Chance Please?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Dartmouth College
1

<p>Hi, I’m a senior at an extremely competitive boarding school and I’m applying ED to Dartmouth. Thanks for reading!</p>

<p>State: New Hampshire (school), Massachusetts (home)…does anyone know if going to school in New Hampshire means you are considered “in-state”?
Gender: Male
Race: Caucasian</p>

<p>SAT: Math-740 Reading-780 Writing-740 (2260)</p>

<p>SATII: Latin 740, Literature -720, Math II – 700</p>

<p>GPA/Rank: My boarding school doesn’t rank and uses a unique grading system, so we don’t have GPAs, ranks, or offer APs (we’re still prepared for the tests though). It’s extremely competitive and usually about 20-30% of each senior class goes on to Ivies.</p>

<p>AP: English Literature (5)</p>

<p>Resume:
Education:
• High Honor Roll (2008-2010)
o National Latin Exam Summa Cum Laude (2008-2010)
• National Merit Semifinalist
• School Award for Excellence in Latin</p>

<p>Extracurricular Activities:
• School Treasurer / Senior Officer of Student Council (takes up most of my time)
• Editor of school newspaper for past two years
• School Choir (past three years)
• Vocal Chamber Ensemble (three years), have been on tour to South Africa and Cuba
• Head of the Gospel Choir (three years)
• Head of Trailblazing / Trail Maintenance Club
• Senior Member of school Outing Club
• Head of school satire blog
• Self-taught guitar player (five years, have performed at school events)</p>

<p>Volunteer Work:
• Spent over 100 hours at a non-profit for the homeless in my town. Also volunteered when my singing group went to South Africa by working nearly 50 hours at an orphanage catered to children with AIDS outside Johannesburg </p>

<p>Athletics:
• Cross Country Skiing – Team Captain, skied for past two years
• Junior Varsity Tennis – Team Captain, played for three years
Employment:
• Paid Day Camp Counselor for past four years, in charge of sixty kids ranging from ages 4-12</p>

<p>Essays:
I think my essays are pretty good; I wrote about working as a camp counselor (short answer) and when I got lost climbing a mountain on my own (personal statement). My peer rec was written by my roommate, who is known for being one of the best writers in our school. My teacher recs were written by a) my english teacher who has openly called me his favorite student and b) one of my science teachers who was also my adviser</p>

<p>Note - Even though we don’t have GPAs, we do use Naviance, and the scattergrams are customized for our school to compute a GPA on a 20 point scale. The average accepted stats for Dartmouth on this scale are GPA 16.94 / SAT 2139. On this scale, my GPA is 18.24</p>

2

<p>Is this “extremely competitive school” St. Paul’s?</p>

<p>Anyway, your chances look good.</p>

3

<p>^Haha, I was just thinking the same thing. In New Hampshire, hmmm.</p>

4

<p>There’s also Exeter.</p>

<p>Naviance at these schools is fairly useless unfortunately because they have so many recruited athletes, legacies and URMs.</p>

<p>If your grades stack up, (and they will know where you rank as they know these school’s grade distributions cold) it will become about who else applied from your school. So you’re in the best shape if they aren’t recruiting several athletes this year and you don’t have 5 legacies in your class.</p>

5

<p>^Private schools such as Exeter and St. Paul’s do it a lot differently than public schools. They can control where people apply (to some extent), and are on a first name basis with the adcoms of the Ivies; hence, inter-class competition isn’t much of an issue.</p>