Chances at Brown, UPenn, Dartmouth, Rice, Vanderbilt, BC, BU?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

White male
SAT: 1540 (Math 760, Reading 780)
GPA: UW 3.73/4.0
Rank: 9/~200
Competitive/challenging private school
5s on AP Stats, Bio, English Lang, USH
Taking AP Euro, Calc BC, Physics, English Lit, American Government this year

ECs:
-Academic decathlon: state champions, second place in division at nationals, 8 individual state medals, 3 at nationals, state division high scorer, team high scorer at nationals
-Leader of veterans’ advocacy group responsible for organizing veterans’ benefits, raising awareness for veterans’ issues, and meeting with legislators to effect legal change
-President of school organization in which National English Honors Society members tutor/mentor younger students and students struggling with writing
-Percussion captain and 4-year member of school band, also played in pit orchestra for 5 musicals
-Participant and semifinalist on televised quiz show for two years

Awards:
National Merit Semifinalist
Member of NHS, NEHS, Mu Alpha Theta, Spanish Honors Society
Winner of state medal for excellence in history
AP Scholar award

Applying to major in history and political science

Essays are difficult to evaluate here, but I’ll give my Common App essay a 7.5/10 and my supplementals 8.5-9/10

My “hook” is that my father is permanently disabled from something that happened when I was in elementary school, and my mom has been hospitalized for the past year with a very bad autoimmune disease

2

Chances are average to below average. Also, your “hooks” are not hooks.

3

BC and BU will be match / high match and all the others will be high reaches. I like your academic decathlon experience and awards. Hopefully you applied to some safety colleges in case those above don’t work out?

4

Agree with @socaldad2002.

While your hooks may not be traditional URM hooks, they’re definitely extenuating circumstances, so good on you if you wrote about them.

At this stage just enjoy your senior year and let college admissions do their thing. There’s nothing else you can do now.

5

depending on the televised quiz show that might be a help. Let us know what happens in March. I assume all apps were/are RD

6

@socaldad2002
Yes, I was accepted to my safety schools EA, so luckily I have a few places to fall back on.

7

@daunt18

Yeah, that was the topic of my Common App essay (or at least the context in which I framed it)

8

If you didn’t ED, your chances are a lot lower for RD at these selective schools than they would have been ED. Some of these schools fill almost half the class ED. Some also have ED2. If you haven’t submitted your Rice application yet, you might mention your percussion experience and interest in the MOB, the Rice scatter band. https://mob.rice.edu

9

@maud_dib @socaldad2002 @daunt18 @sdl0625 @Houston1021

Felt as though I should update this thread after hearing back from everywhere. Excluding a few local acceptances because it would make it obvious who I am/where I live.

Fordham (EA): Accepted with full-tuition National Merit Scholarship

Notre Dame (EA): Rejected

Georgetown (EA): Deferred, then waitlisted

Iona College (EA): Accepted to Honors College with 22K President’s Scholarship + 2K Honors Scholarship

Northeastern (EA): Deferred, then accepted with 14K scholarship

Boston College (RD): Accepted

Boston University (RD): Accepted to Honors College with 25K National Merit Scholarship

Vanderbilt University (RD): Accepted

Harvard University (RD): Waitlisted

Princeton University (RD): Rejected

Yale University (RD): Rejected

Columbia University (RD): Rejected

Dartmouth College (RD): Waitlisted

Brown University (RD): Rejected

University of Pennsylvania (RD): Rejected

Stanford University (RD): Rejected

Rice University (RD): Rejected

Planning on following up on the waitlist offers at Harvard + Dartmouth and then enrolling at Vanderbilt.

10

Vanderbilt is a great school. Congratulations!