Chance me?? =)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Williams College
1

<p>Sex: Female
Race: White
US Citizenship: Yes
Parent's Marital Status: Divorced (almost 12 years)</p>

<p>High School: Competitive, Public
Other: summer@brown course - Laboratory Research in Biomedicine
GPA: 94
Rank: N/A
SAT: 760CR 760M 660W
SAT II Chemistry: 740
SAT II US: 710
SAT II Math Level 2: 660
^Probably retaking math in October</p>

<p>High School Courses:
Freshman Year:
Bio H
Geometry
Choir
Italian 2
Global History 1H
English 9H</p>

<p>Sophomore Year: (Don't even ask me how I fit all of this in my schedule)
Chem H
Trig/Algebra II H
Italian 3
Global History 2H
English 10H
Choir
Chamber Choir
Health
Science Research</p>

<p>Junior Year:
AP Chem
Pre-Calc H
College Level Italian
APUSH
AP English Language
Science Research</p>

<p>Senior Year:
AP Bio
Physics H
AP Calc AB
AP English Lit
AP Economics (Micro and Macro)
Science Research</p>

<p>Activities:
Stage Crew: 9,10, 11, 12 * Leadership position starting in 11
NHS: 10, 11, 12
Newspaper: 11, 12 *2 leadership positions starting in 11
Veterans History Project: 10, 11, 12
Hospital Volunteer: 11, 12
Peer Tutoring: 9, 10 ,11, 12</p>

<p>Recommendations: Excellent! My SciRe teacher (3 years), my AP Chem teacher<em>possibly</em> (2 years), and my English teacher (1 year+Newspaper advisor) plus my school counselor loves me!
Essay is coming along rather nicely! I have 3 or 4 written and in the edit process!</p>

<p>If you could chance me for Williams that would be great!! I'm also probably applying Hopkins, Cornell, Brown, URochester, SUNY Geneseo, College of William and Mary, UVM, and UChicago.</p>

<p>Thank you! I promise I'll chance you back if you want and I won't be offended if you say something negative! I just want some kind of perspective!</p>

2

<p>You probably have a pretty good chance of getting into Williams, but since it is a LAC you might have to improve your SAT writing. The same thing applies to Brown, since it is a pretty liberal Ivy. You should also probably be able to get into SUNY Geneso. I would say you have a good shot at Hopkins because of your research. I’m not too sure about UVM, Rochester or Cornell. For William and Mary go to the William and Mary page. There’s a rep who chances people pretty much every morning.</p>

3

<p>Thanks so much! I’m getting one letter of recommendation from my English teacher and paper advisor! Any chance that will help my case?</p>

4

<p>You’ve got fine stats. Even the writing is acceptable. This whole process teeters on the essays and the impression you give the committee. </p>

<p>Advice: </p>

<p>If you have no passion, no one will remember you. </p>

<p>Don’t sit around and polish your essays until they have lost all voice.</p>

5

<p>actually, Williams is one of a few schools that apparently doesn’t consider SAT writing scores. That might be changing in the next few years, but last I heard they only looked at math/cr. Writing is reviewed like an SAT2 if the scores are high enough, but probably won’t work against you otherwise. That’s good news for you!
Also, Williams says that they don’t care what SAT2 you take. If you think you’d do better on math1 than math2 i’d take that. I’ve heard that because the curve is different the schools don’t care so much about score differences.</p>

6

<p>also, i’d say you’re set for UVM. you’d probably be fine for UVM honors. I would say that your chances at Cornell are very similar (maybe even a little better) than at Williams.
Of course, applying ED will really help your odds anywhere!</p>

7

<p>For Williams, I’m not seein’ it unless you get those SATs all over 700. Many other people have similar stats. Your GPA is a bit low as well-any idea what percentile your class rank is?</p>

<p>You are low for any of the Ivies. Are you from NY? If so, I also predict wait-list for SUNY Geneseo. You are in at UVM and U of R. Why don’t you try HWS as a safety? You also might have more luck at Colgate.</p>

8

<p>@OldbatesieDoc Where are you getting your information from? If you take a good look at the class profile from 2014 you’ll see that people got in with below 550s on some sections of the SAT at Williams.</p>

<p><a href=“http://admission.williams.edu/files/2010/11/WilliamsProfile2014.pdf[/url]”>http://admission.williams.edu/files/2010/11/WilliamsProfile2014.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Also, if you look at College Board I’m in the 75th percentile (or almost) for my CR and Math scores</p>

<p>[College</a> Search - Williams College - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board)</p>

<p>Not only that, but since you’re a numbers person SUNY Geneseo’s top 75th percentile had a 1370/1600 where I have a 1520/1600. Next, you did not account for the level at which classes are taught at. Not everyone who goes to Geneseo takes AP classes.</p>

<p>[Class</a> of 2015 Profile | SUNY Geneseo](<a href=“http://www.geneseo.edu/admissions/freshman-profile]Class”>Fast Facts at a Glance: Fall 2022 | SUNY Geneseo)</p>

<p>And no, my school does not rank because of the competitive nature of the school and I have been told by an admissions officer at Brown that I am a competitive applicant for upper level schools.</p>

9

<p>Lexie, I wish you the best. I am just trying to give unbiased advise and recommend a back up plan. I always hope everyone gets their first choice.</p>

