Very competitve public
3.8 GPA UW
11 total AP
Chess Top 10 in State
Chess Non profit
Math Club Co Pres
34 act
800 math 2
hello?
You need to have a better idea as to what you want besides “T-20”. Aside from the fact that the designation is kinda silly (what about #21? Top 20 by what measure? etc), the fact that you think of them as a unit means that you haven’t really started thinking about what you are looking for in a college.
Moreover, you are extremely brief. You are giving very little information, and not nearly enough for anybody to even make an educated guess.
I mean, it’s actually pretty easy - all are high reaches for you, since your GPA puts you below average for them all. For more than that, we’d need to know how rigorous you classes were (which APs, since not all are equal), what major/s interest you, and more.
A GPA of 3.8 puts you in a strange position, since with a very rigorous class list, you are moderately competitive for colleges with acceptance rates of >10% acceptance rate, but with a not so rigorous class set, you are not very competitive at all.
We’d need to know a lot more about your ECs - Chess Top 10 in State is something that says very little about your central EC. There are likely raninkgs in chess, besides top 10. Moreover, top 10 in North Dakota is not as impressive as top 10 in New York.
Your state of residence is also important.
What can your parents afford? Being accepted to every college with low acceptance rate is useless if you cannot afford to attend.
Take a step back, get your mind together, and then come back and ask the question, while providing more details (not enough to out you, of course).
hello,
I am basically asking my chances for YALE SCEA, I live in NYC. I think we can afford 30k.
Sorry for this but, almost no chance at all for Yale SCEA in my opinion. You live in NYC which means you must’ve had a lot of opportunities, even then you have almost non existent ECs. You don’t have a lot of awards either (Chess one is impressive, but it still doesn’t do justice to your lack of ECs).
Look at other chance me threads and give more information. As of right now, your chances are 0%.
The 3.8 GPA is going to hurt you a lot for T20. I think you can forget Yale; it wouldn’t even be worth SCEA.
Yale is a high reach.
Run Yale’s net price calculator to get an estimated cost of attendance so you know whether it’s within your $30K range. Note the NPC won’t be accurate if your parents are divorced, have their own business, or own real estate beyond a primary home.
https://admissions.yale.edu/estimate-your-cost
Do you have an affordable safety?
Hi, I founded a math team.
is a 3.8 that bad?
how is it zero? people with my gpa got in and I have some accomplishments and testings.
No, a 3.8 is not “that bad”, and there will be unhooked students for whom it is sufficient for an offer. Your challenge is that you are what people on CC sometimes call an ‘average excellent’ student- and those make up the majority of the 36,000 students who are applying for 2100 places.
Most of those places go to the ones who are ‘average excellent’ AND have something else. That’s why you are getting such negative feedback- posters aren’t seeing it.
Being in a highly competitive HS has it’s merits. On the plus side, if you are in a super-competitive NY HS, colleges will be aware of it, and will evaluate your GPA in context. Collegekid1 went to a HS at which the valedictorian had a 3.8, and roughly the top 12% of the class went to tippy tops. The regional reps knew the school, and considered the context.
But there is also a major downside- and you are hitting that now: a lot of peers chasing the same college names, and a tendency to see the name of the college you go to as the ultimate arbiter of your value or success. The more you can remove yourself from this hopeless game the better.
Two things you can be sure of: First, you WILL be able to get into a college that gives you a great undergrad experience, and will have more opportunities that you will have time to take advantage of. Second, the name of that college will never matter more than it seems to between now and June.
Please consider removing yourself from the pressure cooker as much as you can: if you talk at all about where you are applying, continuously include potential safeties and matches- being specific about things that they have that are genuinely interesting to you (for example: “looking hard at UIUC, b/c it has a great chess team and a strong math dept, esp Prof X whose work is really interesting”). This approach has multiple benefits: it keeps you out of the fray (and keeps people guessing!)- but it also will push you to look harder of the specifics of what attracts you to a college, which will help you craft an application list that will give you good choices come spring.
thank you for the advice. But what separates me, an ‘average excellent’ student, from someone else? what do they do / do they have better grades?
That’s the black box. Many will have better grades- and still get turned down. Ditto with test scores. Ditto both.
It’s the “and” that makes the difference- and there is simply no reliable way to figure out the ‘and’ that will work. For an unhooked student it can be anything from:
=having a trait that meets a need of the college (such as an instrument for the orchestra or a new program they are trying to fill), to
=an essay that catches the eye of an AO b/c they see a sense of humor or effectiveness in their activities that they want to add to the overall campus, to
=students who really has achieved something pretty remarkable in their own right.
