What are my son’s chances? He’s a rising senior. He is interested in business. He will graduate High School with an AP Capstone Diploma. I’m not sure how Emory weights AP classes, but his school weighted GPA is 4.23 and unweighted is 3.76. He will graduate with 9 AP credits, and the remainder of his courses are Honors.
His composite ACT is 32, and if super scored 34. He has a 740 in Math 1 and 710 Math 2 SAT Subject Test. His highest level math course will be Calc BC. He got a 5 on Calc AB AP test.
He will be applying out of state. Extra curricular activities include overseas medical mission work (3 summers), competitive chess player (95th percentile in Junior level in state), piano, HOBY (leadership) participant, varsity lacrosse player, participant in Economics For Leaders, University of Texas, summer 2015.
Thank you for taking the time to read this and any insight offered!
He should be okay (probably in if ED, and maybe in if RD. If seriously invested in doing business or being entrepreneurial, he should consider the scholarship program. It is EXTREMELY competitive, but it won’t hurt to try. Being OOS doesn’t matter unless he is from a “rare” (less populated/one that doesn’t send many to places like Emory) state b/c Emory is private.
95th percentile Junior in which state? What’s his USCF rating? If it’s GA, 95th percentile Junior is not that impressive on a national level. He’ll get murdered by an 80th percentile Junior from NY or CA.
I just looked on USCF website and I can’t find Junior ranking on a state level–they list percentile on a State overall, Junior nationally, and National overall. 1672 is the National Junior 95th percentile, which also happens to be the exact rating of the #1 ranked Junior in Alaska. If you meant National Junior ranking, and your son is rated 1673 or higher, you should get your son residency in Alaska–it’d look better on his college app to put, “#1 ranked Junior/Under 21 chess player in the state”. Same goes for the roughly 5% of Juniors in the country who also outranks the #1 ranked Junior in the largest state of Alaska.
I also wanted to know about the GPA class rank, because apparently many people at Emory who report class rank are in the top decile(a healthy 81% of those reporting), yet we have a wider range of incoming GPA’s than say, Georgia Tech (this is the archetype of Georgia schools in terms of in-state students), which still has a slight majority (56%) of in state students whereas we only have 13% in state if you look at class of 2018. This suggests a) Georgia and the various southern states hell-a-grade inflate and b) Emory students are likely coming from tougher schools (with many more being from private or even boarding schools). So yes, % in Ga whether it has do with something like Chess or GPA, needs to taken with a grain of salt. More interesting, Georgia Tech, even with its increased selectivity only has marginally higher SAT’s than Emory which is weird since it is like basically one of the best STEM schools in the country. STEM SAT’s tend to be a bit higher than those for students in other disciplines. So even though most of our students aren’t doing STEM, there is maybe only a 15/1600 (depends on year- something has happened where they have been focusing on stats a lot more, so they may be further ahead now, but about 1-2 years ago the difference was really small) point difference in SAT’s between Tech and Emory which would suggest that the STEM students (largely from other states) at Emory are likely stronger. Just another indicator that in most cases, Georgia and many southern states at their best don’t necessarily compare but so well to heavy hitters in other regions, especially the northeast.
Yes, JR Ranking. He’s 1710. Overall 86.2%. Wow… I thought that would count for something!
@mom2ljr He’s still 95th percentile Junior nationally. That does count for something.
The GPA might be a bit too low to call Emory a match for your son, but with the honors and ACT I think he is a high match RD (25-40% chance of admission).
Now, if he applied ED… then I think he would be a match. I just almost categorically bridle at calling kids a true match for elite private schools.
3.76 is still decently in the IQR for unweighted admitted GPAs at Emory (especially considering they challenged themselves): http://apply.emory.edu/discover/fastfacts.php (weird how they keep admitting the same amount of people or more and enroll over their target every single year, even when the app. numbers jump like this. Also, they didn’t take any risks on scores and admitted the same exact scores as last year. Given the yield, I suppose they made the right decision but I still would have just admitted less folks given the pressure for them to impress the admins and students with the rankings. Oxford will likely catch main if this continues and is already negligibly close). and I am also sure that it is dependent upon rank if he has one. Their SAT sits exactly at top quartile of admits at Emory.
I forgot to mention he has three generations of Michigan Alum., and also attended the prestigious Interlochen camp for five consecutive years.