<p>Hi! I'm a female, white, and I went to high school in rural NC.
My ACT is a 31 (S:31, R:36, E:33, M:24) but will hopefully rise before November. My SAT is lower (1890) and I will not be submitting it.
My GPA is a 4.3 W, 3.6/3.7 UW, but should rise in my senior year. I'm top 20 out of about 350. I've had all A's and B's except for an 83 in Chemistry and an 82 in AP Statistics in my junior year. My course load is the most rigorous at my high school- Pre Calc, AP Lang, APUSH, AP Stats, French II, Honors Chem, and then online classes with the NC School of Science and Math - H. Ecocriticism, H. Intro to Western Political Thought, H. International Relations, and H. Intro to Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.
My EC's are marching band, winter guard, NCSSMO, dance, voice, and lots of theatre.
I plan to apply ED to Northwestern for theatre, and eventually double major in political science. Would this be beneficial, or would another semester of good grades help my case more than ED?
My senior year course load is tentatively AP Calc AB, AP Calc BC, AP Physics, AP Lit, AP Gov, AP World, AP Bio, AP Gov, H. Genetics and a humanities class (basically the history of science).
Is my app strong? Any advice is greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>Advice is much appreciated! Other top choices right now are Brown and NYU.</p>
<p>To be honest, there’s no real way to chance you accurately. NU is a tough school, plus it’s one of “those schools” that considers way more than just grades and scores. If you’re taking the most rigorous course load and you can raise your ACT even just one or two you have a great shot though. I’d say go ED, if you love Northwestern, because there was a 1/3 or so acceptance rate. Just keep getting good grades, study for the ACT and be passionate about your ECs. Find safeties you like, find matches you like, etc.</p>
<p>Also, I wouldn’t take Calc AB and Calc BC at the same time, I’d just go for BC if you can do it. Kind of a waste of time to learn AB when you’ll already be learning it in BC.</p>
<p>Thanks so much! We do block scheduling, so I’ll take AB first semester, then BC.
It reassures me a lot that NW focuses on the whole person. I know my GPA isn’t perfect, but hopefully my ACT (I just took it Saturday, and feel pretty confident) and commitment to my extracurriculars will make up for it. I plan on visiting this fall as well- maybe an interview will help my case as well.</p>
<p>I believe that the consensus around here is that for a qualified student, the chances of admission are greater applying ED than they are RD.</p>
<p>As to the rest – I agree with every word that Crimsonstained said.</p>