<p>Stats:</p>
<p>International Student from Pakistan.
Not applying for aid
SAT I: 2070 - 750 CR, 660 M, 660 W (retook in May, hopefully much better score)
GPA: not calculated at my school but if it were it'd be 3.87 UW
GCSEs: 11 A's
Class Rank: Again not calculated, per se. Was 8/176 in the GCSE results at my school. Definitely top 10% if not Top 5%.
My school sends a great deal of people to Ivies and other top universities each year. This year we had Princeton, Duke, Northwestern, Brown, Middlebury, amongst others. Last year, we had Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Penn, Dartmouth, Cornell, Chicago, Vanderbilt, etc.
Essay: I topped in my school in English Language, and I won the award for best essay writer so I think they'll be reasonably good, hopefully.
Recs: Will be very good, fingers crossed
I'm President of the Drama Club, Lead Role in the Play, done 3 years of debating, won numerous tournaments, shortlisted for national team, MUNs nationally and internationally, won the best english declamation speaker and parliamentary debator awards at school. I've been a regular freelancer for a national newspaper for the past year. Chief Editor of literary magazine.
on the school tennis team this year.</p>
<p>Here is a comment on the class of 2016 offers of admission from the W&L website:</p>
<p>“The admitted students have impressive academic credentials. The average combined score on the math and verbal sections of the SAT is 1,415 (of a possible 1,600). The average score on the ACT is 31. The admitted applicants ranked in the 95th percentile of their high school classes, and 90 percent are in the top decile…The 1,064 accepted students come from 48 states, the District of Columbia, and 21 countries and possessions. There are 518 men and 546 women in the group with 21 percent multicultural students, including 194 American minorities. Seventy of the students are children of W&L alumni.”</p>
<p>Ok thanks! My current score is 1410 math and verbal and I am in the top 5%. does that mean W&L is a match or a reach?</p>
<p>I think unless you are “hooked”, you need to be in the 75th percentile to begin to consider a school a match. At W&L, that means a CR score of 740, a Math score of 740, and a Writing score of 730. If you take the ACT, the 75th percentile score is 32. I’m not sure what the 75th percentile is for class rank/GPA, but it is, by definition, above the average.
I know it sounds harsh, but it usually takes more than being at the average in most of these highly selective schools to begin to have a realistic chance of admission, i.e. a “match”. The legacies, recruited athletes, URMs, and musical and arts prodigies can all certainly do the work, and are all smart, but are, as a whole often BELOW the average for the school. So that’s why a “regular” kid has to be above.</p>
<p>yeah ok, I get it. Hopefully my May scores will push me up to the 75th percentile! Thanks!</p>