I am a rising senior in high school, and this summer I have been interning in DC for a US representative. I’m curious if anyone knows to what degree this will help me get into college. Originally I was planning to only apply to schools like U of M, UNC, UVa, and UW. However, because of my internship I now plan to additionally apply to Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. I have no idea how much my internship will affect my admission chances, especially for these 3 schools, which I probably could not get into without the internship. My SAT scores are 730 English and 760 math, but my GPA is only about 3.5 unweighted, which includes a C in AP Chemistry (although I do attend the top 50th public high school in the country). I haven’t seen my SAT subject test scores yet, but I don’t think I did very well on them. What do you think are my chances of getting accepted into Princeton, Harvard, or Yale?
That one internship will probably not scoot you into the admit pile at an Ivy, but I don’t know what the rest of your application looks like. You can totally apply to reaches like P, H&Y! There’s no harm in it and you have the basic stats to do so.
Would you mind commenting a more complete picture of your ECs?
A congressional internship is a wonderful resume item, but no single item makes or breaks a resume.
Make sure you have some academic and financial safeties. Don’t think any school you’ve listed qualifies (at least from an academic standpoint).
I had one; my kids had one. It doesn’t matter at all in admissions but it can be an interesting experience on its own. Depending on what you learned from the experience it could be a better essay than some.