<p>Hi guys!</p>
<p>I have currently finished my first year (well, second if you take into account the pre-IB year) of the IB diploma that I'm doing in Finland. I've recently started thinking about applying into some fancy american universities (or colleges, not sure how you call them there), but then I found out that they could care less about my final exam results when admission is concerned (I'm aware that they give you credit if you do well in your HL subjects, but what I meant is that when they are deciding whether to ADMIT you, they don't take into account the finals results, because they admit you before you graduate from the IB).</p>
<p>Now this is a problem, because I haven't been THAT active in the first year, and thus my grades aren't very nice (it's above average, on a 0-4 scale the GPA is about 3.2, but that is far from something like 3.8-4.0, which most of the applicants have). I could have gotten better grades, but I had little motivation because I thought that only the finals grades matter.</p>
<p>So now my only way out of this is by focusing on other things which universities will consider in my application. I'm pretty sure to get 750+ on all the SATs, and I'm taking Math II, Physics and Chemistry as my SAT subject tests, and I should also get something close to a max mark, since I'm pretty good at those subjects. I'm also sure that I will get good predicted grades, because I will have some time to show my teachers how good I am before the application deadline.</p>
<p>And here we come to the issue at hand. I've noticed that in the application, they say that you can send a piece of academic work as supplementary material IF it is of unusually high quality. I am doing my extended essay on math (I'm not applying to study math, but finance or economics or somethings similar), and I am planning to make it really good. Also I am entering a competition organised by the Finnish academy for the best academic work (there is a special section for IB students there), and they don't have the 4000 word limit, so I can make an extended version of my extended essay for them :), and this is the version I would like to send as a part of my application in order to show proof of my academic capabilities. By the way I will have no way of telling to the university whether my work received any prizes, as the winner will only be announced in March 2013</p>
<p>So the question is: Is it a good idea to send the version of my extended essay which I sent to the competition as supplementary material for my application, IF I, my supervisor and some other person of authority in the field in which I wrote my essay acknowledge that the work is very good?</p>
<p>In case you are interested, here are the averages of my grades for the first year (Here in Finland, the high school year is divided into five periods and the amount of the subject studied in one period is called a course, and we get a grade for each course, that is why I'm showing the average grades. Also during my pre-IB year, I've done a bunch of courses simply because they were compulsory due to some administrative reasons, and I'm not including them here, and in case it matters I've done about 20 DIFFERENT courses (i.e. if I have done 10 courses on math, it still counts as 1 in this case)):</p>
<p>English A: Lang & Lit SL - 6
Finnish B HL - 7 (Finnish B is a really easy subject, so I'm not sure if it even counts)
Psychology HL - 6
Physics SL - 6 (I did physics anticipated, and should receive my finals grade on the sixth of July this year, which should be a 7)
Chemistry HL - 5 (I'm good at chemistry, it's just that once I received a bad grade once which dropped my average from 6 to 5)
Mathematics HL - 6 (Same story as with chemistry)
I'm also doing Swedish from the national side curriculum, and my average grade in there is 7 on a scale of 4 to 10 (don't ask me why does the scale starts from 4, I have no clue :D), but I will be able to complete the matriculation exam (sort of like the finals) before I send in the application, and the grade should be 9 or 10 on the same scale.</p>
<p>By the way, I am aware that extracurriculars are really important, but that is a different topic for a different discussion :D.</p>