<p>Hey, currently a rising senior. I go to one of the top public schools in the country (illinois). I want to major in history and either do international relations or law (international or environmental law).</p>
<p>The numbers-
GPA: 4.0, Weighted: 5.1ish?
ACT Score: 33 (taken twice, superscore 35, writing 10)
AP Exams: US History (5), US Gov (5), AP English Lang (5), AP Psych (5)
SAT II: US History (770), Math II (770), Lit (690 eeeek)</p>
<p>Extracurriculars-
Latin Certamen (kind of like quizbowl but for latin): City MVP freshman year, 3rd in state fresh and soph and 2nd junior year
Best buddies (friendship program for special needs students at my school)
Jewish Student Union (not jewish, but i find it interesting)
Soccer- JV fresh and soph (captain sophomore year)
Track- Varsity soph and junior year (city and sectional finalist in long jump with a PR of 20'2)
Swimming- Varsity Junior year (All city for backstroke)
~a bunch of other average extracurriculars~</p>
<p>Work/Service:
Work at my parents restaurant part time
Have an internship for a local congressman (100+ hours this summer)
Work for a church nearby (idk how many hours)
will have about 200 hours of service</p>
<p>other details: i interview pretty well, I'm a strong essay writer, and i have close relationships with both my teachers who are giving me recs (and im getting one from my congressman's office)
next year im taking 4 aps: AP Latin Vergil/Caesar, AP Calc Bc, Ap Microeconomics, AP English Lit</p>
<p>Please chance me for:
WashU
HYP
Tufts
Georgetown (SFS)
McGill
Oxford/Cambridge
Duke
Brown
Amherst
Colombia</p>
<p>Oxford/Cambridge: high high reach
HYP: high reach, but just enough chance as anyone to get it
Columbia: mid reach
Amherst: mid reach
Brown: mid reach
WashU: mid reach
Duke: low reach
Tufts: low reach / high match
Georgetown (SFS): low reach / high match
McGill: low match</p>
<p>The thing with reaches is that you probably won’t get into any. If that’s your list then it needs some work. You might want to look into American, NYU, GWU, and some other internationally-minded schools for backups.</p>
<p>Essentially the schools you’re aiming for have three times too many applicants with resumes and stats such as yours. So even if your odds are slightly better than 1 in 20 (which is what they are at HYP) they’re at best 1 in 5, meaning you have 80% odds not getting in.
You have all your dream schools and you’re among the few who have a shot, but
WashU, HYP, Georgetown (SFS), Oxford/Cambridge, Duke, Brown, Amherst, Columbia are all crapshoot. That means you can’t even count them as being on your actual list.
Tufts may reject you just because they don’t want to be anyone’s safety.</p>
<p>If you want to apply to the UK, remember you can only apply to Oxford OR Cambridge and that everything must be sent in September so that they can decide whether to invite you to sit for their papers or not. The only thing that will matter with them is how many APs (you have a minimum number but check if they’re in the subjects they want!), what scores. Also, do you know what college you’d be applying to? Go to the “international/UK” forum, too. Lots of info there.
For IR, LSE is actually better than Oxford/Cambridge, BTW. UCL and King’s are not bad, either. I assume you know you wouldn’t have a “typical” college experience (dorms, campus, electives, etc).
McGill is similar to the British Unis; they’ll look at your grades, transcript, and AP scores.</p>
<p>Right now, you have all your dream schools. What you need to do is find 2 safeties so that you’re not among the bright kids who post threads “I got admitted nowhere” - it’s disheartening because they’ve done everything right <em>except</em> choosing their safeties well… and they end up with local state U or community college as their only choices (or PG or gap year if they’re lucky). You don’t want to be one of those. It’s better to be admitted to 6 colleges and have an embarassment of reaches, than having no choice.
A safety is a school where you’re SURE you’ll be admitted and where you’re SURE you’ll have enough money to attend, but also where you’ll be reasonably happy to attend if admitted. That may mean your flagship’s honors college, a LAC ranked 35-60 (Macalester comes to mind), a school that offers merit aid for your stats and has a great Honors Program (a CUNY+Macaulay?)…
Once you have these two schools, you can apply to all of the others and you’re sure to end up somewhere where you’ll be happy.</p>