<p>I'm a Hispanic male from the northeast. I go to a very good public school which sends plenty of kids to ivys/top schools</p>
<p>My gpa is pretty hard to explain...basically,
Freshman year: I went to school in a foreign country with a different grading system so I don't know how they'd convert my grades
First half of sophomore year: see above
Second half of sophomore year: I moved to the US and got a 4.0. I don't know if they'd only take this final gpa into account though or if they'd also convert the grades from the first semester abroad and average them
Junior year: moved again, 3.66 (my grades at this new school only)
Senior year: most likely will raise my junior year gpa
My school does not rank.</p>
<p>I'm taking very rigorous courses now as a senior, but while I was living abroad I went to a very small school so I just had the exact same courseload as the rest of my class. Last year, soon after moving, I wasn't taking all the difficult classes I wanted to because of prerequisites (the curriculum at the school I attended abroad wasn't very advanced). Anyway, my current school doesn't mark the rigor of courseloads when sending transcripts to colleges.</p>
<p>SAT:
800 CR
750 M
800 W
2350 composite</p>
<p>SAT IIs:
Spanish: 800
US History: 730
Literature: 690</p>
<p>APs:
Junior year: Spanish (5), US History (4), English Language (5)</p>
<p>Essay/recs:
Essay should be pretty good...teacher recs hopefully good, but probably not outstanding...counselor rec will probably be excellent. I might also ask my research supervisor for a potentially great (and specific) recommendation</p>
<p>ECs:
Model UN (vice president)
Art club (vice president)
Music club (vice president)
Mock trial
Did research in a lab (involving the effects of certain agents on neurogenesis)
Guitarist in a band and record my own music
Photographer/writer/graphic designer for student magazine
Played soccer before moving to the US (my school only had one team, so I couldn't say if it was varsity or junior varsity or what. also, that was pretty much the only extracurricular that school offered)
National Hispanic Recognition Program Scholar</p>
<p>I know my ECs may seem unfocused, I do have legitimate interest in all of them but if I had stayed at one school for the past four years it probably would have been easier to flesh them out.</p>
<p>Anyway, I'm planning on applying to:
Amherst
Brown
Duke
Harvard
UMass
McGill
NYU
UPenn
Vassar
Wesleyan
Yale</p>
<p>I'd say my strengths are my SAT score and my background (Hispanic, grew up in a developing nation). I don't know how much my URM status would help though, because the rest of my resume probably isn't as good as that of many other applicants to those colleges</p>