chances? :)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

<p>I am a 16 yr. old female.. going to be a senior at a competitive high school in southern California...</p>

<p>SATs:
1st try: CR 650, W 720, M 560
2nd try: CR 720, W 630, M 600</p>

<p>SAT IIs:
Biology E- 630
US History- 750
Literature- 660</p>

<p>ACT:
1st try: 29</p>

<p>APs:
English Language: 4</p>

<p>GPA:
Freshman Year: UW 3.8, W 3.8
Sophomore Yr: UW 4.0, W 4.2 (2 honors classes)
Junior Year: UW 4.0, W 4.42 (3 honors, 1 AP class)
Senior Year core courses:
AP Gov
AP Spanish IV
AP English
Honors Physics
Math Analysis</p>

<p>Extra Curriculars:
Club Soccer (since 6th grade)- 2 year Captain
HS Soccer (3 year Varsity)- Senior year Captain
California Scholarship Federation
Red Cross Club
High School Volleyball (2 years -Captain)</p>

<p>Awards:
Scholastic Acheivement Award (10th grade)- issued by teachers
CIF Academic All-League (2 years)
Most Improved Player (HS Soccer-11th grade)
Best Defensive Player (HS Volleyball-9th grade)</p>

<p>I would appreciate ANY suggestions for things I should focus on or highlight in my application </p>

<p>Thank you so much!</p>

2

<p>I think the only thing you have going for you here are good grades. Even your course load is questionable with only 1 AP class so far. Your SAT I superscore is decent but the huge dip in writing the second time around looks very bad. Your SAT IIs aren't helping your case either. ECs are pretty mundane with very little depth. Awards sound like fluff. </p>

<p>Suggestions: try to take on an non-sport EC that shows a bit of passion or shows what you're interested in. Keep doing well in class. </p>

<p>I'm generally not too optimistic looking at this profile but good luck.</p>

3

<p>I'd say the same as shraf. Your sat's and sat2's do not correlate with your gpa (even for someone who is just a bad test taker), makes me wonder about the competitiveness of your high school. </p>

<p>I don't think taking on another EC will do much good...once you're a senior it's a bit late in the game to be able to do anything of much weight. </p>

<p>I'd put columbia as a really-really big reach. Maybe if you have a good hook (first generation immigrant, first in family to go to school, etc) and a REALLY good essay, I'd move it down to a big reach. </p>

<p>Honestly, if you have the disposable cash, go ahead and apply; otherwise i would just apply to the UC's or a school a little lower in the scales. Remember, Columbia accepts less than 1 in 10 applicants as it is...who knows tho, stranger things have happened.</p>

<p>Not trying to be insulting, just calling it like I see it.</p>

4

<p>ya.. my mom is from england and my dad australia and i'm the first on on my mom's side to go to college.. thats probably doesnt help much though lol</p>

5

<p>"I'd put columbia as a really-really big reach. Maybe if you have a good hook (first generation immigrant, first in family to go to school, etc) and a REALLY good essay, I'd move it down to a big reach."</p>

<p>This is not a hook, a hook is something that considering all else average in your application the college will still be hard-pressed to reject you. examples include, winning a national dance, debate competition, starting a very successful business / non-profit initiative, being on the junior olympic team of something. In all these cases, if you meet the requirements of coping at columbia, they'll take you because they really want that skill / achievement of yours.</p>

<p>"ya.. my mom is from england and my dad australia and i'm the first on on my mom's side to go to college.. thats probably doesnt help much though lol"</p>

<p>(see above) this is not going to help much, also considering they're from england and australia, I imagine english is your first language, meaning you can't use 'non-native speaker' as an excuse for sub par scores.</p>

<p>Your Sat score is at or below the 25th percentile of accepted applicants, so you need something spectacular to pull you in or a couple of outstanding things. I don't see them, so I would suggest not expecting an acceptance from columbia. I also would say to apply to very few schools (if any others) as difficult to get into as columbia, although you still have a slight chance. As skray says: stranger things have happened.</p>

<p>I know you must be pretty bummed by these reviews, but with a profile like yours, you should get into some pretty good colleges. Focus on the sports, and why you're passionate about them, write good essays as always, and get good recs. For your essays I would say that because you have a slim chance, take risks, because a mundane essay will get you rejected. Don't worry about adding humor to your essays, try to make them very creative, and very different. If you fail, you were a likely rejection anyway, but this might be a good way to make them take notice. You also have no warning lights flashing in your application, which is a positive. good luck.</p>

6

<p>
[quote]
I also would say to apply to very few schools (if any others) as difficult to get into as columbia

[/quote]
</p>

<p>thats horrible advice. I have never gone so far as to suggest to anyone posting a chances thread where they should or should not apply for two reasons:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>We are just giving a subjective opinion without very important pieces of the puzzle. OP's profile isn't so bad that there would be absolutely no chance and even if that was the case i still would not go as far as to discourage anyone from applying. If you apply, you have a chance, however slim, of getting in, but if you don't apply you have no chance whatsoever. We're no experts here so don't put too much weight on your analysis by suggesting where a person should or should not apply. </p></li>
<li><p>The more people that apply to columbia, the lower the acceptance rate, the more prestigious columbia becomes, the more prestigious my degree becomes and the more prestigious it will be once my underqualified kids (i'm just assuming they'll be slackers) apply there and get in as legacies. So apply away!</p></li>
</ol>

