<p>just looking for an honest opinion on my chances at some elite colleges...</p>
<p>I'm a junior right now with a 3.85 (unweighted) GPA and I've only taken 1 AP test thus far (5 in us history) because my school doesn't offer many AP classes. I've taken all the hardest classes at my school but since most of them are not "AP" I think colleges might right them off. My SAT scores were worse than expected, writing 730 reading 720 and math 700 (2150 total) and I can probably get those up another 100 points to 2250. I got a 760 on the us history SAT 2, the only one i've taken this year.</p>
<p>I play Varsity soccer and volleyball, i'll be the editor in chief of my newspaper, I started a community service club at my school and I've done theater and played the guitar and piano for 7 years.</p>
<p>I say go for it and apply. Colleges will know your are very smart by looking at your sat scores, and as for your class schedule, you’ve showed that you took the toughest classes you could. Good Luck!!</p>
<p>There are about 20 or so colleges (Yale obviously included) that are pretty much long shots for anybody. Once you start talking about schools that reject more than 75% of their applicants, it becomes impossible to make predictions about whom will get accepted. In Yale’s case, it’s more like 90%, so predicting is even harder.</p>
<p>Your credentials would make you a reasonable candidate for any college (Yale included).</p>
<p>So, should you apply to Yale: Yes, if you want to go there.
Should you count on being admitted, no…but nobody can.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses.
Does anyone know how much elite colleges like Yale take teacher recs and awards into account in admissions? My recs should be fine but quite frankly, the Extra curriculars I do don’t give out many awards and my school doesn’t do class rank, so it’ll be tough to distinguish myself from my peers.</p>
<p>^Agreed. Part of the reason acceptance rates at these schools are so incredibly low (other than kids applying to absurd numbers of schools) is that kids think that the admissions process for hyper-competitive schools is some kid of lottery, that maybe, when the adcoms flip a coin to decide who to admit, they’ll get lucky.</p>
<p>That’s just not the way it works. With your SATs, lack of significant ECs, and a GPA that’s not wildly impressive for a lousy school, admission is statisically unlikely. </p>
<p>Personally, I’d say save the application fee.</p>
<p>A great post by NSM on outstanding ECs: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/210497-those-ecs-weak-so-whats-good.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/210497-those-ecs-weak-so-whats-good.html</a>. (Of course, plenty of students are admitted without any of these outstanding ECs, but students admitted to hypercompetitive schools generally have something going for them apart from stats.) What I’d be concerned about in your case is a lack of anything outside of your school as well as a lack of identity–I don’t see any cohesive thread in your ECs, and so I don’t gain any insight into your specific talents. What can you bring to a campus community that the other varsity sport playing, community servicing, piano playing newspaper editors can’t? </p>
<p>As for your school, the word lousy was probably a bit too strong. But in general, if your school only has a few APs, colleges are less forgiving of a few B’s; you will be expected to perform exceptionally in your environment. These are schools where the average high school GPA of incoming freshmen may be 3.8+, an average dragged down by legacies, URMs, athletes, and elite prep school kids. </p>
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<p>Of course he’s not an idiot–far from it. But Yale doesn’t have a magical cutoff where the SAT stops mattering; chances of admission increase alongside SAT score, so he’ll be competing against kids who have a much higher likelihood of being choosen over him. Same with his SAT II–good, not great in this context.</p>
<p>I hate to sound so negative, but unless you have something you’re hiding from us (URM status–though from your PM, it sounds as though you’re asian, in which case you’re up against even stiffer competition–legacy, etc), I’d start looking at some slightly less competitive schools.</p>
<p>the way i figure it cant hurt to try! the worst thing that could happen is they say no, but youll never know if you dont try. i would try to get the gpa up though. good luck!</p>
<p>I think glass says pretty much everything that he could. You’ve got some great ECs, but to be totally blunt, they’re not HYPSM quality, although they’re just under. I’d suggest that you set your sight to other prestigious schools–Cornell, Dartmouth and Duke come to mind. </p>
<p>Actually I know a <em>brilliant</em> girl from my school… valedictorian, nat’l merit, the smartest student in her grade… She was all-state, I believe top five cellos in the state (maybe #1, not sure), and she was rejected from Yale and Brown.</p>
I was told things like this too, and applied to many top schools (I was in a situation similar to yours, better if anything). But then I was rejected from MIT, Ivies, etc.
Unless you’re a URM or a savant non-minority, you might as well start your hikkikomori now.</p>
<p>Agree with everything glassersarechic said except the very last part. Yes, you will most likely be rejected like over 90% of the applicants, but I would waste that $78 anyway to apply if I were truly in love with the school. You never know the outcome for certain unless you give it a try.</p>
<p>Perhaps I’m just biased, because you remind me of myself at this time of the year last year in so many ways. My high school doesn’t offer any AP classes besides APUSH until senior year, so I also only had that one on my transcript when I was applying to college. I only had a 750 on the U.S. history SATII, even worse than your score. I didn’t play any sport, but I was the Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine, started a club in sophomore year pertaining to something that I was interested in, and participated in music, which are exactly the same activities that you have listed. Just as glassesarechic said, at a first glance I had no cohesive thread linking my disorganized and lackluster ECs, which ranged from areas as incongruous as science, writing, art, music, and volunteering, and therefore probably “lacked identity” as well, as others have said. (And guess what? I’m also Asian.) It so happens that I was also really disappointed with my SAT score at the time (2210, which is not that much better than yours), and my high school is not competitive at all so that students have rarely been admittedly to even somewhat selective colleges in the recent years. Unfortunately for me, just like you I fell in love with the residential college system and so many other aspects of Yale while visiting over the summer that, being the irrational and impulsive person that I am, I changed my plan in August and applied to Yale SCEA when nobody thought I would actually have a chance.</p>
<p>With that said, I was deferred then rejected at Yale, as one would expect, but I never once regretted having applied. Perhaps it was precisely because I knew I had nothing special on my application that I worked extra hard to bring up my SAT and SATII scores over the summer to a point where they were actually within a much more competitive range for Yale, and I looked for ways to accurately portray myself through the application so that I had some sort of “identity” encompassing all of my disjointed ECs (though I did have some achievements in my ECs that might have helped). Despite not being admitted to Yale, I was accepted to many other schools that I would love to attend, and I’ve enrolled at Harvard for next year, which is more similar to Yale in terms of the residential college system, programs, and student life than any other school that one can imagine. If you think you have a chance, do apply. The essay and the teacher recs are both extremely important. Not having taken AP courses is not that detrimental as long as you are taking the most rigorous course load available to you. (The potential problem I see with your application, if you manage to bring up your scores, is the relatively low GPA.)</p>