Or any number of other things.
In general the tippiest places are looking for the people at the top of their cohort. For example, a student who is the head of student government, the captain of the regionally dominant swim team and a part of the award-winning traveling vocal group; has a leadership role at the local food bank; and is, in the top 5 of the class with an academic load that includes AP Chinese* and Calc BC as a junior, with super high test scores. Yes, a real person- kind, genuinely liked by both peers and adults, very down to earth, and a well-earned reputation for making things happen. Currently enrolled at Harvard. No hooks, no connections- just the kind of student that the teachers fall over themselves to write about how exceptional they are.
This ‘black box’ is why it’s so important to focus on what really, really matters to you. No doubt, prestige is one thing- it matters to most of us. But it shouldn’t be the only thing. Yes, Yale is a super-cool school - and if it’s a great fit for you, apply. Just put some time into figuring out the pieces of what makes a great fit for you. Because factually the numbers at schools that accept in the single digit %s are against pretty much everybody.
*started chinese in school- non-heritage speaker/no Asian background
By all means apply to a few T-20 colleges but also recognize that they must be considered a reach for any unhooked applicant.
Bottom line is that you (like everyone else) should work hard to create a solid college list that includes reach, match, and safety schools that appear affordable (find out your parents’ budget and run the net price calculator for each school) and that you would be happy to attend. The people I see who get hurt by the college admission process are the ones who focus only on the hyper-competitive schools and then don’t get in.
You need to expand your horizons and recognize that there are so many wonderful schools out there where you can have a great 4 year experience and get where you want to go in life.
A 3.8 is not bad, but your ECs seem very weak, and I wouldn’t say have no hope, but you have to consider the acceptance rates… and what they are looking for.
How are they weak? I’m ranked for something and have leadership.
You asked a question and knowledgeable people have given you answers. You don’t like the answers and get defensive when asking again. You are asking about hyper-selective schools that get way more applications than the number of available spots and getting in is a challenge for everyone. Yes, you have leadership but I can say with absolute certainty so does everyone else. Top 10 in your state for chess is great but they may have their pick of those in the top 10 in the country…or world. No one here is trying to minimize your accomplishments but if a school is interested in admitting a chess player, they might have an application from number 7 who also has a perfect SAT score, a 4.0, and can tick off another box (full pay, legacy, big donor, URM). Have you done some cool things? Sure. Will that alone be enough to get you in? Probably not. What can you do to change that? Not much.
@OMF1806 @CollegePanda12 Goodness gracious guys, he’s 17. This is why CC has its reputation. Try to emulate the seasoned posters on here (@collegemom3717, @Mwfan1921, @happy1, @MWolf) and be a bit more sensitive.
thanks! I’ll do more stuff now!
What I meant was that you don’t give nearly enough information for us to make an educated guess on your chances. If you give vague information like that on your actual application, it would, no doubt, be a 0% chance.
I see two problems:
- You think that because you have a “leadership role” and are “ranked for something,” that it automatically makes you an appealing option for colleges. College admissions is not a mere checklist with things you have to check off to be competitive. It depends on the competitiveness of that leadership role, the relation of your leadership role and ranking with your passions, and how your extracurriculars add up to represent your unique story.
- Like I mentioned before, the information you gave is extremely vague, and it's foolish to think that people can give you an accurate guess with those few words.
“Chess Non-Profit” - Elaborate more on that. What did you work on, how many people did you impact, did you get it approved by the government to be called an official non-profit organization, or do you just call it that to sound more impressive? When did you start this?
“Co-pres of Math club” - What did you do, how many people were in the club, how long were you in that position, etc etc.
“Chess Top 10 in State” - I’m a chess player myself, and chess players are ranked by ELO and FIDE rankings. Were you in a specific competition that you ranked highly in? How prestigious was it? When did you do it?
All of this information is vital for us to determine exactly what caliber and intensity your extracurriculars were.
Based on the information I was given,
- 3.8 UW GPA (depends on school competition)
- 3 extracurriculars (if they were deep and meaningful, 3 is fine. However, it doesn’t seem that way from your non-existant description)
You do not seem like a very competitive applicant for top schools.
Your chances also depend on your intended major.
Apply to T20s if you want. Don’t expect admission, however, just because you had a leadership role and were ranked, as literally tens of thousands of applicants have leadership roles and are ranked.