Chances at Harvard/Yale

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>Hello everyone, I was wondering what my chances are.</p>

<p>My resume is as follows:</p>

<p>GPA: 3.8 UW, 4.75 W (out of 5)
SAT: 2320 total. (780 M, 780 V, 760 W)
SAT2: Hebrew 800, Physics 790, math IIC 780, World history 800, US history 790.</p>

<p>In highschool I will be garduating with 8 AP's and 6 Honors. </p>

<p>rank: 6/520</p>

<p>EC:</p>

<p>-Completed a four year curriculum at a Secondary school
(Hebrew College) specializing in Jewish Studies, with outstanding marks (4.0 GPA).</p>

<p>-Opinions writer of high school paper for 4 years.</p>

<p>-member of my school's Jewish Student union for 2 years,
officer during Junior year, and then president for my comming senior year.</p>

<p>-officer at my area's chapter of USY (United Synagogue Youth) for 2 years. Organized many Jewish events.</p>

<p>-member of the American Poetry society for 3 years, was
a finalist for a national poetry competitiion (out of 100 finalists nation-wide).</p>

<p>-rode horses for 6 years (not competitively, but as a hobby).</p>

<p>Awards/acheivements:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>recieved a national Jewish award for outstading acheivement in the hebrew school mentioned above.</p></li>
<li><p>received awards for highscore on the national Latin exam
3 years in a row. </p></li>
</ul>

<p>-received honor roll during every term so far in highschool
(expecting to have them all for my senior year)</p>

<ul>
<li>published a book of poetry at the age of 10 in Israel (where I lived at the time). The book sold ~3500 copies at
a fund raiser event for autistic children (my brother is autistic and was thus the theme of my book). My book received the Israeli National Award for Poetry.</li>
</ul>

<p>-received an award from my Jewish Community for "extraordinary involvement"</p>

<p>Community service:</p>

<ul>
<li>worked at a 6 week summer camp which involved much community service (about 40 hours).</li>
</ul>

<p>-joined a program in which I worked as an aid for disabled children during my junior year (the whole school year ~35 hours). </p>

<p>-did alot of community service at my temple (200+ hours).</p>

<p>That's it. Sorry about the length everyone.
Thank's in advance for your responses</p>

2

<p>help would be appreciated.....</p>

3

<p>You seem to have a pretty good chance, which means better than the usual 5%-10% chance that people have. You seem to show a lot of commitment to poetry and your heritage, which is very good. Just make sure you have great recs and essays. These two things I believe are much more important than people think. Your unweighted GPA seems to be a bit low, but compared to your rank, I don't think it really matters. The other thing that counts against you is the fact that you're Jewish, as Jews are overrepresented in colleges. If you're from the Northeast, then that's another disadvantage.</p>

<p>Just remember that if you are rejected, it isn't because you're not good enough. These colleges simply don't have enough room to admit every qualified applicant (which I've heard is up to 80% of the total number of applicants), and so it sometimes gets really random with admissions at this level.</p>

4

<p>But let's say I apply to harvard, Yale and Princeton. What do you think are my chances of getting into one of those?</p>

5

<p>I'd say your chance of getting in to any particular school is maybe around 40%-50%, at least with Harvard and Yale; I don't know Princeton as well as those two. Your chance of getting in to any one of the three is also about the same because it's not very common for a person to be accepted at one school and rejected at another, although it does happen of course.</p>

6

<p>Assuming that admission to one of these schools is independent of the other, then your statistical chance is about the same as the acceptance rate: 9%.</p>

7

<p>also, btw, what's a URM?</p>

8

<p>

Virtually no one has a 50% chance at HYP. </p>

<p>It is quite common for a person to be admitted to one of the 3 schools and rejected at the others.</p>

<p>URM = under represented minority</p>

9

<p>well if my assumption that HYP rejects 50% of their 1600 applicants is correct, then previously, all that was needed to get a 50% chance at HYP is a 1600. Of course, things have changed due to the new SAT.</p>

10

<p>bump.................</p>

11

<p>bandit_TX: I disagree. However, the only way to find out for sure would be to have access to the committee meetings of every single applicant, which is of course impossible.</p>

<p>wrathofgod64: Harvard has said that it rejects about 50% of their valedictorians. While I wouldn't necessarily say that that translates into a 1 in 2 chance of admittance for valedictorians, it does show that the chances for a valedictorian is much higher than the usual 9%.
I would be interested in creating a table of admittance rates based on SAT score and class rank.</p>

12

<p>Being valedictorian doesn't mean much for Harvard. There are hundreds of valedictorian applying with less than two AP courses or with terrible SAT scores.</p>