Chance me Please - I'm in love with Brown

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
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<p>Hello everyone, i recently started checking out Brown and I fell in love with it, I am thinking of applying Early Decision, either Brown or Duke. Here are my stats:</p>

<p>Location: Large Public High School in SC 2300 + students</p>

<p>Ethnicity: Indian</p>

<p>GPA/Rank: 4.0 UW and 5.1 W Rank 3/510
I will have taken 14 AP’s by graduation. </p>

<p>SAT/SAT II’s:</p>

<p>This is my weakest part of the application and I know will be the decider, just like the other kid on this forum. </p>

<p>SAT: 1320/1980 - I am going to take one more time, but I like to expect the worse</p>

<p>SAT II’s: 760 - US History, 710 Biology</p>

<p>Extra-curriculars: (strongest part of my application)</p>

<p>*I am the Youth Governor of South Carolina’s Youth In Government Program, i serve over 1200 students all over the state and I have made significant changes to the program that will last throughout the program. </p>

<p>*Speech and Debate, I served last year as Captain of the largest team in SC, winning 3 state championships. I won 1 state championship this past year and I have qualified to the National Forensic League Nationals 2 times in a row.</p>

<p>*Boy Scouts, I am currently working on my Eagle Project in order to attain my Eagle Badge. I am working with the Red Cross, running a community-wide drive to collect stuff for “care-packages”
As a Boy Scout I am currently serving as a Den Chief, i go to Cub-Scout meetings and lead a Den every Monday, I also served as several leadership positions in my troop. </p>

<p>*Youth Leadership Greenville, A selective leadership program that lasted 1 year, i recently graduated, it is run by the Chamber of Commerce. </p>

<p>*Vision 2020 for Science, A selective group of students were chosen to design a state of the art science facility in our community, the project will be completed in December, and we all get scholarships along with it. </p>

<ul>
<li>Beta Club and National Honors Society - Basic service and volunteer clubs, nothing important.</li>
</ul>

<p>Basically with my EC’s i like to stress Leadership and Service in everything I have done in high school, all my activities represent that. And as a leader, I go beyond serving, I try to implement changes that last. </p>

<p>As you can see my EC’s and GPA/Rank are good but my SAT 1320 is what I am really worried about. Does anyone have any comments, or anything that will be of benefit to me, thanks a lot.</p>

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<p>It wouldn't hurt to retake the SAT. By 1320 do you mean math and verbal?</p>

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<p>Have you considered going anywhere else besides Brown or Duke?</p>

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<p>yea its math and verbal, and a 1980 with writing, and yes of course i have considered other schools it would be stupid not to, im just inquiring about brown in particular</p>

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<p>It will be tough with those SATs...study for them, it worked for me!</p>

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<p>22%. maybe 30% with a little love.</p>

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<p>yea im working on my SATs, ill be taking them in october, so hopefully i can hit 1400+. it just seems that all these ivies care so much for sat. i bet people can get away with lower gpa's and higher sat's than vise-versa which blows</p>

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<p>no, Ivies and Duke etc. are schools which have the luxury of only taking students with both high gpas and high SATs (athletes nonwithstanding)</p>

<p>that said, you have a better shot at Duke because they give a mild, but certainly noticable, preference to students from the carolinas</p>

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<p>Duke is big on leadership specifically so that may give you a better chance at Duke. Plus, Duke is definitely less selective than Brown.</p>

<p>Get your SATs to 2200+ ideally to put you in the realm of serious consideration, but I guess 2100+ wouldn't kill you. Bottom line: you've got to study really hard for that test, and I get angry with schools for not telling kids that the test is extremely important.</p>

<p>For example, if you look at kids with 2400s applying to harvard, harvard will tell you that scores aren't everything and that "we reject X percentage of those kids." However, the acceptance rate for those kids is well over 60%! That's 6-7 times the normal admissions rate! SAT scores are critically important, and a variety of credible sources (including research conducted at Princeton <a href="http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/Tje/EspenshadeSSQPtII.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://opr.princeton.edu/faculty/Tje/EspenshadeSSQPtII.pdf&lt;/a&gt;) say that for Asian students, higher SAT scores are more critical.</p>

<p>I'm sorry to tell you this man, but I think it's good to understand the reality of the situation. With so many more people taking hours and hours of SAT tutoring and preparing earlier and earlier for the test, average SATs among the top students are increasing. You've got to be competitive in this category. </p>

<p>Your activities/leadership aren't anything short of top-tier, but with those SATs and your background it's unlikely that you'll get the results you seek with Brown and Duke. HOWEVER, you still have a substantial amount of time for the SAT, and you can even try your hand at the ACT test. </p>

<p>Please keep in mind that objectively you are an outstanding student with outstanding credentials. Winning the admissions game, however, isn't always strongly correlated with that. Best of luck.</p>

<p>(Sorry if this was harsh, but I'd rather have people around here understand how things really work).</p>