chance me?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Carnegie Mellon University
1

State: Nebraska
HS Ranking (US News): Unranked, but an IB school, average ACT score of 29, widely considered the most competitive school in the area
Student Rank: 25/589
Unweighted GPA: 4.0
Weighted GPA: 4.149 (my school does not weigh honors classes if that matters)
Summer School before every high school year
Class: 2017
Major: Civil Engineering
ACT: Composite 35 (36 superscore counting a Reading 36 from another sitting), English 35, Reading 35, Math 35, Science 36

Clubs/Activities/Extracurriculars/eetc.:
Marching Band 9th-12th
Concert Band 9th-12th
Jazz Band 9th-12th
Show Choir Band 9th-12th
Cross Country 12th
Spanish Club 9th-10th
Diversity Club 9th-10th
Chemistry Club 10th
University of Nebraska-Omaha Honor Band 10th-11th
Private Trombone Lessons 4th-12th
Omaha Area Youth Orchestra 8th-10th
All-State Orchestra 11th
School Pit Orchestra 11th
Work experience at fast food restaurant summer before 12th grade

Volunteer/Community Service:
Autism Walk Volunteer 10th
After Prom Volunteer 9th-11th
regular biweekly food pantry volunteering 9th-12th
Fireworks stand volunteer

Leadership:
Band Leadership/Section Leader 12
NHS 11-12
Local Food Bank new volunteer assistant 9-12
Shift leader at food bank fireworks stand 9-11
Tech Team Leader at local church 10-12
Peer Tutoring 10-12
taught 5th grade trombone lessons 10th
Diversity/Leadership training 10th-12th
Mustang Ambassador (getting new students familiar with the school, schedule, etc.)

9th Grade Schedule:
American History
Biology
Concert Band/Marching Band
English 9
Honors Spanish 2
Honors Algebra 2
Gym Class
Intro to Computer Science

10th Grade Schedule:
AP Human Geography
AP Statistics
Chemistry
English 10
Honors Spanish 3
Marching Band/Wind Ensemble
Zoology
Debate 1

11th Grade Schedule:
AP Biology
English 11
Honors Spanish 4/Spanish 5
Honors Precalculus
Marching Band/Wind Ensemble
Physics
Psychology
AP Psychology

Predicted 12 Grade Schedule
Marching Band/Wind Ensemble
AP Physics 1
AP Lang and Comp
AP Calc AB
US Gov
Law Studies
Accounting 1
AP Macroeconomics
Intro to Engineering Design 1

2

Your grades and test scores are excellent. How did you get 25th with with perfect grades and near perfect test scores? They must have 24 students with perfect grades and test scores. Your ECs are good but they are not too competitive. However, you are in Nebraska. I don’t think that state is very competitive (you tell me) compared to like California or Virginia. Therefore, I think you have a decent chance. Just Curious, you said it is an IB school yet all your courses are AP?

3

@idkName My school is VERY competitive (at least in my own opinion), and I wasn’t interested in joining the IB program because of how it restricts a lot of your schedule, so I just did AP classes in areas I was interested in.

4

Your odds are excellent, especially being from Nebraska. I’d say this is a target school given your position. That said, nothing is certain, so I think quiet confidence is what you should have.

5

Is this the most competitive schedule? While I agree you have competitive classes, most competitive schools want to see that if your school offers 5 APs, you take 5 APs!

6

@collegeguru2017
that is partially true, college do want you to take challenging courses. However, it isn’t as if you should take as many APs as possible. If you want go to into CS and you have no interest in Art, you should not take AP Art History. Instead, you should take as many APs that you interested in as possible, like AP CS, AP Calc, etc. Ultimately, it will come down to your ECs instead of your classes. MIT admission officer once said that the people who are taking challenging classes that they are not interested in to ‘wow’ the admission officers are wasting their time. They should spend those time on doing stuff they are interested in.

7

@idkName I agree about being interested but if everyone else at that school is in an intensive AP schedule and they get 10 applicants who are in majority/all APs from that school who have better GPAs then one applicant who took one AP with a worse GPA, it’s a pretty easy elimination process.