@suzyQ7 I don’t disbelieve that I could find something to enjoy, it’s just that as I said before I can’t find anything of value to work into my AP-heavy schedule.
I just emailed my counselor. Should hear back anytime now.
“should I avoid universities with holistic admissions entirely because my application is centered around my numbers? Are there Unis like that in the US? Genuinely curious.”
Most four-year universities in the US are not holistic, the majority admit by numbers and gpa, test scores and strength of transcript. Holistic is a term used by colleges to defend or rationalize who they take. Take athletes, they’re not holistic by any stretch, they do one thing and they do it really well. I’m not against athletes getting admission based on their talent, just that when a college accepts an athlete, they expect them to focus on academics and their sport, not run a service club or write for the school paper. And athletes can make up 15-20% of a selective university’s class.
I think there are 80-100 holistic universities, and that’s probably overestimating it, out of 3000 4-year colleges. Figure the top 50 schools in US News national, top 50 LACs, that’s probably it.
The issue is when colleges claim they’re holistic when they’re not.
The Common App asks it’s members to use holistic. Last count I saw was well over 600 colleges.
While they can certainly “ask,” members are not required to comply.
https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/common-app-changes-membership-requirements/39017
But regardless of whether the number of colleges which evaluate holistically is 80 or 600, most colleges do not evaluate holistically, so there are plenty of options for the OP.
That said, I’m not sure what the OP is wanting from us. S/he’s opened a number of posts that, to me, are all variation of a theme, and the more active ones just seem to go around in circles.
as @skieurope mentions and the article confirms, you can ask for colleges to use holistic but there’s no way any organization can tell a college how to choose its class, especially a private one. And holistic in this sense was an essay and one recommendation, which I don’t think is actually unreasonable but by no stretch can that be considered holistic.