My high school is a popular picking ground for Cornell but still very competitive (20/90 admission).
I have a 3.4 GPA and I’ve taken and passed 3 APs throughout high school (APUSH: 4, AP Bio: 3, APES). I’m not the greatest at math. I got a 1250 on my SAT and a 710 on my US History SAT subject test.
I’ve always been very involved in my extracurricular activities. I’m president of a local 4-H club and Herdsmanship Award recipient (also applied for 4-H Youth in Action Award and have been named an a 4-H Honoree by my county’s Cornell Cooperative Extension), I’ve volunteered regularly at a local wildlife reservation and education center for the past 4 years (over 140 hours overall), and I’ve been a Girl Scout for over 10 years and my Gold Award is almost done. I’ve also been involved my my school’s clubs as a member of Cooking for a Cause and assistant club leader for our History Club.
I’ve had a couple summer internships at the Bronx Zoo. I’ve been a summer camp counselor at a local natural science hiking camp for two years. I’ve gotten a letter of recommendation from the mother of a child I babysit who happens to be a Cornell alumni.
I attended a summer course at Cornell for Sustainable Animal Husbandry (3 credits), preformed very well (got a 100% on the final exam and an A in the course), and the professor wrote me a letter of recommendation.
I’m just really worried because I know classmates that have 4.0 GPAs, are in my school’s Science Research program, and have really good SAT scores (like >1500 SAT and >32 ACT) have also applied ED to Cornell (not too many to CALS though). Do my extracurricular activities mean anything in the end? Feel free to ask any clarifying questions or recommend other/similar schools.
The whole point of this isn’t to brag or calculate my odds on a statistical software, I’m just trying to gauge how much time I should spend looking/applying to other schools in case I don’t get accepted.