Final chances?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Northwestern University
1

<p>Goes to a public school (812 API) in California
Gender and Ethnicity: Male, Indian
4.00 GPA (unweighted) (10-12)
4.83 GPA (weighted) (10-12)
UC GPA: 4.33
Class rank: 1/269</p>

<p>Test Scores:
SAT: 2210 - 680 CR, 750 M, 780 W, Essay:11/12
ACT: 31 composite (35 M, 31 E, 26 R, 32 S, 9 essay)
SAT II Biology M: 790
SAT II Math L2: 760
SAT II U.S. History: 710</p>

<p>Course Rigor:
Took 4 Honors in freshman year, got all A's (7 total).
Took 1 AP class (AP Biology) in sophomore year and 4 Honors courses (7 total).
Took 4 AP classes and 1 Honor's course in junior year (6 total).</p>

<p>Senior year schedule:
1. AP Physics C
2. AP French Language
3. AP English Lit.
4. AP Statistics
5. AP Environmental Science
6. Econ/Govt.</p>

<p>All A's throughout high school (man, that sounds pretentious =p)</p>

<p>AP Scores:
AP Biology (sophomore): 5
APUSH (junior): 4
AP English Lang. (junior): 5
AP Calculus AB subscore (junior): 5
AP Calculus BC (junior; not offered, so self-studied): 5
AP Chemistry (junior): 5</p>

<p>EC's/Volunteer work:
-Volunteered at Canal Alliance for 2 years; (helping lower-class kids in education).
-Member of Youth Leadership Institute:
-Member of its Marin County Youth Commission and President of its Health Committee (3 years)
-Member of its Healthy Empowered Youth Program. (for 3 years)
-Enrolled in summer classes from UC Berkeley in a program called Academic Talent Development Program (ATDP) for in summer of 2009.
-Selected by UC ELP (Eligibility Local Context) program.
-Member of Link Crew for 2 years (max); (helps high school freshmen to transition into high school life).
-Member of Marin Symphony Youth Orchestra for 3 years.
-Founder of Tennis Club and Cultural Diversity Club.
-Member of Varsity Tennis team (Co-captain).
-Member of California Scholarship Foundation (3 years)
-Peer Tutored kids after school in my high school
-Member of the Big Brother Big Sisters program (2 years)
-Member of Marin Indian American Association: Member in cultural events and youth education programs. Raised Haiti earthquake relief funds. Taught Indian heritage to young children. (2 years)
-Worked as a paid intern at a Kaiser Perm. Hospital Intern for its 2010 Summer Youth Employment Program- lots of medical experience.
-Went to UC Davis COSMOS program for math and science in summer of 2011 for -Biochemistry (200/800 applications get chosen)
-21 Community College Credits</p>

<p>Awards and Honors:
-AP Scholar w/ Distinction
-President of French Honors Society
-MVP of Varsity Tennis team
-California Legislature Assembly Leadership Award-for making change in health-related issues in my community
-Successfully completed and honored in Toastmaster's International Youth Leadership program. (2010 summer)</p>

<p>Essays:
Have a reliable essay tutor and have pretty good essays, in my opinion.</p>

<p>Letters of Rec:
1 Science, 1 US History, and 1 Math, and they all know me well.</p>

<p>Hooks (barely have any, I don't think these count anyways):
-Indian ethnicity, but AA screws me haha.
-Parents studied in India, first gen. in family to study in the USA</p>

<p>Interests:
I'm thinking of doing a Neurobiology/Cell Biology/Molecular Biology major with a pre-medicine discipline.</p>

2

<p>Final chances for what? College? Yeah, you’ll get in somewhere.</p>

3

<p>you seem to be posting everywhere :smiley: dont you have any work to do?</p>

4

<p>Dang, that 4 in APUSH is really gonna screw you over… Off to a community college for you.</p>

5

<p>Haha, thanks for the compliment.</p>

6

<p>bump10char</p>

7

<p>dj – </p>

<p>To state the obvious – the biggest negative in your resume is the SAT-CR score (680) and a 26 on the English portion of the ACT (which is equivalent to something like a 600 on the SAT). In fact, the ACT-31 Comp, is a bit low. (Are you sending in the ACT, btw). Don’t get me wrong, 680 is an excellent score – it’s just below average for what you’re considering.</p>

