Academics:
34 ACT composite
3.87 unweighted/4.33 weighted GPA
Class rank: About the top 17% mark, my school is pretty competitive though
6 AP classes by graduation
I scored 4 points above what the cutoff for NMSF in my state was last year, so I’ll probably get NMSF
Extracurriculars:
Varsity football since sophomore year
Recreational league basketball team captain since freshman year
Officer in JROTC with the rank of Cadet Captain(I’ll likely move up to Cadet Major next year)
I received a national level award in JROTC for leadership
I went to Boys State and was elected to a state level position(state level is the highest level)
National Honor Society member junior and senior year
Other:
Half White half Asian from a fairly high income family
I would say 1 out of 4 or 5
@BatesParent2019 Alright, thanks! What do you think is the weakness in my application that’s make my chances so low?
Vanderbilt has a 13% acceptance rate. Saying you have a 20-25% chance of getting in is EXTREMELY generous.
As mentioned the acceptance rate is 13% and that school has a pretty accurate acceptance rate. Kids just don’t apply there to take a shot like Ivyies and its not popular with international students.
I gave you a bump because your ACT is at the top of the middle 50% but in fact your odds could be lower but certainly above the average acceptance rate.
If you want to apply to such selective schools you have to be prepared for these odds.
@BatesParents2019 Alright, makes sense. Thanks for the help!
Sorry to break this to u but the essays r the difference makers at these top universities as well as the letters of recommendations. I spoke with the Vanderbilt admissions officer for my area and she told me that those are the real difference makers. (She accidentally gave me the finger when explaining it to me lol)
@2016senior At my number 1 school(which has been ranked the best in the country) letters of recommendation are only 10% of the application score and the essays do not factor into your application score.
@balrog29 Im just saying what the Vanderbilt admissions officer told me (her advice was mainly for Vanderbilt) but I’m pretty sure those are the real difference makers at top schools (except if u have a near perfect average and test scores which is probably what ur #1 probably cares about)
@2016senior I doubt letters of recommendation are the biggest factor in the admissions process at any school. They can probably make a difference though. The average ACT an my number 1 is only a 28.
@balrog29 letters of rec and essays are what separates students who have the same stats which is the difference maker in admissions. the essays are the real difference makers though.
@balrog29 I wasn’t saying that letters of recommendation were the biggest factor in admission. I was just saying that they can be difference makers if u get an exceptional letter.
@2016senior I agree, letters of recommendation can be/are the difference maker like that admissions officer said. But I would be surprised if they made up more than 20% of the application at Vanderbilt or any school for that matter. 20%, or even 10% is still huge in any admissions process though and probably often makes the difference between acceptance or rejection. Imagine if you gave a basketball team 10% more points for every shot they made, they’d win just about every game. On the other hand, if you gave 10% fewer points for every shot that team made, they’d probably lose just about every game. The same concept would be true for the college admissions process. A candidate would probably have a very hard time getting in without that 10% of the application, but that same candidate would probably have a fairly easy time getting in with the 10%.
However, one could argue in that every part of the admissions process can be the difference maker. ACT/SAT scores, GPA, extracurricular activities, interviews etc. They can all be deal breakers and it’s very difficult for one to get in if they do horrible in any of those areas.
Because Vanderbilt is so selective, it’s essentially a crapshoot. Alabama basically has guaranteed acceptance once you fall into a certain area. Check out the Vanderbilt results threads and sees how many high stats students got rejected especially seeing that you have gotten your fair share of B’s. Elite colleges reject applicants with perfect scores all the time. It goes beyond that. Look at @Dividerofzero and then come back and talk about how certain you are about admissions at any elite school.
He had a 4.0 with a 36 on the ACT and 2400 on the SAT.
His results:
MIT Early Action: deferred, then rejected
Caltech Early Action: deferred, then rejected
Stanford: rejected
Harvard: rejected
Princeton: rejected
Yale: rejected
Columbia: rejected
UPenn: waitlsited
UC Berkeley: waitlisted EECS
Johns Hopkins: waitlisted BME
Cornell: waitlisted CS
Carnegie Mellon: accepted ECE (FA covered 90-95% of need)
As was implied in another post, it doesn’t quite work that way. Schools like Vandy get more than their fair share of what I guess I would be forced to call “deluded dreamers”, people that apply to schools like Vandy Duke, Ivies, etc. with ACT scores of 25 and a GPA of 3.25. Barring being a recruited athlete or a descendent of the Commodore himself, they are not getting in but they are counted in the 87% denial rate. Clearly your chances are better than theirs, ergo your chances are better than 13%. I would say in your case 20-25% is probably accurate, but it might be higher even. We cannot know some aspects of your application that the adcoms will see.
As far as essays, I think you might not be looking at them quite the right way. Suffice it to say they are in fact more important than you might think, beyond any “weighting” you might have been told. Sure, if you have stats that are well above the average for a certain school the essays might not matter, but even that is not always the case. Many schools use the essay to see if that student is really interested in attending, or if they are far more likely to go elsewhere and is just using the school as a safety. And certainly among the highly selective schools like Vandy, once they have it narrowed down to a set of students that are very similar in their profile, the essays might well be the tie-breakers. At that point any weightings you were told or read about are out the window; the essays become all important. The bottom line is that all schools are different, and it isn’t always how it appears. Tulane, for example, calls their “Why Tulane” essay optional, but it is only optional if you really don’t care about getting in.
You have a decent chance b/c of your good scores and varsity football. But, 17% is a bit low for class rank. I’d say low reach. Chance back?: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1778302-chance-an-asian-yale-duke-williams.html#latest