Hello. I’m an incoming senior in high school and am starting on my college apps. Frankly, I’ve heard extremely conflicting information about my chances for getting into Ivies. On one hand, I’ve been told that Cal Poly Slo is somewhat of a reach for me and on the other hand, I’ve been told that I can get into schools like Duke or Dartmouth …
Since I don’t want to be horribly disappointed come second semester, I was wondering whether y’all could chance me on: Dartmouth, Cornell (my dream school), Duke, UPenn, Columbia, Rice, Brown, and Tufts. I’m planning to major in CS by the way.
Here are my stats:
SAT: 2300 (800 CR, 760 math, 730 writing)
SAT 2: 760 Math, unknown chem score
GPA: 3.9 - significant improvement (death of beloved family dog plus other personal issues)
Extracurriculars and leadership:
- volunteer at local hospital: 150 hours
- volunteer for local science fair: 100 hours
- president of aforementioned science fair board (I also judge and speak at study sessions)
- president of my city’s teen advisory council
- 2 years of paid internships in national labs (sister labs - high performance computing)
- accepted but didn’t go to other internships (nasa, etc.)
- varsity swimming (9th and 10th grade)
- international student cluster competition (represented the national lab I interned for last year - over 1000 teams but 12 made it to internationals)
- international HPC conference attendee (invitational)
- various summer camps
- science fairs (robotics)
Awards (copy and pasted - bear with me here …):
- Best Senior Division Project Award (sponsored by NASA Ames Research Center): 2015
- Intelligent Systems Award (sponsored by The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics): 2015
- Outstanding Science and Engineering Project Award (sponsored by United States Air Force): 2015
- Outstanding Science and Engineering Project Award (sponsored by Wireless Communication Alliance): 2015
- Best Senior Division Project Award (sponsored by Society of Women Engineers): 2015
- Engineering Senior Category Winner in Synopsys Science Competition: 2014
- Best Senior Division Project Award (sponsored by U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary): 2014
Most of these awards are national …
I know my GPA is a tad low but will my ec’s and test scores balance everything out?
Thanks for chancing, everyone and I promise I’ll chance you guys back!