<p>I still think you should try talking to the AdComs. You don’t have to go into all the details, but say you don’t have a counselor and everything etc. and what should you do?
Where are you planning to apply tho?</p>
<p>I wish I’d thought of that earlier but since the deadlines are approaching and I’ve already started sending them out, I think it’s a bit too late… I’m applying to all the regular colleges we all seem to be applying to…</p>
<p>ARUN- NO!
I dont want to comment on this publicly so I’ll PM you.</p>
<p>Arunemo- Its very common here.</p>
<p>^ the norm you mean <em>wink</em> <em>wink</em></p>
<p>By the way, how much weightage do colleges attach to recommendations anyway?</p>
<p>Depends, it’s an important aspect of course but good recs won’t overshadow a poor essay, poor grades, or both.</p>
<p>Senjuti, recommendation letters are important.</p>
<p>Think of the recommendation letter as a piece of the jig-saw puzzle admission people try to put together to form a complete picture of you. Make sure this piece fits well with the rest. </p>
<p>JMHO</p>
<p>^Couldn’t have put it better.</p>
<p>Yeah, reco letters play an important role in showing the adcoms who really are. they’re like a summary about your character from a reliable, respectable third person source.</p>
<p>IMO, what really matter are your school grades and SAT scores. Rest just “help” adcoms take a decision, they aren’t as integral as the aforementioned two.</p>
<p>Also, coming back to the debate about “depth” and “breadth” of ECAs, depth matters a hell lot more than breadth. Colleges don’t like kids with 1000 different activities, but little achievement in any. they want to see focused individuals. So, if you’re an applicant with 3 solid ECA (i.e fair amount of awards and recognition in each, your chances will be greater.</p>
<p>Um I’m not too sure about that Columbialove. In the most selective colleges, kids with stellar GPAs and test scores are a dime a dozen. It becomes a sort of very basic requirement to get them to look at your application. There are plenty of people with perfect scores who’ve gotten rejected, and an equally high number of people who’ve gotten in with good-but-not-excellent scores yet extremely compelling EC’s, essays, recs, or a combination of the three. There are so many variables in the admissions process that no Admissions Officer sits and reads an application while ticking off a set of boxes for prerequisites.</p>
<p>@arunemo,
But SAT scores are given paramount importance by any admissions officer. Okay, a lot of applicants might have stellar SAT records, but trust me, those who don’t have, stand a helluva lower chance (especially at Ivy Leagues). Additionally, school grades matter a lot because they’re the only reliable assessment of your academic performance. </p>
<p>Also, note that the applicant with low scores who gets through, usually (1) writes a very evocative essay
or/and
(2) shows some distinctively unique ECs.</p>
<p>I won’t say paramount. High school GPA yes, but not so much SAT scores. Admissions officers look at the entire package-you make it sound like a person will get in solely on the basis of their 2400 or whatever. Even if a person has an amazing score and 4.0 GPA, if they write a mundane essay, or if they have bad recs, or if they’re not very engaged in ECs, they will almost certainly get rejected. I know people who’ve gotten below 2000 SAT scores and who’ve attended MIT, Cornell, and Harvard because the rest of their application was excellent and made up for their low-ish score. At the end of the day, SATs and GPAs are numbers; AdComs want to see a person beyond the numbers, and you have to get that across as effectively as possible in order to stand a good chance of admission.</p>
<p>^
At Ivy’s - yes.
But smaller, public schools want to see high test scores and GPAs. They don’t really care about the essays, recs, and ECs.</p>
<p>This is so true:</p>
<p>Depth > Range</p>
<p>webass-I’m not very aware about large public schools and their admissions process. Most of what I wrote was on the basis of meetings and emails with Admissions officers and Alumni of Ivies and Selective LACs, so I suppose you could be right. Thank you for pointing that out.</p>
<p>I still think that your scores matter more than the rest of your app. Especially, for us, internationals.</p>
<p>Ya I guess it helps put things in perspective…?</p>
<p>The subject test scores help the adcoms get a perspective on how rigorous the school curriculum is and help them understand school scores. For eg, if a student has great school scores and mediocre Subject test results, the inference would be that the school isn’t really rigorous and the student isn’t very good academically especially since the subject tests are a helluva lot easier that APs.
However, for the typical Indian student who scores well in the Subjects, low school scores would just signify grade deflation.
For international students subject tests are important as they help the Adcoms understand the school scores.</p>
<p>There was a debate on CC on the importance of Subj tests over SAT reasoning.
Some believed that Subject tests are of the most importance since they test actual skills one learns in school while SAT Reasoning tests nothing much at all and basically cannot serve as a parameter of evaluation.
I belong to this category.
However, since Indian students are expected to have a good SAT score, even though I believe the Reasoning to be useless, I would nonetheless suggest that one should strive to achieve a good score in it.</p>
<p>Scores definitely don’t matter more than the rest of the application. It is the GPA that counts the most. However, scores as I mentioned are necessary to put the applcant’s school record into context.</p>
<p>EC’s are indeed less important for internationals. Adcoms take care to scrutinise every single EC and its importance before considering it. They realize how easy it is to get a certificate from an NGO here, so its hardly going to help. Similarly, EC’s with no substantial achievements are next to useless tbh. Unless you’ve got good recognisable achievements, your EC’s shall hardly help you. That is why sports are the most reliable EC to be in- it’s actually counted as one cannot fake his/her national ranking. EC’s like school cricket team, school debate competition, yada yada(the usual ECs every Indian lists) would be of little help. They don’t know or care about the school’s level of competiton. If you say “avid interest in say,Drama” but have nothing to show for it, consider it rubbish. Or maximum, you could list one EC as this, but to have your whole list containing just “avid interest” or school level competitions,it’s not going to help you for the HYP’s and other highly selective institutions. At smaller, lower tier institutions, they don’t care about EC’s anyway, so your test scores and school report is what matters anyway, so such people have a better chance at these places.</p>
<p>This is hard to take for many, but it’s true. Since I saw that this thread was now in “Featured discussions” I thought I’d make a note of it. I hope it helps out the next few coming classes!</p>
<p>^The whole debate becomes a bit redundant when people decide to take the ACT+Writing over the SAT+Subject Tests :p</p>
<p>It’s debatable, how much weight SATs should hold. I think performance in an internationally recognized rigorous program like the IB or AP or in National Level exams like the CBSE/ICSE/Olympiads in India is a better indicator of academic ability than a 3-hour test taken on a single day. I do admit that SATs and the ACT provide an equal playing field for Unis to compare all the candidates. Yet I’ve seen far too many people whose SAT scores belie their academic prowess. One of my really good friends who applied ED to Penn has a 1750 in her SATs with her writing score in the low 500s. Yet her GPA is stellar, she’s doing the full IB, and she’s hands down one of the best students in English in our class. This is of course evident in her essays and her recs. I’m not saying the SATs shouldn’t count for anything, but the huge emphasis placed on them is bit absurd when there are much more reliable accounts of ability on your application.</p>