chances (if any)!

Colleges & Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>Gender: F
Ethnicity: It's complicated... so let's just call it mixed/multi-racial
College Class Year: 2012
High School: Private
High School Type: sends many grads to top schools
Will apply for financial aid: Yes</p>

<p>Academics:</p>

<p>GPA - Unweighted: 3.0
GPA - Weighted: 4.2
Class Rank: no rank, but it's probably not that good - around top 35%
Class Size: around 400</p>

<p>Scores:</p>

<p>SAT I Math: 800
SAT I Critical Reading: 800
SAT I Writing: 800
SAT II Literature: 780 (grr)
SAT II World History: 790 (again, grr)
SAT II Math Level 2 (IIC): 800
SAT II Chemistry: 800
SAT II Chinese with Listening: 800</p>

<p>Extracurriculars:</p>

<p>Significant Extracurriculars: Literary Magazine, Math Club, Games Club (we play mostly lame board games)</p>

<p>Leadership positions: Editor-in-chief of Literary Magazine (10, 11), Vice-captain of Math Team (9, 10, 11), Captain of Scrabble team (9, 10, 11), Captain of Chess team (10, 11)</p>

<p>Athletic Status - list sport and your level: Tennis at amateur level... nothing else besides that</p>

<p>Volunteer/Service Work: Volunteer at local library (9 hours/week), Helped raised funds for charities (300+ hours)</p>

<p>Honors and Awards: USAMO qualifier, had around 25 of my short stories published in Literary journals/magazines of varying prestige (ranging from school magazine to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction <= my only major selling point to the Harvard adcoms), Won city-wide chess tournament twice, 3rd in state-wide chess tournament</p>

<p>College Summer programs: Internship at actuarial firm</p>

<p>Area: East Coast</p>

<p>Everyone keeps saying that I have no focus =.=... is it that wrong to utilize both the left and right side of the brain? Yeah... so I like both maths and writing... sue me.</p>

2

<p>How do you have a B average when you completely aced your SATIIs? I can’t tell you your chances, but I will tell you that I wouldn’t be surprised if you were accepted. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were rejected, either.</p>

3

<p>You’re an exceptionally high scorer, but you don’t come across as impressive or outstanding otherwise.</p>

<p>No offense.</p>

4

<p>Um. You’re grring over a 790. Don’t you have anything more important to grr about? Can’t you just stop worrying about scores and go after what’s important to you? Holy crap, I can’t BELIEVE you’re grring about 780s and 790s. Honestly, I would say THAT is more of a cause for rejection than the scores themselves. Your scores are great, but the fact that you STILL can’t be happy with them and go for some other, perhaps more meaningful goals is really quite saddening to me.</p>

<p>I got a 760 on physics. TRAGEDY. I got into MIT and Caltech. I play no sports. For the record, I got an 84 on AMC. Not even close to USAMO qualifier. And I’m applying for a math major. Also for the record, if it hadn’t been for my taking time and devotion to starting a math team, I wouldn’t have had that AMC score to show. Some things are more important than the numbers. I had no amazing national scores. I just like math and music.</p>

<p>Dude, you qualified for USAMO. Chill about your scores and find something you love. THAT will be more of a hook than anything else, I think.</p>

<p>Sorry to sound critical. But I REALLY hate it when people post things like “grr” after near-perfect SAT scores. It’s false modesty or something. Come on, those scores aren’t going to hurt you. Stop being full of yourself and your NOT QUITE PERFECT SAT SCORES and go outside, or go read a book, or go build an airplane, or solve a math problem. But chill out, and worry about things that are really important in life. You do realize that once you get into college, nobody is going to care about your SAT Scores?</p>

5

<p>“You’re grring over a 790…It’s false modesty or something.”</p>

<p>No, dude, that means he was one freaking question away from getting a perfect score. That is damn irritating. It digs away at you to know: “&%*$, ONE stupid question away from a FULL score, if only I had answered that question, left this question blank, etc.”</p>

<p>It may seem asinine, but that’s only because you don’t know how it feels.</p>

6

<p>^Haha, both of the posts above are true… It DOES feel really bad that I was one question away from perfection, but the “grr” was not serious =) Besides, they’re only numbers (which aren’t perfect) and, as you said, no one is going to care 2 years down the road.</p>

<p>Anyways, I’m kind of worried about my extracurriculars being a bit on the light side… what do you guys think?</p>

7

<p>:D
As long as you show passion in them then I think it’s okay. I mean not everyone getting accepted into Harvard can be the winner of let’s say…the International Math Olympiad or the Intel Science thing lol</p>

8

<p>You’re def in a good place - if your essay and interview are very good then you’re in a great place.</p>

