hancesCay

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

<p>Hey. Hope you guys could give me some chances input.</p>

<p>Senior attending semi-competitive HS in South-Central Jersey (sends one Ivies, three-ish to top 40 schools)</p>

<p>Plan to major in Civil Engineering</p>

<p>SAT: Superscore 2060 (700M 660CR 700W 10 Essay)
ACT (good s**t): Composite 33 - 34 English, 33 Math, 31 Reading, 34 Science, 32 Writing
(Is Columbia biased on which test to accept? I mean, they've got my SAT's and SATII's, and I sent them my ACT's two weeks ago. I hope that they get my ACT's in time and will take those scores)
SAT II's: Physics 650
Math IIC 690
(Unrealistic because I realized I had to take them a week before the test date, don't think they accurately measure my skills and I mentioned this in Addt'l. Info)</p>

<p>GPA: Right around a 4 weighted, 3.7 unweighted.
Classes: Most rigorous curriculum: All honors and AP classes.
APs: Soph: AP Macroeconomics-4
Junior: AP Spanish Language-(Couldn't take test)
Senior: AP Physics (Well, it's not AP, but its the same coursework/load and I plan to take the test)
AP Calculus AB
AP USH
AP Microeconomics</p>

<p>EC's- National Honor Society
Spanish Honor Society
F.I.R.S.T. Robotics Team, member of founding team as senior
designer/engineer. We won the NJ regionals and won a Rookie
all-star award, after which we went to the world champs in Atlanta.
Morning TV show, I created a lot of attractive, professional grade Flash
Intros which really got everyone talking!
Habitat for Humanity
Perhaps one or two more as the year goes by.</p>

<p>Work experience(significant!)</p>

<p>Worked in a construction company all four years of high school. I started as skilled labor(electrics, plumbing, carpentry) and moved up to more professional jobs. I am now a project manager, sales consultant, in marketing, and I've created a website for our firm. It's a serious job in which I've used a lot of stuff I learned in school. I'm also given full-scale responsibilities, like some sales presentations and crew management, no easy stuff. I can run most machinery, including excavators and large tractors, and tools. I hope colleges look at this as a much more involved employment as opposed to something like working in a supermarket (nothing wrong with that, but my job's way more intensive!)</p>

<p>Special considerations, if any:</p>

<p>Come from a low-income family for where we live, I think. I'll do the EFC thing today with my folks, but I expect it to be at most $2,500. I work very hard to support it. I used to work around 30-35 hours a week before, now due to the housing slump, that has increased to near 35-40 hours, taking away some time I could've used to study, play lax, etc. I heard the Ivies+top schools have a hard time attracting lower income kids, so I'm hoping mentioning this will help me. I worte about it in the extra info section and mentioned a snippet in my essay.</p>

<p>Thanks for your input.</p>

2

<p>until i got to the job part of your post, i was thinking - likely rejection. With the job you have a chance, not a great chance, but a decent one. your job is pretty unique, and i guess your circumstances hindered you. So considering this they could take you. However your grades are not great for admissions, and your sat 2 math and physics are definitely well below average for seas. even a 700 in sat 1 math is quite low. you profile is really interesting, but you don't show how you have the ability to do well in classes at columbia, the material and the competition in the engineering classes are serious, and nothing suggests that you'll be able to do well. i can't say you'd do badly because your time has been taken up by other stuff.</p>

3

<p>ED'd SEAS? </p>

<p>I'd say you have a pretty good chance everything looks good and normal cept the math iic score.. you'll need something else on your application (more than anA in calc AB since almost everyone has that) to show that you are proficient in math and that was an anomaly. since SEAS is an engineering school and proficiency in math is very important.</p>

4

<p>I looked up SEAS a while ago on collegeboard, and the AVERAGE math SAT 1 score for the freshman class of (unless they're out of date, in which case it might actually be a few points higher) 2011 is 765.</p>

<p>And considering only around 50% of people accepted to SEAS enroll, it's likely to assume that the average math SAT of those ADMITTED is significantly higher, and probably approaches 780-790. </p>

<p>^Reasoning: 293 ( out of 608 admitted) students accepted to SEAS refused their seat. We must ask, why would somebody refuse a seat at Columbia SEAS? Well, I would fathom a guess that at least 70% of them refused their seat because they were offered one at a more prestigious engineering school, i.e., MIT or Cal Tech. So, the other 30% either were accepted to MIT or Cal Tech and refused their seat, or gave up their seat at SEAS for other reasons (maybe they decided they like politics better, or their girlfriend didn't get in). These other reasons often don't coincide with academic achievement, and so, assume those 30% are average, which is 765. Of the remaining 70%, let's say that 40% got in to Cal Tech, which has an average math SAT score of 790. Let's say that the remaining 30% got in to MIT, whose average math SAT score is 760, but not Cal Tech.</p>

<p>So, of the approximately 50% of admitted students who refused their seats. . .
30% = 765
40% = 790
30% = 760
Average of those who did not attend = 774</p>

<p>Average of all accepted SEAS students (.5<em>765 + .5</em>774) = 769.</p>

<p>(Yes I did all of that work to add 4 points to the average SAT score. My excuse for wasting your time = really thought it would be closer to 790. Oh well)</p>

5

<p>I'm goin' for Civil Engineering. Perhaps the high math scores are due to Columbia having some ultra--smart plasma physics engineering or something...I don't know. Anyway, it would'nt be so bad to go to school in NYC, right? If NYU had an authentic engineering department(not the SIT stuff) then that'd be my first choice.</p>