<p>Extracurricular:
-JV baseball freshman year
-Varsity baseball sophomore, junior, and senior year
-Member of DECA
-Volunteered coaching for Youth Association</p>
<p>*please note that I did not apply in the engineering school at Virginia Tech, I am aware that I fall nowhere near the requirements for that program</p>
<p>I think you’ll be fine with JMU and Tech though perhaps after initially being deferred. My D had a number of friend with stats like yours apply early (decision/ action) at Tech and JMU and be deferred last year but admitted in the RD round. By April you should be happily selecting between the schools though. :)</p>
<p>JMU is borderline. Most likely (but not positive!) you will be deferred from EA for JMU but have a good chance at RD (as 89wahoo states). Some of that depends on how many students accept their EA offers, thus how many spaces are left for RD applicants. VT is also borderline. Especially VT goes by numbers, and your SAT and ACT scores are low for them. They are also a little low for JMU. Perhaps you could retake whichever test you feel more comfortable with. Your GPA and course selection are strong, especially the fact that you’re taking AP Calc and doing well in it. That counts for a lot. Not sure about South Carolina, but upon reviewing their required credentials, it looks like you should have a decent chance at that school. The main reason I’m being conservative on estimates for JMU EA chances is that I’ve seen the caliber of students from our high school in my daughter’s senior class who are applying EA to JMU and also to VT RD (a lot of crossover there), and they are really competitive (most have 3.8 weighted gpa at a minimum, SAT’s well over 1800/ACT at least 27 or higher, lots of leadership, and 10 plus AP or IB classes in addition to 6-8 honors/intensified classes). You don’t see much about Arlington public schools in the media, because it’s a small system, but it is crazy competitive. For example, my daughter is considered an average student in her Arlington public school with 12 AP/IB classes, the rest honors/intensified, leads in two school plays, varsity captain, 4-year varsity letter, all-district honrs, 3 honor societies including NHS, etc. She did well on the ACT, earning a 30, but she has a number of friends who got perfect scores on two out of three portions of the SAT (and close to perfect on the third) and 32 and up on ACT. Yikes.</p>
<p>Interesting tidbit about JMU for those of you considering VA schools: A friend of mine who is a CEO of a NOVA tech company (and a VA Tech alum) and attends a lot of meetings and forums with other DC area CEO’s said that this man who headed up their last forum who is CEO of an acquisitions and mergers company was going over statistics about recruiting and leadership in DC area tech and consulting companies. He said that the VA college with the highest number of graduates who are CEO’s in the Wash DC area right now is JMU. Before he announced that, he took a poll of the audience (some 300+ CEO’s and COO’s) to see what school they thought it was, and of course, they all thought it was UVA. He said that not only does JMU hold the top spot, but it is closely followed by VA Tech (his alma mater). Then W&M and UVA were next. He said that the quality that the JMU people seem to have in abundance is people skills/emotional intelligence. So all of you who feel dejected right now because some of your friends are outscoring you on standardized tests…keep in mind that people skills and the ability to work with others seem to be as important qualities as raw intelligence. That is definitely true in my work place. And for that, it doesn’t matter where you go so much as whether or not you take advantage of the opportunities to network that exist at whatever college you attend. All colleges have the opportunities, and you don’t need to go to a name brand college to have access to them. You also don’t need to break the bank going to the most expensive college out there to have success in life. In my office, which is selective, there are more public college graduates, and they are doing the same work alongside those who spent three and four times as much for their educations and are sweating it out trying to pay down huge student loans. Return on investment (ROI) is what’s important, much more so than a fancy name. Sometimes the fancy name place will give you a high ROI, but not always. I know that’s not what the establishment has been telling you all along, but it’s true. Please keep that in mind – it’s what you make of the time you have in college. You can easily waste your time in a big name college if you don’t take advantage of the resources at your disposal.</p>