<p>I am a freshman at Northwestern, planning on majoring in Economics and probably philosophy. I'm from NYC, where I attended one of the top private schools. We only sent two kids to Harvard from my year, but eight the year before. My high school grades were certainly subpar (about a 3.1), due to extenuating circumstances, yet i got a 1490/2260 on the SAT and managed to get into Northwestern, meaning they must have found some merit in my explanation of my grades.</p>
<p>Now however, I find that I don't really fit in at Northwestern, even though I applied ED expecting to love it. Also, while taking all courses I have to take to graduate (including two typically taken by sophomores, one of which even had a ton of juniors), I had a 3.85 gpa without doing a whole lot of work.</p>
<p>I have a few reasons for choosing Harvard. For one, I would like to be closer to home, as well as in a city (Northwestern is in the suburbs of Chicago); I feel like now that the issues that ruined my high school grades are behind me, I can handle more of a challenge than I am currently receiving; and I am extremely interested in the Social Studies program that seems to really integrate my interests well.</p>
<p>In terms of ECs, I was an all-state athlete (for private schools anyway) and captain, I was also in a few clubs, though not with leadership positions, did some community service work, and have interned every summer since I'm 16, including major financial corporations both in Europe and in NYC.</p>
<p>Any advice would be greatly appreciated!</p>