<p>Hi College Confidential,</p>
<p>I'm currently a junior attending a very difficult prep school in Northern California. My basic stats so far are a 3.5 UW GPA, and a 2300 SAT score taken at the beginning of Junior year.</p>
<p>My gpa is low because halfway through freshman year my brother killed himself which has sent a ripple effect through my life and disrupted things such as my performance in individual classes. </p>
<p>Another thing to take into consideration - my main EC is policy debate which involves me flying across the country around 10 times a year with the school debate team. I fly to universities such as Emory for example and compete for a weekend in the largest and most competitive speaking competitions in the world. This usually entails me missing many school days. I usually spend much of my time at home researching (Around 20 hours a week in my case, actually) for these competitions. I'm very competitive on the national circuit and think my senior year I have an opportunity at being one of the very very top teams in the country.</p>
<p>Note here that my dream schools are Emory and Berkeley because they have very notable collegiate policy debate programs that are historically successful off of recruiting people like me.</p>
<p>Other ECs include:</p>
<p>Student Council Rep
Post-Modern Philosophy Club Founder
100+ hours volunteering at a retirement home
Cofounder of a microfinance club</p>
<p>What do you think my chances are for these schools assuming that things continue this way, CC?</p>