<p>White, gay, Jewish male from North Jersey suburbs, goes to public school, somewhat upper middle-class but not terribly affluent background.
GPA: 3.8-honors and AP classes in all the humanities, and freshman/sophomore year in science. AP US History and AP Language and Composition junior year. AP World History, AP Spanish Language, and AP Literature senior year...predicted 5s on all exams. My weak point is a C- in Chemistry Honors sophomore year, but otherwise I have pretty much all As, with a smattering of Bs.
Board Scores:
SATS (1st time in March): 2120/1390 (800 Critical Reading, 730 Writing, 590 Math) Retook in June, don't want to jinx it, but I strongly suspect that my math score improved.
SAT IIs: Literature-800, US History-800.
Extracurriculars:
President and Founder of Gay-Straight Alliance
Literary Magazine, 7-12 (Staff 10, Co-EIC 11-12)
Newspaper Editor (10-12)
NHHS (National Hispanic Honors Society)
NHS (National Honors Society)
Drama Club (6 productions since 2004, freshman year; scripted scenes for the One Acts)
Spanish Club
120+ hours of community service helping out at my mother's preschool in a low-income, mostly Spanish speaking area of Paterson. I did not even know this was community service until recently.
Awards:
National Merit Commendation (PSAT Score 210)
Fairfield University Book Award</p>
<p>I don't think you stand out that much. You need a hook. I really don't think being gay should be it and you should agree.</p>
<p>How am I supposed to stand out? My essay, interview, and recommendations? Because, yes, they would make me stand out. I think what makes me stand out is that I did everything I did because I had a passion for it, not because I thought it would score big with admissions committees who wanted me to "stand out" in a superficial way more suited to novels than real life. And if the admissions committee doesn't see that in my application, they have something wrong with them.</p>
<p>Your SAT IIs are great, obviously, but penn's right in the sense that you lack a hook. You want to show you are passionate for "it"--but your ECs seem disjointed and don't quite fit together. You don't show a clear passion for anything in particular. I don't think founding the GSA chapter for your school will help much, especially if you mention the application that you are gay. I think disclosing you are gay would make that act seem less courageous/gutsy etc.</p>
<p>Fusion is also quite correct, the EC's just don't seem to mesh. what are you passionate about? What makes you tick? Your activities don't give me a clue. Answer my questions and let me see if i can brainstorm some ideas for you.</p>
<p>I'm passionate about "lots of stuff." Well, that's a lame answer. The activity that I focused most on in high school was the literary magazine, and when I became editor in chief it developed from being a pastime into a passion. That includes every aspect of it, from aligning the typeface on the cover page to matching art with text to ordering the pieces in a properly dramatic fashion to just plain selecting which pieces are good enough for inclusion. The newspaper, I was never particularly enthusiastic about editing, in all honesty, though I enjoyed writing a wide variety of articles, from school news to entertainment news to international politics to interview features to editorials to town profiles. </p>
<p>I started writing poetry in 2nd grade, and I love to read and analyze it, something any English teacher of mine could say, and I have a wide knowledge of it and appreciation of it. I was the youngest person ever published in my school literary magazine, in 7th grade (I go to a 7-12 school), when it was a 9-12 magazine. I've probably read more quality literature than anybody in my school, both poetry and prose, honestly. One of my main "passions" is social history. I'm the sort of person who drools over census data and ordering it into a larger pattern (I'm such a dork that I do this in my spare time.) I read extra chapters in our assigned AP US History reading over Christmas break (Only Yesterday) because I had such an unquenchable thirst for discovering what made the America of the 1920s tick. I spent my February break reading a book about the ramifications of the bubonic plague. As a child, what I liked to do most was read about Ancient Greece and Egypt. When I go through a city or town anywhere, I look for the historical trends that lie behind every building, every garden, every lamp post in it.</p>
<p>I'm constantly writing, making up cities and towns to demonstrate a historical impulse, poems I jot down in the margins of my physics notebook, and I have a serious interest in improving my nonfiction prose writing so I could become a historian of American history. I'm quite well-spoken and talkative, or so I'm told, having actually won most talkative in our 8th grade year book superlatives, and can go on for hours. I go and talk with my teachers after class more about what we learned in class that day, and genuinely enjoy arguing it. I collect 45s from the 1980s, seashells, and enjoy walking in my local park. Does this make me unmarketable?</p>
<p>Focus on describing your literary ECs--newspaper, lit magazine, drama club--in your application. It shows a literary passion and a focus on humanities. Hopkins has started to accept more humanities kids because it doesn't want to be cast as only a university for engineers and doctors.</p>
<p>That's part of the reason I may apply to Hopkins, since they're looking for strong humanities applicants.</p>