<p>There are thousands of applicants with scores like yours. URMs and recruited highly talented athletes are the majority of accepted students with lower scores. You seem to be neither. Williams takes the 90th and up for students who aren’t standouts. So do the Ivies.
Another “in” at Williams is musical talent. Everyone else has less than 15% chance of being accepted, even with excellent stats. So you could be lucky, and by all means apply. Kids at my local HS with 4.0s in IB, SATs over 2300, head of student orgs etc. have been rejected universally. The only ones to get in : recruited athletes.</p>

<p>My son was told at his Princeton interview that “he would have his choice of acceptances” No lie. He was rejected by Princeton and Williams, with everything you have, plus XC, track, plus 2200 SAT 1s, and 2400 SAT2s. Go figure. He was waitlisted at Midd, Tufts, Amherst, Dartmouth. He didn’t apply to safeties partly because of that fateful Princeton interview. I would personally like to strangle that woman.</p>

<p>So honestly. why I waste so much time advising students on CC is to encourage realism and back up plans, and prevent pain in the future. I hope you are lucky, really. But with these highly selective schools, the ADCOM is “crafting” a class. Being in the ballpark still makes it a crap shoot.</p>

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<p>Sorry-typo-SAT2s all over 740 but I guess I can’t multiply and talk on the phone, and type-let’s say 2300ish.</p>

11

<p>You’re borderline. Essays and rec letters are going to play a huge roll. If they don’t make you really stand out, your chances are dim.</p>

<p>That said, you have a strong track record and will end up somewhere great.</p>

12

<p>Not to pile on, but you are also female and white and I’ll extrapolate from your attending a competitive high school that you would not fit into the socioeconomic diversity tag. The 25/75 score ranges can be misleading. You are unhooked and overrepresented. Yes, your scores and grades are solid. You are going to really need to grab them with your writing and recs. You never know unless you try, you could be admitted everywhere. Certainly you are a reasonable entrant to the applicant pool at Williams. You could increase your chances by applying ED. Of the schools you have listed, Williams probably offers the best need-based aid if that is an issue.</p>

13

<p>I feel I have been unduly harsh, after some thought.</p>

<p>I can chance you around 40% for ed, and with the general applicant pool at 15% for RD. Note that if you apply to 10 highly selective colleges, you should get into at least one of them, maybe 2. I hope you do!
As you know, you could get into all 10-odds on that (1/7) to the 10th power. Maybe your odds are more like 1:4, which will increase your chances of hitting more than one.</p>

<p>If your intended major is a “hard” science(not bio) and it shows in your essays-or they ask it on the application-that would also increase your odds, but not significantly, with that Math2 score.</p>

14

<p>OBD, I see you recommending kids apply ED in many a ‘chance’ thread. Here you estimate that the OP has a nearly 3x better chance as an ED applicant. Do you really think it makes THAT much of a difference for an unhooked kid (non-legacy, non-recruited)? Do you have a solid basis for that contention?</p>

<p>I got a very detailed response on this topic from a Bowdoin adcom during the info-session when we visited last Monday, and he presented a pretty compelling case that the inflated ED admission stats are quite misleading and the two applicant pools really are fundamentally different. He left me fairly convinced that an unhooked kid really does not appreciably improve their chances by applying ED (at least at Bowdoin). Maybe the boost in odds is higher at other schools (e.g. Williams), but I have a hard time swallowing 40% vs 15%.</p>

<p>Just putting it out there, because, in my experience, adcoms will uniformly deny that it makes much difference, and I have a bit of a hard time with the notion that they’re all lying through their teeth.</p>

15

<p>rayrick, I can only quote a Williams admissions rep “of course ED helps”, said with a smile. That was spring of '08 but I don’t think things have changed. I don’t think it will help a low stat kid at all, but it will help the high stat ones who might get lost in the shuffle in RD.</p>

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<p>I’m impressed you got an admissions rep to admit that :slight_smile: That being said, I didn’t mean to suggest it doesn’t help at all. It’s a matter of degree.</p>

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<p>That was said openly at an info session with about fifty people in the room. It is a matter of degree but I think ED can be a very useful tool for the right applicant. And it can be a wonderful thing to end the madness in December rather than April.</p>

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<p>I have to go with OldBaties on the ED vs. RD statistics. White girls without hooks constitute the biggest group of applicants. ED definitely increases your odds of acceptance. During RD time, many, many more applicants - just like you - throw there application into the pool and now you are competing against a larger group. In addition, the addmissions staff is looking to put together a diverse class and fill gaps they may have. I have this first hand from several LAC admission offices.</p>

19

<p>So does Lexie really have a 3x higher chance of being accepted if she applies ED? Hmmm.</p>

<p>Well, like everyone, colleges want to be loved, too.</p>

<p>And as I have said before, I’m a numbers girl, so here are the approximate( I am also a lumper, not a splitter) numbers based on last year’s stats:</p>

<p>6634 applicants for 1240 acceptances for 550 places(guess the rest got into Midd as well) 538 applied ED. 217 accepted ED with 67 “aspiring athletes”. That leaves 150 of the 540 for about a 37 % acceptance rate-
Furthermore, the other 6100 students applied for only 1021 slots, for about a 16% acceptance rate.
So while it isn’t 3x higher, it’s substantially improved. If you really want Williams, it’s gotta be ED unless you have a “hook”</p>

20

<p>To further support this ED discussion… MY D is a freshamn at Williams this year and we took her out to dinner, along with 7 frends, and to our shock, all 8 applied ED. 2 were athletes and 2 were legacies, but its a pretty obvious choice these days…</p>