9

<p>The contrast between the 3.0 GPA and the SAT scores will catch the attention of the adcoms. And your ECs are indeed a bit light. Do you have some solid safeties lined up?</p>

10

<p>ERRATA: It says my college class year is 2012 in the first post, but it actually is 2013.</p>

<p>^LOL, I haven’t thought that much about safeties yet. But I think my biggest safety would probably be Yale. Before you attack me for the above statement, I would just like to say that the only reason I view it as a safety is because I’m a TRIPLE legacy there (if I go, I’ll be a 4th gen Yalie), and my Dad’s one of the more recognized Yalies (and big donor) from the school. =) But then again, that’s still no guarantee :(</p>

<p>But forget about Yale, I’m concentrating my efforts on the big H! I’ve still got a year left, so I’ll beef up my ECs a bit. Join Mensa, maybe? National Forensic League?</p>

11

<p>unless you attend a school where 40% of the kids go to ivies, I think your class rank and unweighted GPA will cause you the most trouble, much more than your ECs. Without some kind of strong hook, I think someone with a 3.0 UW GPA and a class rank of ~35% is unlikely to be admitted.</p>

12

<p>^^ Yeah, even legacy won’t help a 3.0 GPA, I believe. How come your GPA is so low? Do you go to a particularly competitive school? Isn’t a 3.0 a B? Meaning if you have ever gotten A’s you have also gotten C’s?? Unless you have a really good excuse, that will make it difficult to get accepted, EVEN to Yale on triple legacy. As somebody at an unofficial admissions conference said, if you are not capable of consistently getting mostly A’s in high school classes, you will probably have a VERY difficult getting into a very competitive school - because MANY applicants ARE capable of getting A’s and having good ECs at the same time. I think more than 1 C is really hard to justify. Do you have any particular reasons for such a low GPA? (competitive high school, serious illness, family issues…)</p>

13

<p>*Isn’t a 3.0 like a B- I mean to say. I am not sure about the unweighted GPA system, please correct me if I am wrong</p>

14

<p>Every school has a different grading system, especially the more respected and competitive ones.</p>

<p>A 3.0 might very well be a solid B–which isn’t bad at all.</p>

15

<p>^ “High School: Private
High School Type: sends MANY grads to top schools”</p>

<p>Does that answer your questions?
It’s a very challenging school (at least according to the rankings, it is), and I’m quite pleased that I have a solid ‘B’ average (unweighted) at all.</p>

16

<p>yeah but your class rank is in the top 140 people out of 400. That’s not very good, unless your previous classes have sent its top 150~ people to ivies?</p>

<p>and you made USAMO and got perfect math SAT scores–did you try in high school in yoiur math classes or not? why didn’t you do well in them? if it’s cuz they’re hard and nobody ever does well in them, i guess you’re okay…hopefully Harvard knows that. However, if it’s cuz you’ve been lazy then thats bad :stuck_out_tongue: Look into MIT?</p>

17

<p>^You’d be surprised at how many people in my school actually got into HYPSMC and other such schools.</p>

<p>While I can’t say that I gave my all for my classes, I certainly didn’t slack off either. My school just has REALLY high standards (know of any other Math IIC 800-pointer who got a B in maths? Who didn’t totally slack off?). LOL. Anyways, I’ll work my ass off next year and maybe try to raise my cumulative GPA to a 3.5 or something…</p>

<p>note: as I’ve mentioned before, my school doesn’t have class ranks - I just made the 35% thing up with no basis other than my own emotionally-clouded estimation… the actual thing could be better, or it could be worse… i dunno</p>

18

<p><a href=“know%20of%20any%20other%20Math%20IIC%20800-pointer%20who%20got%20a%20B%20in%20maths?%20Who%20didn’t%20totally%20slack%20off?”>quote</a>.

[/quote]
Haha at my school all the time. we send about 20% of our 300-ppl graduating class to HYP every year. Plus more to other top 20 schools</p>

19

<p>^^ “Look into MIT”?? I think MIT would be just as hard to get into as Harvard in this case - possibly harder, since what MIT is looking for is rather specific and includes “passion” - usually in the form of concentration in ECs. Also, Math IIC is not that hard… I would not think it unreasonable to get an 800 on that and a B in math, especially if the math class is hard. But good luck in any case.</p>

20

<p>yay! fellow usamo qualifier! i dont know how much that’d help for harvard, though, because it seems to have plenty usamo winners or the equivalent in other countries in their applicant pool.
gpa is a bit weak, but if you take it into context of a very challenging school, it might be better.
i hate giving chances, so i think we’ll all see in about a year and six weeks. :P</p>