me, until a good friend told me about his son, who is currently a two-sport D-III athlete–a walk-on, who is proud to have gotten into the school “on his merits,” and later tried out and was selected for both teams. Who knew that there were D-III walk-ons? I assumed that by definition all D-III athletes were walk-ons!
At any rate, both Chicago and MIT are D-III schools, so as the previous poster alluded to, your rowing talent may be the last push you need at those schools. I’d contact the coaches there, maybe if/when you visit the schools in person, and see if there would be any interest if you applied. Given your scores, I suspect that the coaches will love you, because they may figure they won’t have to use up any of their recruiting slots for you, and may just have to give you a tiny push–again, I don’t really know the mechanics behind it. Good luck!