Cornell, Georgia Tech, and Harvey Mudd Chances

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>I will be graduating from an extremely competitive private Catholic high school (in Cincinnati), who sends many kids off to Ivy League schools and other top universities, at the end of this school year. Currently, I have an SAT (CR + Math) of 1520 and an ACT of 34. I have decent ECs including many service projects, internships (at a powerful law firm in the Willis Tower), baseball (on a state championship team), and leadership positions with the American Cancer Society. I also have glowing letters of recommendation from my AP Physics teacher and my AP Spanish teacher. Also, if necessary I could get a letter of recommendation from the speaker of the house (family friend and I worked as a page). Additionally, I am considered fluent in Spanish, but I provide no diversity. However, my gpa is only a 3.1 (unweighted). I'm unsure what it is weighted (my counselor said between the 4.1 and 4.6 range), but I have taken 12 honors classes and 4 AP (as of junior year) this year I have two more AP's, a dual enrollment (dual enrolled in Ohio State's college of engineering) and a handful of honors. If I apply early decision to Cornell what are the odds that I would get accepted? If you think there is no way, any suggestions on how to get closer to an acceptance would be wonderful.</p>

<p>Edit:My class rank is about in the middle for my school. My freshman year grades were low because my dad left during the summer before that year and then my mom was out of the picture for a while that year as well. So I made sure to write about that in my essay in order to give an explanation for why my gpa doesn't match up with my letters and test scores.</p>

2

<p>I’m pretty sure you’d get into Georgia Tech, Harvey Mudd would be tougher (a lot tougher if you are applying to it’s engineering, which is quite competitive), and Cornell would be toughest. You don’t have a great chance of Cornell (not that anyone does), but it would definitely be worth applying, unless your freshman year GPA is catastrophically low, you would probably just get deferred to regular decision in the worst case scenario. That Speaker of the House recommendation would also be good to have assuming he knows you well. </p>

<p>You should definitely put your family situation during freshman year on applications, but you should probably put it under additional information or something similar. Essays are a place to show off your writing skills and allow adcoms a glimpse at your personality, not to clarify bad grades. If you only want to make that your essay topic to explain your grades, consider a different essay topic.</p>

3

<p>Thank you for the honest opinion! I chose an essay topic where I was to describe an obstacle and how I overcame it. So, I thought it seemed fitting and a way that I could give some clarification. I used my gpa’s for freshman (2.7) and sophmore (4.0) years to show that I found a way to overcome it.</p>