I’m thinking to apply early decision for College of William & Mary.
I live in South Korea, and I’m not sure if being educated in a different system changes how my class rank/GPA is looked at, because as far as I know, education in South Korea demands a lot more from the students compared to the U.S.
I wish to know if my possibly more demanding education system is a factor in affecting my chances for acceptance, what my chances actually are, and if I’m being too greedy.
Also, I’ve had a bit of work experience if you could call it that. With a friend, I built an online dinner reservation service for our school, and it’s in use right now. It used to be done in paper. Will this play a role? If so, should I mention it in my essay or is ticking the checkbox “Started a business or service(something like this)” while registering for the ACT is enough?
Any advice is welcome, and please don’t hesitate to ask for more information.
Here are my stats:
ACT: 29 (ACT website is down, can’t get details right now. I’ll ) , planning to retake the ACT in November, aiming for 32 this time.
SAT Subject Tests Math 1: 690 (National percentile: 69th)
Math 2: 720 (National percentile: 52nd)
GPA: Somewhere around 2.4/4.0
Class Rank: Just about the half mark.
TOEFL iBT: Total 106 (If I’m correct, most colleges see 100+ as a ‘pass’.)
Did you do your own conversion on your GPA? I’m not an expert on the South Korean secondary school grading system, but from the little I know it is too different for you to try and do the conversion. Fwiw, W&M has no students with a 2.4 GPA, but let the Admissions Office do the conversion themselves. W&M has one of the most helpful admissions offices I know (their [url=http://wmblogs.wm.edu/category/admission/]blogs[/url] are great)- so email them and ask if your grades- in the form you have them- are in range for W&M
The middle 50% of ACT scores is 29-32, so improving your score in ACT would strengthen your app. W&M doesn’t ask for Subject Tests, and yours are fine but not super strong, and I’m not sure that they will add much to your app.
Again, not an expert, but I think that’s true in some ways: it seems a lot more structured, with an expectation of a lot more hours of study. But in it’s own way I think that the US system demands a lot from students looking to apply to competitive colleges: good grades in the 5 academic subjects (math, science, english, history and a foreign language), good test scores, strong ECs (that may sound easy- but the rule of thumb is that you ‘should’ have a sport- ideally a team sport, a performance art, community service and leadership positions in student organizations), as well as summers doing something meaningful (job, research, etc).
Thank you for your super helpful reply!
Wonder why I couldn’t think to seek answers from them directly…
Yes, I did the conversion myself, which seems like a mistake, now that I think of it.
I know little of how things are for high school in the U.S., and my comparison between the U.S. and South Korea was pretty much a wild guess based on the difference of difficulty between the two countries’ standardized tests.
Sorry if I guessed wrong.
I’ll try sending them an e-mail.
Most of the bigger US universities have admissions people dedicated to specific regions of the world. So you will probably have someone reading your application who is familiar with the Korean grading system.
What type of schools are you targeting for college?
I’m planning to apply early decision for William and Mary.
Maybe my GPA and class rank is too low regardless.
Your ACT score will be at the 25th percentile for William and Mary:
http://www.wm.edu/admission/undergraduateadmission/how-to-apply/freshmanapplicants/application-checklist/standardizedtesting/index.php
So it is a bit on the low side. Since you are applying as an international, try to focus on schools where your stats are at or above the 75th percentile