<p>High School Junior at a public school in VA
IB Candidate
Female
Registered member of the Choctaw Nation of OK
Want to major in Theoretical or Astro Physics </p>
<p>weighted GPA 4.37 but should go higher due weighting of IB classes</p>
<p>ACT 31- will take again in Fall
SAT best combo 1990
Taking SAT 2 this June- Lit and Math 2</p>
<p>ECs so far
3 years Crew/ Rowing - 25 hours per week x 36 weeks per year, Team Captain Junior Year
1 year National Honor Society - 2 hours a month
12 years Girl Scouts- Bronze Award, Silver Award</p>
<p>Looking at Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth, UVA</p>
<p>Although you have good grades, your test scores are very low; try to get your act/sat up. Yeah your ecs are pretty poor. You don’t have enough leadership. Your chances are increased by the fact that your are a URM, but I am thinking HIGH reaches to any of the schools you listed, maybe not UVA though.</p>
<p>How are ECs poor? I spend 25 hours a week doing Crew. I am a Team Captain this year.</p>
<p>I am going to retake the ACT aiming to get a 34. The first time was with no studying. 31 is the 25 percentile at most of the Ivies so it is possible to get in with a 31.</p>
<p>Current classes
CYD 001 IB THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE II (BELL 01)<br>
C2B 001 IB PSYCHOLOGY SL (BELL 02)<br>
D1D 001 IB MATH METHODS II (BELL 03)<br>
CCZ 002 IB HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS (BELL 04)<br>
EPK 001 IB PHYSICS I (BELL 05)<br>
BSF 002 IB SPANISH IV (BELL 06)<br>
EMD 001 ADVANCED ASTRONOMY (BELL 07)<br>
AMF 003 IB ENGLISH III (BELL 08)</p>
<p>Yeah your chances at the Ivies are very low. Your SAT score is way too low for any Ivy and is about on par for UVA. Your EC’s are very poor considering you listed 3 of them… You have very few leadership positions and they are not concentrated around a specific theme. Also you show no commitment to any EC but crew. Ivies are very very high reaches. UVA is a reach but a low reach.</p>
<p>Your ECs are great (this coming from the guy who believes in quality over quantity). Are you good enough for D1 crew? However, your SAT scores are a but low. </p>
<p>Tbh… leadership positions are highly overrated. Being a leader of a club of 2 people who play D&D isn’t that impressive. Remember to take all advice with a little grain of salt. </p>
<p>The average SAT for UVA was over 2100 this year, and it’ll be higher for out-of-state students.
Sent from my VM670 using CC
EDIT: just saw you’re an in-state student. Still, the scores and ECs are a little weak. The URM status will help, though.</p>
<p>Apparently “some of these people are ridiculous” because they are being honest with you. URM status or not, based on what you have posted you do not yet appear to be a truly competitive applicant for the Ivy League schools you listed. Sorry, but three years of crew are not going to get you into an Ivy League school. Clearly you think you know everything anyway, and are disappointed that your self-perceptions are not being validated. </p>
<p>So, here’s a suggestion. Instead of asking anonymous people whose opinions you don’t value for their advice, go the forums of the schools you are interested in. Look on the RD 16 threads for each school, as the posts are the stats of CC applicants to the schools – those accepted and those rejected. Weigh your seemingly meager resume (based on what you have revealed) against those posted by students who applied to these schools in the last admissions cycle. See how you stack up. Based on what you posted, you really do not seem to be competitive for Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, or Cornell, or at the same level as the students who are being admitted to these schools.</p>
<p>I am not saying that you cannot work to get to that competitive level, but to get there, you have to at least acknowledge the possibility that you are not there yet. </p>
<p>If you think we are wrong, and that you have NOTHING to learn from anyone here, apply and take your chances. Good luck.</p>
<p>Tbh I find it quite rude that you post here asking for advice but only listen to what you want to hear. Stating that “some of these people are ridiculous” about those who give you honest opinions is very immature. </p>
<p>Instead of arguing and degrading people trying to help, control your ego enough to listen to some advice. If you want to be told you’re awesome and perfect this isn’t the place.</p>
<p>I was going to chance you, but if you convey the personality you’ve put on here in your college essays then you’re in trouble.</p>
<p>Bumping your ACT to a 34 will help significantly. Native American is the most highly desired URM, and you’re a female intending to go into STEM, so you’re fairly well hooked.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, and contrary to what you may think, your ECs are not currently Ivy-tier. Your dedication to crew is very impressive, but that’s more or less what you have going for you at the moment. Two hours a month of volunteering with NHS just doesn’t add up; you’re going against kids who often have 200+ hours when you apply to Ivies. Girl Scouts is by no means a bad EC, but it doesn’t scream anything, you know?</p>
