Ok, so I’m interested in their English undergraduate program but I’m measuring up my chances of getting in. I have a 3.72 GPA but… a 1590 SAT score. (I know, boom, I barely studied so I maybe could take it again…) I’m a member of the National Honor Society, I speak English, Spanish, Portuguese and French, and I’m Mexican/American, if any of that matters hahah. I taken 2 AP tests, a Spanish, with a 4, and a Psychology, with a 3. (And this was also with minimum studying…) I’ve already graduated from high-school but I’m taking a break in Brazil for a year, I’ve moved a lot during my senior year and though I started the IB program very well in one country, when I moved for my second semester with my family, my new school was only AP approved, so I could never get any IB anything… So I’d appreciate if you’d all just bring be back to Earth and break me the truth in the nicest way possible hahah
Here’s the link to Brown’s common data set: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EZJ6fyeXsWEJ:brown.edu/about/administration/institutional-research/sites/brown.edu.about.administration.institutional-research/files/uploads/CDS_2013-14.pdf+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a
With a sub-10% acceptance rate, Brown is a reach for everyone. Brown ranks rigor of secondary school rigor, GPA, standardized test scores, and extracurricular activities as very important. With only 2 AP courses under your belt, it doesn’t seem as though you took the most rigorous schedule. The last acceptable SAT test date for class of 2019 admission was in January. Did you take it then? A 1590 is well below the 25th percentile. Being an underrepresented minority is a boost in admissions, but it won’t really help you if you weren’t competitive to begin with.
@tola2015
Thanks! I guess I was just waiting for a miracle lol A friend of a friend got in with a 1550 but I guess he had more “under his belt”.
Do you know of any other good schools, just not THAT good, who offer a good English program I could MAYBE get into more realistically?
It is very hard to think that someone was admitted with a 1550/2400, it would be such a huge outlier, but if so there must have been a lot of confidence in the coursework and something extraordinary about the applicant. If you moved a lot then that can explain lack of opportunity to take more rigorous classes, students aren’t penalized for not taking AP or IB if it is beyond their control. Your language facility is great. Mex/Amer is a URM and that helps. But the SAT is very low for Brown. No one cares if you study or not. They don’t check about that. Your score is just average and so far below accepted student data it seems unrealistic. Also you have to submit 2 SAT II.
A low score means you will have to stand out in other ways, so concentrate on how you can use your application to show Brown who you are in the best light. Focus on what makes you unique, and why Brown would be a great fit for someone with your personality and interests. You aren’t going to get much sympathy on here with “chance me” threads tbh. I know they are tempting to do, but at the end of the day, it would be much more productive to spend that time working on how you can tell your story on your application. The odds of getting in with a low score are small, but it can and DOES certainly happen. I got in with a 26 ACT. Not sure what that equates to in the SAT, but probably somewhere around that range. I applied twice ED to Brown. It was the perfect fit for me for a variety of reasons and was the only school I was interested in attending. I worked my butt off to get in by concentrating on what made me unique and standing out in other ways (i.e. my essay, extracurricular interests, etc).
A friend of mine who worked in the admissions office one summer said that Brown specifically looks for at least one (or preferably all) of the following:
unusual independence, unusually self-motivated, or unusual expertise in one academic field.
And I think that sounds pretty accurate. Looking back on my second app, I exemplified the first two.