<p>Okay, so i am a senior in a public high school, and I am applying ED to Dartmouth. I really want to go there but I am a bit concerned because of my GPA (though it does have a huge upward trend) and because of where I live, my ECs have been limited to mostly personal projects rather than school-related ones. I also grew up living and working on a farm, so I think I have several unique experiences that I will write about in my common app essay. Here are my stats:</p>
<p>white middle class male, small public high school in a small townin southern minnesota
GPA: 3.47/4.0 (UW) (class not ranked) 3.3ish from fresh/soph year, 3.85ish last year, 4.0 so far this year
ACT: 32(second highest in class) Breakdown eng:30 math:32 read:31 sci:36 (taking again this month)
SAT IIs: Just took math II, chem, lit.. scores should be decent but have not received yet
ECs: I have skipped around with sports all of my HS years, i'm on law team this year, thats about it for school related ECs
Course load: govt & econ, AP Calculus (highest math level offered), AP Chem, AP English (there are only 3 AP classes that you can take at one time) dual enrollment college physics with the university of minnesota, and youth service leaders
My resume which I will be attaching emphasizes the skills i have acquired from working on the farm
I will be writing about the car that i built from the ground up during high school that I now drive around, its a 1969 camaro so pretty nice looking and flawlessly restored now.. I will be attaching pictures of this to my resume.</p>
<p>Note: I had lunch with an alum of Dartmouth who graduated in 07 and he was admitted early decision with an ACT of 28. He said that when he applied he talked about a cabin he had built and attached pictures of it to his application and he was pretty sure that played a role in his acceptance. </p>
<p>Any input would be great sorry about the crap grammar thanks</p>
<p>You do have an upward trend, but I do not think it is enough… And SStephen2015 might be right, considering you have a pretty low GPA, and your SAT score is barely higher than the 25th percentile. Your ECs are also sort of low. </p>
<p>In fact, I do not want to be mean, but about 11.5% of applicants are accepted overall, and ~27% through ED:
27 out of 100 students are accepted for ED, roughly.Do you know who gets accepted at the 27th percentile of accepted students? URMs and recruited athletes, and the URMS probably had a little something extra to boost up their application, and the athletes were probably pretty damn good at the respective sport. I don’t know if you have either, but even then, it would be hard to see you in their class. I heavily suggest trying at some other places, too. </p>
<p>I’d say no chance. GPA is simply too low, and there’s no other part of the application that seems to compensate for it. Are you applying anywhere else, do you have any safeties? I’d say you need to let Dartmouth (and any other highly selective schools similar to it, to be perfectly honest) go and start focusing on some other less selective schools. Why don’t you post some other options and then you can get chances for those schools? Everyone is going to be saying the same thing about Dartmouth. Or, if you still don’t have a finalized list, try the College Search & Selection forum to see what others suggest?</p>
<p>I have plenty of safeties and moderately selective schools that I’m applying to as well, but i visited dartmouth and it was absolutely perfect so I decided to try for ED there. I just wanted to gage what kind of chance i might have even though i knew it was little to none. I just decided that I would go to college last year tbh. I’m looking at a couple other reaches (Cornell, Gtown, Hopkins, Northwestern). One that is a reach but a little more in range is Boston College. My grandpa went there so i have a little legacy as well. Other than that, i’m looking at some UCs, BostonU, Northeastern, and some local public schools that i’m sure i’ll get in to.</p>
<p>Thanks Stephen, could you recommend a few more schools in that range? If I don’t get into any reaches, I’d most likely go to BC (which is actually a reach kind of) or UM-twin cities, UW-madison something along those lines but id like to have other schools around the 20-30% acceptance rate range</p>
<p>Hello @minnesotan456 ! I am a current student at Dartmouth! Honestly, I think everyone has a chance of getting in here. If you scores are lower, that just means that you have to make up for it in another part of the application. Set yourself apart! Why does Dartmouth NEED you here? What would you contribute to the college community during your undergrad years, and after you graduate? Don’t join things now in order to pad your resume some more. The admissions directors will recognize this immediately and it might hurt you. Hopefully throughout high school you participated in a wide variety of activities and eventually focused on a few specific ones that relate to your interests and future goals. If you haven’t submitted your essay yet, definitely try to incoporate why you chose to participate in your specific ECs and how it relates to your future plans. Dartmouth can be described as: outdoorsy, athletic, artsy. There are definitely more aspects to the college, but these are the three main adjectives that come to my mind. Do any of these adjectives apply to you? Essentially, make sure the college knows exactly who you are and why we need you here! </p>
<p>Good luck with everything :)</p>
<p>You may want to look into Middleburry, Williams, UVM, and UNH as well. </p>
<p>@xoxo14 well I was rejected =(. I am not that disappointed because I was expecting it though, and I’m possibly a little relieved because I liked so many other schools as well. Thank you so much for the advice anyway! I’m applying to both Middlebury and Williams now :)</p>