<p>Will you guys, more specifically current NW students, chance me?</p>
<p>-GPA: 3.66 UW with 7 AP's total
freshmanhonors)(3.8) sophomorehonors)(3.9) juniorAP+honors)(3.3)
-School ranked number 39th public
-AP scores: 4 USH, 4 Bio, 3 Stat
-SAT 1 R-750 M-690 W-750 Total:2190
-SAT 2 USH-670 Bio-Ecology-750 Chinese with listening- 720
-AP Scholar
-Two Academic Letters
-Two piano semifinalist awards
-Started up my own band
-Interned at Tsinghua University in Beijing, teaching English to grad students
-Worked for Subway
-Volunteered for National Youth Sports Program at the University of Saint Thomas as a staff assistant and a group leader.
-Volunteered as a teacher assistant and a chess teacher every saturday at a Chinese school.
-Volunteered at a Chinese orphanage
-President's Award for academic excellence (9th grade)
-various volunteering activities with NHS
-Brown Belt in Karate, achieved over the course of one year
-Made it into school's select choir, jazz choir and callbacks for musical(Aida), with no prior training
-We moved the beginning of junior year, and I became really down because I was away from friends and my current environment is cutthroat. One of my essays is about how I adapted to this environment.</p>
<p>The only problem I see is that your GPA went down and at the worst time possible. I'm referring to Jnr yr of course.</p>
<p>3.66: red flag. Your ECs are alright but might not be enough to offset grades that are well below average for NU (working for Subway and a 9th-grade award are not going to distinguish you). You have to absolutely rock your essays. </p>
<p>The Chinese SAT II will not help you, since you are a native speaker. Your other test scores are high enough not to be a hindrance, but test scores alone do not offset a mediocre GPA.</p>
<p>Also, a downward GPA trend is a serious issue, especially when your troubles don't start until you begin to challenge yourself. Things will only get harder at the college level, and a student who does well in honors courses but falters once he begins his AP curriculum raises real warning signs. Additionally, your excuse does not seem to hold water when compared with other applicants who had to deal with everything from personal illness to deaths of parents and other calamaties, yet still managed to keep their grades aloft. </p>
<p>I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I am giving you a straight answer to your question: there are thousands of Chinese kids with similar applications, higher GPAs, and identical activity lists who are climbing over themselves to get into top schools (and just as many who apply to schools like NU errantly believing that they are safeties). Working in China is great, but this will not necessarily separate you from the throngs of similar students submitting applications to a given school. </p>
<p>I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but these are all factors to consider before you get too comfortable with people telling you that you are a lock. You are a safe bet to get into a top-20 school, but I don't think that anybody can reasonably tell you that you are an auto-admit for Northwestern.</p>
<p>I realize NU is no lock for me. It's a match at best, and certainly one of the highest-ranked schools I've applied to. I realize that I stand little chance of being admitted to ivy leagues, which is why I only applied to Cornell's state schools, so I'm not an elitist, or snobbish. If it makes any difference, I'm already in USC, Wisconsin, Buffalo and UCSD. When do decisions come out?</p>
<p>Decisions usually come out the last week of March, so look for news no later than the first few days of April.</p>
<p>You've already got some awesome choices, so congrats on that (Wisconsin is one of the very best public schools in the country, and USC's selectivity has been steadily rising over the course of the past few years)! Good luck with NU and Cornell.</p>
<p>thanks a lot man. Maybe I'll see you next year as a fellow wildcat!</p>
<p>Ha...well, I'm long gone (graduated a couple of years ago), but hopefully I'll see you at a football game next season!</p>