So I’m feeling a little bit conflicted on whether or not to apply for restrictive early action for Stanford later this year. I know it’s normal to feel nervous about applying to Ivy Leagues and thinking you’re not good enough, but I’ve heard Stanford is extremely hard to get into.
I’m a junior with a 4.0 unweighted GPA, weighted of 4.6 with a cumulative GPA of 5.1 and I’m ranked in the top 3 of my class. I’ve taken many honors and AP classes since freshman year and got As in all of them. As for extracurricular activities, I joined my school’s SWAT (Students Working Against Tobacco) Club. I volunteer for Give Kids the World and A Gift for Teaching. I’m also a dual enrollment student with As in all my classes and recently was inducted into the Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society at the college campus.
Even with all of this, I feel like something’s missing, something that will make me stand out more such as sports or leadership. However, I am a creative writing major at my arts high school and am sure my essays will be enjoyable to read.
Any advice? Comments?
Leadership, as I mentioned in the other thread. You also come off as a flat or unidimensional student with no interests such as music or sports outside of academics. You didn’t even note what course of study you were interested in.
So far, you’ve done all you can do academically. Keep doing that.
Don’t worry about the sports thing. It’s not that big of a help unless you are a recruited athlete. Otherwise you’re just one of millions of kids who have played a HS sport.
I see, beyond continuing to get all As in your classes, that there are two main things you should do:
Get a killer SAT score.
Find a way to increase involvement in one or two of your ECs. Take a leadership role, or come up with some new thing that one of your groups does, and make sure it is successful.
After that, it’s up to writing great essays. Stanford is an amazing place. Have you visited? If not, I recommend that you do. It may inspire you to write some great essays. And, Stanford is a reach for EVERYONE. It will be that for you even if you get a perfect score on the SAT (but that would increase your chances of admission, so strive for that). Good luck.
I beg to differ. Athletic participation, leadership and success (which stands out from the average) can be every bit as important as any other element on an application.
Yes, better to have the sports on there than not (and I am pro sports – former college athlete), but it is not necessary, and when people talk of the sports helping them, it’s really under the conversation of actually being on that colleges’ team. And, as you said, if their involvement included leadership and success, that’s one thing, but most kids on high school teams are roster fillers and not really successful or have any leadership to the point of impressing a college.
That is great that you’re applying to Stanford but let me give you some advice.
You need to show passion. I cannot stress that enough. You look like, literally, thousands of other applicants.
The best thing you can do is write great essays.
Still, there is absolutely no guarantee. Roughly 95% get rejected. Are you a bad person because you get rejected? No. There is simply not enough space.
I want you to know that people with 4.0’s and near perfect test scores get rejected. This is good because that means other people without perfect test scores + 4.0’s did get accepted.
People do get in with low GPA’s - 3.0 - 3.5 range. It is not rare. And, before someone says “they can pay” or “they’re recruited” or something extraneous like that, no. I know many people who have been recruited before but they must have high grades so that logic doesn’t even apply. Stanford is laid back. Come visit Stanford if you want to see for yourself. The academics aren’t alike MIT where you will struggle and you can’t just do sets of math and then use that built up fuel to go party in Boston.
Is there something that gets you going every morning besides academics that you can roar about for hours and hours for? Talk about that.
Why do you want to go to Stanford though? What would you do for the Stanford community?; when there’s people who are semi’s/finalists in the Google Science Fair, given TED talks, the list goes on.
@nenasnsd Same here bud. I also used to play sports in MS and then dislocated my knee three times so I don’t have any HS athletics. How have you recovered so far? I know this a little bit off topic but I’m really struggling with my injury and I just want to know if you have recovered to the point where you’re not afraid of dislocating your knee whenever you trip. You seem like a dedicated individual though, taking up Korean after your injury is definitely interesting.