My high school is a popular picking ground for Cornell but still very competitive (20/90 admission).
I have a 3.4 GPA and I’ve taken and passed 3 APs throughout high school (APUSH: 4, AP Bio: 3, APES). I’m not the greatest at math. I got a 1250 on my SAT (RW: 690 M: 550) and a 710 on my US History SAT subject test.
I’ve always been very involved in my extracurricular activities. I’m president of a local 4-H club and Herdsmanship Award recipient (also applied for 4-H Youth in Action Award and have been named an a 4-H Honoree by my county’s Cornell Cooperative Extension), I’ve volunteered regularly at a local wildlife reservation and education center for the past 4 years (over 140 hours overall), and I’ve been a Girl Scout for over 10 years and my Gold Award is almost done. I’ve also been involved my my school’s clubs as a member of Cooking for a Cause and assistant club leader for our History Club.
I’ve had a couple summer internships at the Bronx Zoo. I’ve been a summer camp counselor at a local natural science hiking camp for two years. I’ve gotten a letter of recommendation from the mother of a child I babysit who happens to be a Cornell alumni.
I attended a summer course at Cornell for Sustainable Animal Husbandry (3 credits), preformed very well (got a 100% on the final exam and an A in the course), and the professor wrote me a letter of recommendation.
I wrote my essay on the college admissions process and how students are now more focused on getting perfect grades than finding their passions and taking on extracurricular activities that truly matter to them. I also wrote about the influence my grandmother had on me (she was a graduate of Hunter College in 1942 with a BS in Accounting and later became a NYC high school teacher) and the influence of her death on me last year.
I’m just really worried because I know classmates that have 4.0 GPAs, are in my school’s Science Research program, and have really good SAT scores (like >1500 SAT and >32 ACT) have also applied ED to Cornell (not too many to CALS though). Do my extracurricular activities mean anything in the end? Feel free to ask any clarifying questions or recommend other/similar schools.