ECs:
Founder and President of a charity club that donates school supplies to Africa (11,12)
Editor of school’s literary magazine (10,11,12)
Design Editor for school paper (self-taught graph designer) - 11, 12
Editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper (11, 12)
Leader for a dorm program (10,11)
Varsity Cheerleading for four years (9-12)
A capella (10-11)
Advanced Choir (10-11)
National Honor Society (11-12)
Visited Africa for one summer (10)
Additional Info:
I forgot to add that I’m Asian (pretty bad stats for an Asian…)
I was captain for cheer during my senior year.
I’ve won 3 awards from school so far.
What would’ve helped me to get into these schools?
You probably know that your grades are important. While an upward trend is good, your grades are not outstanding. That said, you don’t indicate what classes you are taking. Obviously AP classes, advanced math, rigorous, college prep classes are essential to being seriously considered. Your SAT is good. Quality is probably more important than quantity for ECs; visiting Africa doesn’t really ‘count’ but varsity cheerleading and being Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper is good. Good luck.
I currently attend an IB school. Here are my courseload:
IB DP English LIT HL
IB DP History HL
IB DP Economics HL
IB DP Math SL
IB DP Chemistry SL
IB DP Chinese Lang. SL
The upward trend in GPA is good, though fresh/sop GPA is a little low for the schools. However your ECs look good, as do your test scores. I think that they are all reaches because of their caliber, however with great essays and recs you could get into one or two of them. Best of luck!
Take a look at my thread if you could please I’d really appreciate it http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1743297-ecs-will-chance-back-p1.html
@JustOneDad I’m running a very active club that donates around 100 school supplies (books, pencils, erasers, everything a student needs) in order to help african kids achieve their dreams. we are currently working on an event that might include computer donations as well.
As is obvious, the upward trend is a great thing but the colleges you’ve mentioned are highly GPA orientated and have people with perfect GPAs. Your SAT score is amazing and falls in for the right tier in all schools. SAT IIs are a bit offbeat for the higher echelon of colleges but that’s ok. Your extracurriculars in my perspective are amazing, they make for your GPA weakness. A good essay might get you in, those colleges are all high match/low reaches for you.
Best of luck (I’m an IB student too, so if you wanna talk about anything - message me)
Even if your school doesn’t rank you should probably have a rough idea where you stand in the class. Look at your school profile. Many schools give information about gpa ranges. The reason I ask is because admissions officers will try to guesstimate where you stand in the class either from knowing your school’s history or from the school profile. For the school’s you’ve listed you should at least be in the top 10 percent of your class (actually, in the top 1 or 2 percent is what you should be aiming for). Dartmouth, an Ivy similar to Brown or Penn, said that 35% of the admitted class were valedictorians and 10% were salutatorians.
@forevercool -I think what JOD is asking is what’s the scope of this charity club? What you’ve told us could be interpreted as this: “I packed a box of 100 pencils into a mailer and sent it to Africa.” Obviously this isn’t the case, but it’s hard to know what you’ve really done.
So…
How many active members does your club have?
How many recipients have you served?
Can you explain the 100? Is that 100 discrete items per student? 100 cases of school supplies to be donated to each of 50 schools? 100 total items to be sent to a US based charity working in Africa?
What monetary value would you place on the gifts in kind and cash you’ve raised?
How are you getting the supplies to the recipients?
What was your impetus for starting this club? Is there a personal connection?
What’s you succession plan?
As someone who actually does this kind of work professionally, and whose kids have done drives for my organization, I would be asking these questions if I were evaluating your application.
Your ec of general nothing that will jump of the page, your gpa is low, you sat is average with the schools you’ve listed …They would gain nothing but admitting you to their institution you offer them no diversification … you are smart and have accomplished a lot but not enough for the Ivy league … start looking for safety schools