<p>Otherwise, your activities look good, though I see more breadth than depth. Nothing really stand out.</p>

<p>Your grades/rank are obviously excellent.</p>

<p>What do you want to study – if you plan on majoring in the sciences/engineering, the SAT-CR score won’t stand out as much.</p>

<p>Since you’re apparantly asking about a lot of schools – IMO, you have a shot at a top 20 school, though you won’t be a ‘lock’ at any of them. You should certainly apply to a number of these schools, but should also include a couple of schools that are the next tier lower as well as a safety school.</p>

<p>(I’d probably give that advice to anyone looking at this level school, but perhaps a bit more so in your case.)</p>

8

<p>The only other problem I see, which I think I mentioned before on another post of yours, is that the API score of your school is low.</p>

9

<p>Just spoke to several Ivy league-attending friends and read that chance result thread…I think I’m fine…First off, you say that I have more breadth than depth. I’d like to rebut that I’ve done each extracurricular for at least 2-3 years, which is a good amount of depth. Plus, I WANTED to do all of those things, not because I want to be “well-rounded” or whatever. I actually loved doing each and every one of those things. I love science. I love student government. I love leadership. I love to help others. These couple sentences essentially define my personality. I personally don’t see why a person should leave out all other passions and delve into just one passion; it seems stupid.</p>

<p>And you’re forgetting about the essays. The chance result thread provides enough evidence that the essays matter. A lot. Heck, I saw tigerbound12 with a 2100 SAT get into Harvard and Princeton, but I bet he wrote awesome essays, which I believe I am doing and hope to do. I’m beginning to dislike this “standard” of requirements you need to get into top colleges because it really is subjective and about YOU, not your test scores.</p>

<p>Honestly, I have done all these chance threads in order to see how people on this website view admissions. Some of them are good. Some are pretty much focused on test scores and don’t even mention anything else. Overall, they have been helpful into gaining an insight into admissions, but the chances people give here are truly not great…</p>

<p>This is for sure a rant, by the way. And I don’t rant much.</p>

10

<p>dj</p>

<p>I didn’t mean to set you off.</p>

<p>A couple of points – </p>

<p>Essays – not having seen yours, we can’t evaluate it. (And even if we did, we don’t know how an admissions committee would). </p>

<p>Depth vs Breadth – you’ve listed something like 18 activities. It comes through as someone who does a lot of things, but has not found one activity that is a passion. If, in fact you have one thing that is special to you, it doesn’t come through. This is an observation, not a criticism. I only make the observation, since there is a school of thought that top colleges prefer to see that passion (however, I’m not an admissions officer, so I don’t know how true this is).</p>

<p>“Having a shot” – NU has an 18% acceptance rate. Unless a student is exceptional, that’s all anyone can honestly say. In your case, you have excellent academic credentials, but one relative weakness. Can this be overcome – sure. As I say, you have a shot, maybe even an above average one. I really can’t say more.</p>

<p>In any event, good luck!!</p>

11

<p>I’m sorry for being set off. It’s definitely due to the stress of college apps and basically my future haha. Thanks for being cool about it. I agree with the passion thing, but I don’t think it will be a matter of rejection, I just won’t be the “best” applicant; maybe I’m just the “better” applicant. I’m pretty sure it’s not just the “best” applicants in all areas go only to NU. But that’s what I think, I guess. Good luck to you as well!</p>

12

<p>I understand the stress --</p>

<p>A couple of thoughts. First of all, with your stats, you should get into an excellent college. Be it NU or somewhere else you will have opportunities when you graduate. Though we’d like to think differently, to be 100% frank there is not a lot of difference in opportunity for NU graduates and graduates of peer institutions.</p>

<p>As to the “best” applicant. Perhaps you aren’t, but then again neither are the vast majority of students who are actually accepted into NU. There really are very few perfect candidates. Most have relative strengths and relative weaknesses.</p>

