<p>I have a 1600 sat score (800 verbal 800 math), 800 bio, 800 math ic, but unfortunately i got a 600 on my sat writing. </p>
<p>i'm also number 3 in my classes and i am canadian american. I'm a member of several clubs, president of the key club, and speech and debate clubs, and i excel at soccer (varsity 2 years), and tennis (varsity 4 years). I've also volunteered at the local hospital for over 500 hours cumulatively.</p>
<p>Besides all this, doyou think i have a good chance getting into harvard? I can't retake the writing because its over, but I can take the new SATs but I don't want to. </p>
<p>I'm sorry, but you don't seem to have anything to distinguish yourself from the rest of the academic stars...:-/</p>
<p>The fact that you are "member" of "several" clubs will work heavily against you. Or were you mostly president? I'm confused....also, you didn't do anything outside of school?</p>
<p>What's your GPA? are you URM? first generation? poor? legacy? </p>
<p>If the your answer is no to any of the last four questions, you may be in trouble.</p>
<p>ah, hopefully there's a "regular kid" hook. I don't mean that with sarcasm....Harvard wants diversity, meaning it wants high-achieving middle-class kids, too.....as far as I know.</p>
<p>and there are probably thousands of them applying, with 90% higher gpas. I would hope that your writing score was a fluke and not an indicator of your skills as a writer, because the essay is such a vital component to getting in. I agree with the clubs thing too. you don't stand out.</p>
<p>sometimes you really don't need to stand out. I've seen so many variations of acceptances and denials that you can't say definitely whether one will get in. of course, if you have mostly 800s on the SAT2s and a perfect SAT1, AND you've taught orphans for free and was the editor of the school newspaper etc..(stats for an actual Yale acceptee) you'd probably get accepted to Harvard or Yale. However, I also saw one with 3.9+ GPA and 1600 SAT1 and perfect PSAT and several 800s on the SAT2..lots of volunteers, leadership, good essay.. who got deferred from Stanford. (although Stanford does pick 70% of its deferred students) Someone else just did a ton of APs, had close to no extracurriculars, acceptable essay (nothin special) but got in to Princeton. Another had a D in Math and B in literature(of course the rest were As), a few APs but still got into Stanford w/o any special extracurriculars or special essay. Guess the "exceptions" to college admissions are growing in number. In close competition, numbers don't mean that much, but when most people have similar extras, maybe seamless numbers do come to play.. not sure at all. All you can do is take the least confusing way.. to be Valedic, get mostly perfect scores, do a ton of APs, be pres. or vice pres. on several clubs, show them u have a passion for sth on the essay, maybe show compassion through volunteer work.. get a few national level awards.(Don't gasp.. this is possible and not that difficult.. even a slacker like me did half of it. and I'm sure many others have done much better than me..(cause obviously I got deferred) our school keeps students from 7 in the morning until 10 at night to take classes and study. The classes are at least harder than the APs, but the school doesn't offer any APs or honor classes.) Maybe the way teachers evaluate you is really important also. By the way, I have 1550 SAT1, 4 SAT2s with 750+, 3.95 GPA (no class rankings) only a mere 2 APs(I had two college counselors.. the previous one constantly emphasized that APs were marginal.. only at the beginning of my senior yr I found out that it had a lot of weight.. but are APs really that difficult to have such high merits? I think they're mostly quite easy as long as you have the time to study the material.).. Editor in chief of newspaper, editor of regional newspaper, several awards for journalism from nat'l newspapers, wrote a student column (alongside a teacher's column that was a prominent columnist) for a major newspaper.. the mayor gave me an award for volunteer work, Prudential Corporation gave me an award for volunteer work etc...average extras for any harvard applicant... Were among the thousands that got deferred from Harvard.. was told that I was in the top 10% of deferred but still they pick a really small number of deferred students, quickly turned my first choice to Princeton(planning to send two extra essays and an extra letter of recom. to Harvard tho) By the way, one who got accepted from our school had more than 15 Bs throughout high school.. horrible SAT2s(all 600s)-the only thing standing out a passionate essay on concerns for the Middle East... after reading it.. wonder if it was really that good tho.</p>