<p>3.74 GPA weighted
School doesn't rank kids but is in "Top 100 High Schools"</p>
<p>34 ACT
SAT - 720 Math 700 Reading 750 Writing
SAT II - 790 World 780 US 770 Math I 670 Lit (wont send it)</p>
<p>APs:
10th: World History 5
11th: US: 5 Language and Composition: 5 Psychology: 3 Computer Science A: 3
12th: Economics, Literature, Statistics, Environmental Science</p>
<p>EC:
Debate Team (Captain + state tournament in 10th and 11th)
Varsity Cross Country (all 4 years, captain this year)
Senior Class secretary
approximately 300 hours community service
Various clubs with some commitment to them - nothing too special
Academic Summer Programs</p>
<p>Honors:
AP Scholar with Distinction
Scholar Athlete
Spanish Honor Society
National Honor Society</p>
<p>Recommendations:
Getting one from my debate coach/world history teacher - should be pretty sick, one from my 11th grade english teacher, should be pretty good, and my peer eval will be good of course</p>
<p>I’d say you have as good a shot as any unhooked ED applicant. It might be a little easier for people to tell if you maybe gave some more specifics as to what your 300 hours of volunteering entailed.</p>
<p>Unfortunately I think scores are low coming from a top NY school. My son is a similar applicant, he had decided to go RD if his scores were below 2300 to have another shot. You might consider this strategy.</p>
<p>Also on rank, as A Is For Admission, written by a former Dartmouth admissions staffer informed us, they will figure out where you rank. So being near the top of your class will be important without a hook.</p>
<p>3.74 weighted? Does that mean you have 50% Bs on your transcript? Not good, unless your school grades low and is well known to D and you are near the top of your class. Even if they don’t rank, it is likely that adcoms will figure it out by looking at your school’s profile, which usually includes a GPA spread. </p>
<p>Your ACT is definitely better than your SATs, which are a bit weak for an unhooked student Your SATIIs are fine. Too bad about those 3s…and from a supposedly “top” school? Your ECs sound solid, but not riveting. </p>
<p>I don’t think you have a good chance for ED, based on the results we’ve seen here in past years. Your chances for RD aren’t incredibly strong, either. You need to have something that makes you stand out. What is it? What were those academic summer programs and hours of service? Do they add up to an interesting individual with some kind of fire?</p>
<p>not sure what u mean by bs on my transcript - obviously the gpas low but thats mainly because a) i put next to no work in in high school and b) i took basically the most challenging cirriculum i could. and the school reports nothing on gpa in any way other than what it is weighted and unweighted. our school is top 100 according to newsweek and is fairly well known as a public school that might as well be a private school</p>
<p>and debate is kinda the centerpiece of my application which i am pretty passionate about and plan on continuing in college and beyond</p>
<p>not sure what u mean by bs on my transcript - obviously the gpas low but thats mainly because a) i put next to no work in in high school and b) i took basically the most challenging cirriculum i could. and the school reports nothing on gpa in any way other than what it is weighted and unweighted. our school is top 100 according to newsweek and is fairly well known as a public school that might as well be a private school</p>
<p>and debate is kinda the centerpiece of my application which i am pretty passionate about and plan on continuing in college and beyond</p>
<p>A 3.7 usually indicates an A-. Therefore a 3.7 weighted GPA indicates that a lot of those grades were Bs before they were weighted, and those Bs will be on your transcript. If your GPA were 3.74 UNweighted it would be a lot better. Or maybe that’s not your school’s grading system, and you don’t have 1/3 Bs on your transcript, which would certainly help your chances.</p>
<p>D has its pick of students who not only took the most challenging curriculum they could, but did extremely well in it. The fact that you put in next to no work in high school is not going to be a point in your favor, come admissions time. I’m not saying you’re dumb. I’m saying that you may have limited your choices by not doing a bit more grade-grubbing. It frequently happens to the brightest kids. </p>
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<p>Your school will send a school profile with its transcripts. A profile describes the community, the courses and ECs available, how many students take APs and how they do on the exams, where graduates are going to college, and so forth. Often the profile includes a chart showing GPA distribution, which enables adcoms to figure our roughly where you rank–or at least where you would have ranked in last year’s class. Go to your school’s website and look for it. Normally it can be found in the Guidance area of the site. If it doesn’t look like you are in the top 10% of your class, you’ve got a problem at the most selective schools.</p>
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<p>The methodology isn’t widely admired. In any case, you have to realize that if you are at Scarsdale High School or a magnet school like Stuyvesant they expect high scores from you. If you could send your ACT with your SATIIs and skip the SAT, I’d do it.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that you don’t have a shot, especially RD. I’m just saying that you need something outstanding that apparently isn’t on your transcript. Hopefully the mix of debating, your essays, and whatever those academic pursuits you followed in the summer plus your service activities will come together to form that picture.</p>
<p>i have a copy of the school profile and there is absolutely nothing about gpa on it - just APs offered, average scores on them and where kids went to college. as for my transcript, i had 2 B’s (one in an AP) and 4 B+'s (two in APs) and the rest of my grades were mostly A- with some A’s</p>
<p>also, how would i have a better shot RD than ED?</p>
<p>Okay, your school conceals what your GPA means. Presumably they have found that this increases their college admissions success. The top 4 or 5 public schools in my state all give a GPA graph last time I checked.</p>
<p>6 Bs so far. Assuming you took the equivalent of 5 to 7 full-year courses per year, that means you’ve taken 15-21 courses, and received a B of some kind in roughly a third of them. That is a good record but not great for D unless the grading at your school is very difficult. But no one can tell without some kind of reporting on GPA spread. (BTW, I can’t quite figure out how the weighting works with your GPA, since according to what you’ve said you should have something like an A- unweighted…)</p>
<p>ED at D takes a lot of legacies, recruited athletes, and other hooked students. We’ve seen many very strong unhooked students be rejected outright, much less deferred. Some of us have thought that it may almost work against unhooked students who are not really, really strong to apply ED. </p>
<p>Anyway, as I said above, I hope that your application paints a strong picture and that you have good luck.</p>
<p>unweighted i think my gpa is like 3.65 or 3.66 something like that, the weighting works that you multiply the grade by 1.1, so an A = 4, A- = 3.66, B+ = 3.33 and so on, and if its an AP or honors class than A=4.4, A-=4.02, B+ = 3.66, and so on.</p>
<p>Your school is ridiculous (no offense) but shouldn’t it be common knowledge by now in the educational system that an A- is a 4.0? 3.66… that’s just bogus, you have a 4.0 no matter what your top 100 school says…</p>
<p>And your GPA is really low for D, so as an unhooked applicant, chances are low. I know you go to a top 100 school, but in all honesty, plenty of people here come from top 100 newsweek public schools and pulled 3.95UW+. </p>
<p>Question: Debate. What kind of debate do you do? How well have you done?
Parliamentary/LD debate won’t necessarily be much help, but if you do really well in Policy it can be a serious hook: my ex was a semifinalist at the TOC for policy and the D debate coach helped him out getting in, and same thing for a lot of the kids in the DFU.</p>
<p>our league doesnt have policy or parliamentray debate, i do LD. i went to states the first two years i was on the team (10th and 11th) and almost went to nationals last year. ive come ridiculously close to qualifiying for states this year in varsity LD at our first two tournaments - beat out by a single speaker point both times</p>