Hi my name is Christopher Owen and I am an upcoming senior from Massachusetts that is dying to attend Northwestern in 2017. I was hoping someone that knows a bit about this amazing school could give me feedback on my chances as an early decision applicant. My intended major is materials science/engineering and as for my credentials:
4.3 GPA
Ranked 14 in my class of about 370 kids
1380 score on New SAT with 7s in all areas on the optional essay out of 8 for each
-700 R+W
-680 Math
On the subject tests:
-730 on Chemistry
-710 on Math II
AP scores:
4 on statistics
3 on Chemistry (bummed about this)
3 on English (I was super sick so this I was not so shocked about)
Extracurriculars:
President of the national honor society
President of the Science national honor society
Founder and president of the chemistry club
Leo club (community service organization) chairperson
Students against destructive decisions club (SADD) member
D.A.R.E camp counselor
Was secretary of class as a freshman (since only 1 year I may not include this on app)
Founding Member of english national honor society
Was in french nat honor society for 1 year (then decided not to take french senior year)
Lots of hours of community service
Organized the Junior Fundraiser
Did independent research into Piezoelectric materials and built a generator with the help of my physics teacher
Work at Target in electronics
Varsity swim team all four years
Founding member of robotics club
Awards:
Bausch and lomb science award
Key club
Most active chair of the leo club
I really love this school but I am worried that my scores are just too low. I may be able to take the sat again in october but assuming these are my credentials, how do I stand early decision?
Thank you!!!
I think if you really love northwestern, you should apply ED. and your gpa and ecs look great
Do you think my test scores will hurt me alot?
northwestern admissions has actually told me that since the new sat is so new, they will use your new sat score and just compare to other new sat ED applicants in the same pool. I don’t think it will hurt you a lot. I would make sure your recs and essays are great. good luck!
What unweighted GPA?
Definitely apply ED for the best shot.
I have no idea what my unweighted is 4.3 is what my school reports me having I would need to find a chart or something and figure it out
@Cowenite, here is how to calculate your UW GPA:
Take all your grades (9th - 11th, all semesters) and assign the following values: A=4.0, A-=3.67, B+=3.33, B=3.0, and so forth.
Add up the numerical values, and divide by the number of credits you have earned (usually one course = 1 credit).
The average is your cumulative unweighted GPA.
This calculation can be set up in an excel spreadsheet. We do this for our kids because their school simply reports the weighted value. Rows are the subjects, and column are semesters or trimesters (whatever the actual unit of academic time is that results in a “final” grade).
You can get extra fancy and calculate your “core-4 GPA” (English, Social Studies, Math, and Science), and your “core-4 plus foreign language” (as oftentimes - but not always! - FL is also considered to be a core subject).
It’s a good idea to make these calculations because colleges and universities are making them too so you are ahead of the game when you know what you have sent them. The adcoms want to put everyone on an equivalent scale to allow for real comparison among applicants and may assign their own weighting system to account for course difficulty, etc. That way, one student doesn’t have a disadvantage over another just because his/her school’s weighting system isn’t as generous.
@cowenite here are NU’s mid-50% range of “concorded” SAT scores from the prior year (Source is CompassPrep):
EBRW: 740 - 780
Math: 740 - 800
Total: 1480 - 1580
ACT: 31-34 (just threw that in because it was on the table)
While the new SAT has no historical data, those College Board concordance table are readily available to colleges and universities, and it’s reasonable to expect adcoms to be doing some “translating” during this transitional year. Therefore, it’s helpful to understand how your scores stack up to NU’s historical profile of admitted students, even if using an imperfect concordance to estimate that.
A significant advantage of your application is that you are applying ED. NU puts a LOT of weight on ED applications because they totally want people who really want to go to NU. In prior years ED has had higher acceptance rates than RD (not sure about the past couple of years, however). This advantage can offset lower SAT scores.
Good luck to you!
For the unweighted GPA, the numbers assigned to each grade is actually as follows (it is a little off in the previous post about how to do this):
A = 4.0
A- = 3.7
B+ = 3.3
B = 3.0
etc.
If your school does not do + and - grades, then just use A = 4, B = 3, etc.
@thatrunnerkid you’ve rounded more than I have. A strict mapping would actually be:
4.0000000,
3.666666… (repeats)
3.33333… (repeats)
3.0000000
And so forth.
Your value assignment actually rewards the kid with a lot of A-'s and punishes the poor kid with a lot of B+'s. Those who have equal amounts of both won’t exactly care. In the grand scheme of things the overall answer won’t be all that different; however, GPA’s are typically presented as rounded to the second decimal place (i.e. a 3.68 rather than a 3.7). Therefore, it’s best not to round too much in the calculations. IMHO
@Mamelot true, the overall answer won’t be that different. I did some internet searches and it turns out that some schools use the system that you presented, with 3.666… and 3.333…, while some schools use the system with 3.7 and 3.3. Both my high school and Northwestern (in different parts of the US) use the system that I mentioned earlier, while some schools use other systems with a 4-point-GPA scale. That both my high school and university (Northwestern) use the .7 / .3 grading system led to to believe that such a system was universal for 4-point-GPA grading with + and - grades. In light of that, I apologize for the self-righteous sort of attitude I posted with last time.
Because Northwestern grades with .7 and .3, I do however think it would be a good idea to calculate unweighted GPA in this case with the .7 and .3 grading system. For schools that use the .666… and .333… system, the unweighted GPA could be calculated the other way.
Also, I think it would be a good idea for the OP to not stress out about this too much 
I agree with that last part, @thatrunnerkid and no offense taken at all. I suspected that the academic side of NU used your rounding method. My spouse attended a very comparable private uni. that did the same thing. My college (an LAC) used my rounding method, as did my high school and my children’s high schools. My grad school rounded to nearest whole grade! So it’s all over the place in reality.