<p>The real problem with your ECs as they stand now is that they don’t demonstrate any academic interest. I’d have no idea that you were thinking of majoring in physics had you not said so. Physics major-hopefuls applying Cornell and Princeton have placed at national competitions, been published in journals, interned at labs, etc., and some of them are captains of their respective varsity sports teams, too. That should answer your “How are my ECs poor?” question; they’re not bad in and of themselves, they’re just subpar compared to other applicants. So, if you’d like advice (though it doesn’t sound much like you do), try to demonstrate academic passion in ECs between now and app time. You’re a junior, so you’ve got time-- time to strengthen ECs, time to improve test scores, etc.</p>
<p>Ultimately, you’ll probably end up getting into one of these schools because your skin color is more fashionable for schools to accept, and some better-qualified Asian kid who has worked their tail off to stack up jobs, research, and community service hours will get the rejection letter. C’est la vie, and congratulations.</p>
<p>I think your crew just needs a little more description. Did your team win district, state, regional, and/or national level? I wonder if you can be recruited for any of the ivies’ crew teams. If you spent a lot of your time on crew, you might as well prove to everyone here that quality trumps quantity. As for your act score, a 31 is good, but only because of your URM status. With that score you’re kinda relying more on your URM status. The reason everyone says to get a 33+ is so that you can be ABSOLUTELY safe in the standardized test department and so that admissions won’t have to be on the fence about you (they’re gonna be like "oh I love how she’s a rare native American, but her test score…GAH idk!) best of luck!</p>
<p>URM will help you alot. But don’t show an attitude. Honestly, unless you are recruited for crew, it will not carry much weight. Your ECs are extremely weak. Girl Scouts is great. But thats about it. Scores are too low. If you bring your scores up a lot, you will have a great chance as you are URM.</p>
<p>Your scores are “lower” for an Ivy no doubt, but you can get in with those scores or even very slightly lower. Having more leadership is definitely good, but if you can write very well about each and explain how they’ve impacted your life then it isn’t the end of the world. I mean don’t get complacent with your current situation, but don’t listen to posters saying that every Ivy will toss your application in the garbage.</p>
<p>Not a SINGLE poster has said that “every Ivy will toss [her] application in the garbage.” Stop being melodramatic! But being UNREALISTIC is not helpful to her either, for you DO NOT KNOW that she WILL get into those schools with these scores and this meager resume of ECs. Hence our advice to get this application up to Ivy par, if OP wants a REALISTIC CHANCE at acceptance by these schools. She wants to major in a hard science and has revealed NO evidence of the passion for or kind of talent in that field that successful applicants demonstrate on their applications to those schools. She has time to work on those things, but NOT telling her that there IS work to be done would be a DISSERVICE to OP!!</p>
<p>Unless she refines and boosts elements of the application, sorry, but she will NOT be a terribly competitive applicant to any of these Ivies. </p>
<p>But hey, the only way to find out is to apply.</p>
<p>IB Diploma Candidate work load does not leave time for a lot of other academic pursuits. I take the hardest course load available to me. IB requires volunteer hours and I will be completing most of those this year. I am also planning to start a creative writing club at my school this fall. </p>
<p>This summer I am working 2 jobs. One is 40 hours x 6 weeks. The other is tutoring a younger student about 10-15 hours. Additionally I am taking an ACT test prep course and hope to get my score up to 34 this fall.</p>
<p>Actually I have registered for several websites that give guesses/ predictions and all of them give me fair to good odds, especially at Cornell and UVA (in-state). I’ve also gone through the RD decision threads for my favorite schools and looked at other IB students results and I’m fairly comfortable with the results. The Ivies are not a slam dunk for anyone. If I end up at UVA, I’ll be perfectly happy with that outcome. </p>
<p>I appreciate the responses from the people trying to be helpful.</p>
<p>If personality and attitude was seen in the application process, I’d give you a “no”. </p>
<p>Honestly, your grades and devotion to crew are AWESOME.
And your URM status does help.
I can see that you’re motivated, but people aren’t willing to help you if you act rude to them.</p>
<p>Just be kind and say “Thank you for taking your time to give great advice!”, not “Some of these people are ridiculous.”</p>