Chances at West Point

<p>I'm ending my Junior Year (and attending the Summer Leaders Seminar in a few weeks)
White male
Kind of have a military background.
One grandfather was in the Army
the other was in the Navy
Great Uncle was in the Army</p>

<p>I go to a highly competitive private school in Virginia, which explains my average gpa:
about a 3.0-3.1uw. School DOES NOT rank, college counselors do not publish ranks and will not send ranks to colleges.(trust me, i asked)
My SAT was a 2150 on my first attempt but i'm going to take it again and work for a 2200-2250 score.
Haven't taken the ACT, should i?
ECs (Including what i plan to do next year)
4 years of football (3 years varsity)
2 years lacrosse (Freshman, Sophomore: 2 years J.V. captain)
4 years Basketball (rec league, team leader all four years)
2 years Spring Track (throwing shotput, Varsity, captains are named before senior year and i expect to be a captain)</p>

<p>President of my Freshman Class
Published in 'Chicken Soup for the Soul: Teens Talk High School'
Junior and Senior Year Chess Club
Acolyte at Episcopalian church for 5 years, Head acolyte for one year
Work at a Toy Store part time</p>

<p>Looks promising, keep up the good work.</p>

<p>do sports count more than gpa in west point?
i’m trying to get in as well.</p>

<p>WilldaBeast,</p>

<p>Looks good. I really don’t think the ACT will be necessary - especially if you reach your goal on the SAT. Good luck.</p>

<p>3stump,</p>

<p>West Point will look at you very holistically. Academic (class rank and test scores) will count for more than your leadership and there are certainly successful cadets who were not high school team captains or even letter earners. That said, if you aren’t involved in a sport, you may want to consider joining a team next year. Cross country is a fall sport. You could begin a running program over the summer to prepare. Have you played any sports in hs?</p>

<p>short answer: No, and I can’t because of work. I elaborate in my chance-me thread:</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/932914-what-my-chances-getting-into-west-point.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/932914-what-my-chances-getting-into-west-point.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>DH works with the admissions office some (and is an Old Grad) and the word is that the Summer Leaders Seminar is more difficult to get into than the academy. That would be good news for you.</p>

<p>Update:
Named senior track captain for throwing
Chess Club officer
Just got back from SLS and loved it…West Point is still my 1st choice</p>

<p>I hope you get good news early in the admissions cycle this fall. Whooo-aaa.</p>

<p>Be advised, West Point is going to rank you whether your high school will or not. They will look at the size of your graduating class among other factors as some schools are hesitant to rank because they are so small. I never did understand the reason why some smaller HS’s wont rank their students— you will be ranked in life more times than you may ever know, and every class you attend at West Point will rank you vs your classmates from Day 1. Your ability to get the branch you want, the posting you want, the training you want, etc will all be affected by your class ranking, and (trust me) if you think its competitive at your high school, wait till West Point :)</p>

<p>Smaller, competitive high schools don’t rank because it makes too many of their kids look bad. If you have to apply to get in to the high school, and the school only takes the best students, even the kids in the bottom half are (or certainly could be) good students. I don’t think the OP is worried about any future ranking; it is just that his current high school doesn’t rank.</p>

<p>Well it would have been really funny to have our youngest son’s high school class ranked, which the school did not. He was in the first graduating class of the new school and the class had a total of four students. Each one had a corner on 25% of the class ranking. How on earth would that be a fair comparison if they were separated by a point or two from the highest to the lowest? It would be a meaningless statistic, and the Academy simply ignored it.</p>

<p>Well i would guess that if the schools that dont rank give out a gpa then it would be fair for an admissions board to estimate class rank in terms of percentile vs the other students. If a student is getting a 3.0 (B) then it would be reasonable to assume they are in the 75th-85th percentile of their class, be it 4 students or 40. I guess that they at least have the standardized tests to sort it out but I still think ranking a student based on a body of 4 years of work vs their peers is probably a better indicator than one test. Anyways, the point is mute, admissions does their magic despite the various and sundry ways schools seems to want to present their particular students, and its seems to work pretty well. :)</p>

<p>The phrase “competitive” always seems to go hand in hand with “small school that doesnt rank” on these boards and I always find it kind of amusing since I see mostly large public schools around where we live and they seem to be pretty “competitive” themselves lol. Lucklily we’ve got plenty of bright young men and women attending both!!!</p>

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<p>Mind me asking, what platoon/squad were you in? Also, your GPA looks a bit low, but everything else looks solid. Especially if you get your SAT up to your benchmark.</p>