I’m a Minnesota student applying to Reed from an alternative (but public) high school with similar values and grading to Reed, I’m also queer and am doing a full year of college courses for my senior year, focusing on the humanities.
GPA: 3.98 W, 3.69 U/W
ACT: 32 composite, 36 in reading and writing, 29 in STEM, 11 on the essay (which is out of 12)
I’ve done 2 years of a city run commission that distributes grants for youth groups around the city and acts as a youth voice to the city council, I set rubrics, ran interviews, etc. Senior year I’m working on the board for a youth performance company, and I’ve been doing art and writing related stuff through most of high school along with part time/summer paid work sophomore - senior year.
I’m in a very similar position: I have a lower GPA but I go to a rigorous private school which counteracts that, however I’m just nervous the workload at read will crush me.
The workload may demand that you have a good answer to this question: “How many hours are there in a work-week?” If you think 40 is a good number (typical number for typical job), then you need to adjust your number upwards for Reed. By 50% or more, i.e., 60+ hours.
Never fear, there are actually 24x7 (168) hours in a week. But at Reed you need to think about academics, or do academics for about half of that time. You will be rewarded – as I have been – if you can focus that much and engage the curricular and other opportunities at Reed.