<p>Anyway, this really gets down to the point I was trying to make. I believe that NU reported last year that it rejected thousands of candidates with SAT (presumably CR-M) over 1500. There are many posts of valedictorian’s being rejected. On the other hand, many students with lesser ‘stats’ get accepted every year. The same is true of other peer institutions.</p>

<p>People here don’t see the entire application and even if we did we lack the experience to judge which applications are strong and which are weak. The result is that the most I think we can say is whether, based on the information you provide, whether you seem to be in the ball park for admissions or not. (You are).</p>

<p>However, an unfortunate fact is that many highly qualified students are not accepted into their first choice. Given how hard they worked and all they’ve achieved it may seem random and unfair. That’s the bad news.</p>

<p>The good news – where students understand the process and have done their part, applied to multiple top-tier schools, taken each application (especially the supplement) seriously, visit (or attend local events) when possible, etc. the overwhelming majority are accepted into the level of school (if not the specific school) that one would expect. </p>

<p>Given that you’ve posted many ‘chance me’ threads, it appears that you understand the numbers game and the system. At the end of the day, you should be fine.</p>

13

<p>I agree with your opinions. Thank you for your responses.</p>

14

<p>DJ, my thought is that when you put yourself out there for “chances” you have to be willing to take some criticism. No one is intentially trying to bash anyone, they are just giving their opinion, which you ASKED for. OK, every once in a while there is a harsh poster, but for the most part people have the best intentions and are kind and helpful. </p>

<p>If you are true to yourself in the application process, you will get into some great schools and some you won’t. It is the same way for everyone. But if you have been authentic and you are not accepted, then you probably wouldn’t be happy at that school anyway. We all know that this process is like buying lottery tickets. Who knows who is going to read your application and what kind of day they are having! There is some social engineering that goes on and you either fit into their project, or you don’t. As the previous poster said, we can only go by the information that has been provided by the school and by you.</p>

<p>As an aside, I read that many top tier schools look most specifically at the CR portions of standardized testing because you do a great deal of reading and synthesizing in college and it is considered a strong indicator of success. Of course if one is a math major or engineering major this is less likely the case.</p>

<p>Good luck and let us know what happens so we will have “anecdotal evidence” going forward!</p>

15

<p>[SAT</a> Validity Studies](<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/sat/validity-studies]SAT”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/sat/validity-studies)</p>

<p>“Writing is the most predictive section of the SAT, slightly more predictive than either math or critical reading.”</p>

<p>In the end, each score is equally important, especially at top tier schools in my opinion.</p>

16

<p>…and NU doesn’t look at the Writing portion of the SAT…</p>

17

<p>Do you have a source to back up that statement?
CollegeBoard gives a statistic of it:
[College</a> Search - Northwestern University - NU - SAT®, AP®, CLEP®](<a href=“College Search - BigFuture | College Board”>College Search - BigFuture | College Board)</p>

<p>And, by the way, this writing being not looked at thing is changing. This was true from 2006 to like 2009/2010, but as time continues, even now, writing will become significant.</p>

18

<p>Except for at those schools who don’t consider the writing portion (of which there are a few), of course. I will go back and check through my information to site my information.</p>

19

<p>Quote from A is for Admission by Michelle Hernandez. Page 53 ( you do know who she is, right?):</p>

<p>“It is still, as it has always been, more impressove to see high verbal (critical reading) scores than high math scores, since most students at the highly selective colleges will be doing much more writing and reading than math. Verbal ability is still a good indicator of how strong a reader the student is. The ability to read well will ultimately have a bigger impact on most college students than the ability to do SAT math very well, espicially since the level of the SAT math is not particularly high.”</p>

<p>“SAT scores of 750CR and 630M would be muich more impressive for most highly selective colleges than a 640CR and 780 M, even though the latter score has a higher combined total by forty points.”</p>

<p>I have heard as well that Northwestern does not looking at the writing portion. I wish they did, my daughter has a very high writing score.</p>

20

<p>Re post #17-just because CB gives a statistic doesn’t mean that NU uses the score. If I have time to waste (besides the time I’m wasting now jousting with you) I’ll try to find my “back up.”
Edited to add-Go look at the CB source you provided and see what it says about how the Writing component will be used. :rolleyes:</p>