Chance me for these International Relations schools?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hey guys, I'm a rising senior, and I'm really interested in international relations, and I hope to become a foreign service officer one day. I'm applying to a pretty wide range of schools, but Georgetown is my first choice. My GPA is a bit low because of freshman/sophomore slacking, but in junior year I really buckled down, and now I have a HUGE upward trend if that helps. Let me know what you guys think!</p>

<p>Schools I'm applying to:
Georgetown, SFS (EA)
American University, SIS
George Washington, ESIA
Johns Hopkins
NYU
UMD, College Park
Tufts
UToronto, Trinity
UVA (EA)
(I need more safeties so feel free to recommend some)</p>

<p>Middle Eastern male, school doesn't rank, but top 10-15%, very competitive high school, in the top 30 in the nation, famous for grade deflation.</p>

<p>GPA: 3.7
WGA: 4.2 hopefully 4.3 by the end of first semester (out of 5.0)</p>

<p>SAT: 2180 (retaking in October)
710 Math
670 CR
800 Writing</p>

<p>SAT IIs: taking World History, Biology, and Spanish in November
ACT: taking in September</p>

<p>APs:
Sophomore year - Gov/Politics, 4
Junior year - Environmental Science, Spanish Lang, 5's on both
Senior year - Psychology, Spanish Lit, Micro/Macro Econ (also taking honors English and honors Calculus)</p>

<p>ECs:
-Founder/President of the Global Students Association
-Officer of Spanish Honor Society
-Model UN
-National Honor Society
-FBLA
-Key Club
-German school on Saturdays</p>

<p>Honors:
-Maryland Commended Scholar
-NMS semi-finalist
-German language diploma (this would let me study at German universities)
-Black belt in Taekwondo (though I got this before high school so I don't know if it counts)</p>

<p>Internships:
-Internship at Global Media Trail, foreign media analysis company
-Internship at Radio Free Europe, contributed significantly to (name will also be published on it) a think-tank presentation/report for foreign policy makers regarding the threat of Islamist militancy in Central Asia
-Internship at the Office of Rep. Chris Van Hollen</p>

<p>Recommendations:
One from my English teacher, one from my Spanish teacher. Both should be very good (I hope), as I am very close with both. Also getting one from my boss, the editor-in-chief of Radio Free Europe.</p>

<p>Language:
-Fluent in Farsi (Persian)
-Fluent in Spanish
-Fluent in German
-Fluent in Portuguese, completely self-taught
-Learning French/Italian
-Completed intensive German language course at Goethe Institute in St. Peter-Ording, Germany
-Presented the International Declaration of Human Rights in Spanish and Portuguese at the International Human Rights Day Rally in 2010</p>

<p>So yeah, as you can see, International Relations is and has been my dream field of study for quite a while. I'm very into politics, and very into foreign cultures/languages, so naturally, I was drawn to IR. And again, feel free to recommend more schools for me.</p>

<p>Thanks to anybody who took the time to read all this!</p>

2

<p>bump? anyone?</p>

3

<p>any takers at all?</p>

4

<p>should I have put a different title…</p>

5

<p>bump…again</p>

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<p>…</p>

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<p>aaaaanyone at all…</p>

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<p>Looking good! Although Hopkins and Georgetown are slight reaches! I’d look at Syracuse if I were you! Good luck!</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1196782-chances-brown-will-chance-back.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1196782-chances-brown-will-chance-back.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>thanks lexieam! does syracuse have a good IR program?
anyone else?</p>

10

<p>I also am trying to go to school for international relations but you have far more amazing extracurriculars and language skills that I have. I think that your interesting experiences should help you but it’s always good to be in the 2200 range for the SAT. However, I think that a place like Georgetown would possibly take you just because of your outside experience with international affairs.</p>

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<p>Thanks! And thanks for bumping this lol. Yes, I got back my scores from Oct 1 and now I’m at 2280 superscored, 1480 M/CR. Hopefully that’ll push it over. Good luck to the both of us!</p>

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<p>anyone else?</p>

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<p>Georgetown, SFS (EA) – low match
American University, SIS – in
George Washington, ESIA – in
Johns Hopkins – reach, but not a large one
NYU – high match
UMD, College Park – in
Tufts – you never know, with Tufts syndrome and all
UVA (EA) – slight reach (not as big as JHU, though)</p>

<p>I don’t know about UToronto</p>

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<p>Speaking as a Hoya alum who was once a student rep on one of the SFS admissions committees (there are quite a number of different committees), I think you have a pretty decent chance of getting into Georgetown SFS. I think your internship experiences set you apart. I cant really comment on your academics though because it depends on whether you’ve taken the most rigorous courses available in your school. The admissions committee places value on whether you’ve done this and trust me, they have a lot of experience with schools and so they will know if you didnt take the most rigorous courseload available. Generally, they also like to see that you’ve taken math and a foreign language all four years of high school. Also, not all math courses are the same - admissions officers know that taking a statistics class in lieu of calculus is the easier route.</p>

<p>It’s great that you’re proactive in learning all these languages. That’s definitely a plus… but be wary of saying you’re fluent in something when you’re just conversational. If you can read a foreign language novel and write a 2000-word critical essay about it in that language, then you can say you are fluent. I dont mean to attack you in any way, I’m just trying to warn applicants of this. </p>

<p>The SFS takes languages very very seriously - everyone who graduates has to pass a foreign language oral exam administered by a panel of professors in order to earn the ‘proficient’ status that they need to graduate. And trust me, every year you have ppl that fail the oral exam and can’t graduate. So, fluency is not something that admissions officers like to see thrown around in an application unless it has real basis. </p>

<p>I have seen applicants who have taken 4 years of a foreign language in high school, visited the foreign country for a month over the summer, and then claimed to be fluent in that language. Or worse, applicants who say they are fluent in a language and then score less than 750 on the SAT II for that language. Yes, I know that some people are not great test takers, and yes, even a native speaker may not get a perfect score, but you get the general gist of what I’m saying.</p>

<p>I’m not sure how much help this response was because if you applied EA, you should’ve heard by now. But if you didnt make it in the early round and get passed on to the regular admits, don’t get discouraged because you really had to be exceptional to get admitted in the EA round. I’ll explain why in the next paragraph. </p>

<p>I’m not sure if all the admissions committees do this but this is what my experience was like. Applicants are scored using a 10-point scale (usually it’s divided between personal and academics) - so you can get a max score of 5 for personal qualities and a max score of 5 for academics. Both scores are combined to form your final score. Every person (reviewer) on the committee reads the candidate file and decides on an individual score for the candidate. Each reviewer then discusses the score that they reached with the committee as a whole. If there is a lot of discrepancy between individual reviewers’ scores, the committee debates and reviewers convince each other to either raise or lower their individual score. The final score for the candidate is the average of all the reviewers’ scores. All the scores are then ranked. Lets say this year’s quota for early admits was 100 ppl (this is a random number), then the top 100 applicants got in early. Generally, to get in early your final score should be at least above a 9. I think a 9.5 and up is an almost guaranteed early admit. </p>

<p>Hope this helps! Good luck to you!</p>