<p>
[quote]
For your essays I would say that because you have a slim chance, take risks, because a mundane essay will get you rejected. Don't worry about adding humor to your essays, try to make them very creative, and very different.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>a bad/mundane essay will get u rejected no matter what your profile looks like. The advice about humor is very bad...you should always use extreme caution when including humor in any college essay. Also essays should be creative and different no matter what your profile is, i dont see y OP's situation changes anything.</p>

7

<p>"The more people that apply to columbia, the lower the acceptance rate, the more prestigious columbia becomes, the more prestigious my degree becomes and the more prestigious it will be once my underqualified kids (i'm just assuming they'll be slackers) apply there and get in as legacies. So apply away!"</p>

<p>I do chance threads for the OP, not for the columbia acceptance. my telling someone to apply or not, isn't going to change the number of applicants significantly at all, in the long term it's the alumni not the acceptance rate that matters. Adding highly sub-par applicants to the pool doesn't help (not saying that tmc is highly subpar).</p>

<p>As for your number 1, stop being an idealist, if someone has a slim chance you should call it as such, or risk hurting them. I agree we don't know everything, but if there was something spectacular about tmc that could be revealed in an app she'd have included it in her op. Also if she chose not to reveal it, she'll know that my decision is being made with imperfect information, if on the other hand she's given me unbiased information she'll gain from us giving realistic perspectives.
inflating someone's chances hurts them in the long term, and makes for bad application strategy. why do you think people have a mix of reaches / matches and safeties without applying to 20 schools? It's because high school students should put in a lot of effort into schools that they genuinely want to go to, and genuinely have a chance at. </p>

<p>Here's a blatantly sub-optimal case: i apply to 8 reaches, 2 matches, 1 safety. ask denz, he applied to too many reaches and had to take a gap year because he didn't maintain a realistic perspective of where he could get in. It turned out well, but his initial application decision was clearly sub-optimal.</p>

<p>finally and importantly, you set a bad precedent over time of inflating people's chances and you lose credibility with people on this forum, so you undermine your own interest.</p>

<p>I stand by my position of taking essay risks. Which does not apply to someone with top sats, grades and pedigree in ECs, they can write a simpler essay (not a mediocre one) and expect to have a good chance.</p>

8

<p>
[quote]
As for your number 1, stop being an idealist, if someone has a slim chance you should call it as such, or risk hurting them.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]
inflating someone's chances hurts them in the long term, and makes for bad application strategy.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>
[quote]
finally and importantly, you set a bad precedent over time of inflating people's chances and you lose credibility with people on this forum, so you undermine your own interest.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>did you even read my initial post. My assessment was by no means sunny. But what i'm saying is that you should not be giving people advice on where to apply and where not to apply...that advice should be left to a college counselor. Also, its pretty much a given that you shouldnt apply to highly selective colleges in lieu of less selective ones since the process is a crapshoot but if someone wants to take a chance by applying to columbia in addition to your matches/safeties who are you to discourage them.</p>

9

<p>"But what i'm saying is that you should not be giving people advice on where to apply and where not to apply...that advice should be left to a college counselor"</p>

<p>shraf, what's the only possible inference to make from "your chances are low"? it's to apply to schools that are easier to get into. If you're doing that and you're applying to 10 schools, there should be one or at most two schools like columbia. Something easier to get into, take (for instance) cornell arts and sciences, or u-chicago are better bets. they still might be reaches, but they're good reaches, where the chance of admissions might be 20-30% instead of 5%. </p>

<p>"Also, its pretty much a given that you shouldnt apply to highly selective colleges in lieu of less selective ones since the process is a crapshoot"</p>

<p>there's no such thing, it all depends on the applicant, some people have a very good chance of getting into columbia others absolutely don't. the same goes for NYU. you need to place yourself relative to selectivity, there isn't a list of the right level of selectivity applicable to all high school students. I do believe it's inefficient if she applies to many colleges like columbia. You made the conclusion that her chances were slim, I made the only possible inference that she might want to shoot quite a bit lower on average, while still considering columbia and not too many others like it.</p>

<p>It's completely analogous to someone who's ivy material but applying to state schools. If they strategize only thinking they can't get into better, I will tell them that they can and should shoot higher, and that they only need to apply to a couple of schools at that level as safeties (where say their sat score is in the 90th percentile of accepted applicants, good ECs etc.)</p>

10

<p>Hmm... sports look like they're your thing. Maybe you can highlight that in your application. </p>

<p>Don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't apply. Go for it... </p>

<p>Well... you always have the UCs to fall back on. They're a nice bunch of dedicated schools where you can get a good education for an affordable price.</p>

11

<p>"Don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't apply. Go for it..."</p>

<p>whoever said she shouldn't apply to columbia?</p>

12

<p>strictly by what you have listed here... slim shot.</p>

13

<p>Ehh...look farther than Columbia. Nothing really stands out.</p>