Sex: F
Hooks: 1st gen and legacy (sister goes there)
School: In the most richest county in the world with excellent schools (Thomas Jeff. High is in the same county)
Race: Asian
Overall UW GPA: 3.6
Freshman Year GPA: 3.4 UW
I take the most rigorous courses in my school: HN Geo, HN Eng, HN Bio, HN History, Chinese 1
Sophomore Year GPA: 3.09 UW
Again, most rigorous courses: HN Alg2, HN Eng, HN Bio, AP World, Chinese 2
the reason why my GPA was so low this year is because i have a C in AP World which obviously brings me down a ton):
Predictions/Goals:
Junior Year: 3.9 GPA
Physics, Precalc/Tric, AP Lang, AP Psych, HN US History, Chinese 3, Peer Helping
Senior Year: 3.9 GPA
AP Physics, AP Calc, HN Govt, HN Eng/AP Lit??, AP Macro/Micro, AP Chinese, AP Stat
I also have extremely unique and great EC’s (I am a very competitive figure skater who skates about 15 hours a week with a handful of medals from local competitions and I am in the highest level possible (Senior). I am also a dedicated figure skating coach who works about 4 hours a week for children, seniors, and people with mental disabilities. I can ask my boss to write me a good rec, because he really likes me and thinks im an incredibly active instructor).
My family has a history of doing incredibly well on the SAT’s because my dad is very good at helping me and my sibs prepare. My oldest sister who graduated HS with a gpa of 3.3/4 UW gpa and went to VT engineering had a near perfect SAT score, with maybe 50 points off (the 1600 SAT) and my sister who went to TJHSST and went to Columbia got a 2350 on her SAT, so my prediction would be:
2200-2300
by the way, I will apply as an engineering major to increase my chances since I am a female. If I get accepted, I will switch immediately to business!
You are technically not a legacy if your sister attends the school but they will give your app a little extra consideration. If your sister is in good standing at the school you might get a slight boost. That being said, your gpa (which is closer to a 3.2 than a 3.6 if I am reading your current stats correctly) pretty much puts Columbia out of reach for you. Also, because you have no national awards in figure skating, it will be viewed as any other EC that kids do and not given any special regard. I suggest you research schools that are more in line with your stats.
Lastly, your master plan to be accepted into engineering and then switch to business won’t work for two reasons. First, switching from Columbia engineering to Columbia college is extremely difficult. And second, Columbia does not have an undergraduate business major (they do have a few business course you can take now but not enough to to major in it).
Good luck with everything!
@falcon1 thanks for the input. I decided that I would go for columbia economics instead. What if by the end of beginning of senior year i had a 3.6 uw and 4.08 W?
Your grades through junior year are too low for Columbia. Being a female interested in engineering is a slight boost but you have no track record of accomplishment in science and math that I can see to support your application, so applying to the engineering school with the hope of switching to the college to study economics is a highly unlikely strategy. Things like having a sibling legacy or being interested in an underrepresented field only matter if you have the goods to go along with them. I really do think you should wait to see how you do on the SATs and then focus on schools where your grades and scores make you a competitive applicant for them instead of targeting a school with a 6+% acceptance rate with backdoor strategies. That’s my two cents advice. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
@Falcon1 thanks. I actually decided a eek ago that I was going to go for economics in columbia, not engineering. And I will take my SATs at least 3 times in order to get a 2300
@Falcon1 also, I may apply ED to columbia to boost my chances plus the fact that my sister went there
I hope it works out for you.
I just saw that in five days you started 38 threads and had 143 posts. Does this sound a little obsessive to you? I think that rather than continue down this path you coukd more wisely spend your time concentrating on trying to end your school year on a high note ( especially trying to raise that AP Wolrld grade from a C to a B. You should probably stay off CC for a while in my humble opinion.
@falcon1 if you can see the threads, most of the threads are chances, and I copied and pasted the same exact op for almost 20 of them in 1 day, and also the 143 posts is because of this 1 thread that has gotten many views
^and why are you stalking me haha
I didn’t stalk you. I noticed that you seem to be asking the asking the same questions over and over again so I clicked on your name to see how many threads you actually have out there. It took me almost three years to get 814 posts and at the rate your going you’ll have that in a few weeks. But whatever, I hope you get the answers you’re looking for.
@falcon1 like i said, 2/3 of them were chances and all were in the same exact time, and same exact op!
@cowycam7 Look, if you don’t see the merit in my advice that having to monitor and respond to posts on 38 separate threads all at the same time is a giant waste of time, then by all means, follow your own judgement.
Getting back to your original question. Even if you put up a 3.9 gpa junior year, by my calculation, you will be applying to Columbia with a 3.46 gpa if you apply ED. You are NOT a legacy which is different from having a sibling at the school. Even being a legacy at the Ivies and top schools is not what it used to be. Yale, for instance, only accepts 20% of their legacies. Princeton which has one of of the highest Ivy preferences for legacies is still only around 30%. Columbia has one of the lowest preferences for legacies with recent freshman classes having less than 10% legacy kids in them (that is different from the legacy acceptance rate which I don’t know).
I personally know quite a few Ivy league (and similar school) single and double legacies from top HS’s with excellent credentials who were rejected this year. Many were head scratchers because they would have been shoo-ins not to long ago.
Harvard and Princeton appear to slightly favor siblings but they have never overtly stated as such. However, I would imagine Columbia has the one of the of lowest preferences for siblings in keeping with their legacy policy but I have no actual knowledge of this.
In any event, you are in one of the most competitive demographic groups and in one of the most competitive geographic areas of the country. I am terrible at chancing people but I would say that having a 3.46 (even with a decent SAT score which, unfortunately, has become fairly commonplace in your ultra-competitive demographic group) would not be offset by either applying early or having a sister at the school. Both those things would ever so slightly help IF you were an truly outstanding candidate to begin with.
If you plan on going ahead with your strategy, I hope I am wrong about your chances and you somehow get accepted.
FWIW, when I first came across CC, I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, I immediately told my daughter to visit the site. She looked at it once and told me that she was too busy actually doing things than to spend a lot of time reading what are sometimes very neurotic posts. She was later accepted early to Harvard and did so without the help of strangers on the Internet. There certainly can be some helpful advice on CC but you will have greater success with your plans if you limit your activity on this site and actually get out there and do things. Raise your gpa, get great AP, SAT or ACT, and SAT II scores and make sure you are the type of person that people will want to say and write terrific things about. None of this can be accomplished by obsessively posting threads and responses here.
@falcon1 I thought they look at senior year grades for semester 1 in ED?
They will have one quarter’s worth of grades at most before they go into committee. They will mostly be looking to see if their high performing candidates are maintaining their excellence not if a mediocre applicant is doing better. This is an important distinction. The one qtr’s worth of grades will not be factored into your gpa.
feel free to inbox me to talk.