<p>I know no one but an admissions officer can say for sure, but could someone here give me an idea if Reed is a realistic possiblity for me?</p>
<p>I won't bore you with the details, but here are the basics:</p>
<p>Male, won't need financial aid
4.1 weighted GPA, 3.85 unweighted
4 years math, English, history, science, foreign language
6 AP courses/6 Honors courses, my counselor says it is "most rigorous" whatever that means, 5's on 2 of the AP tests so far
SATs: 730reading, 710 math, 680writing, 760 Literature, 750 Math 2
I'd say my activites outside of school have been pretty solid, but not sure how important that is to Reed.
I plan to apply ED unless it would be a hopeless case.</p>
<p>I would say that your credentials are pretty good! Just make sure that you impress them with your essays - mostly the Why reed essay:D
good luck</p>
<p>I am going in the fall. My grades in highschool and my participation in anything other than work are nothing compared to yours. The biggest thing that I think Reed looks at is if you are a "reedie" You have to be able to appreciate nerd mecca and everything that comes with it. Although I cant speak from any real experience because I have only visted I would suggest letting your transcript do the talking for your academics. From what I gather it is a bit of a showoff to even talk about grades simply because they aren't the point. Def. do the interview mine was really fun we didn't even talk about the school much it just turned into the remarkable conversation with a perfect stranger in the lobby of a hotel.</p>
<p>Thanks guys. I visited in April and did the whole overnight, interview, and Hum 101 class routine and I didn't want to leave. It was like I had found my tribe. Haven't yet felt that connection anywhere else I've visited. So, I'll take a shot early decision and see what happens. Does anyone have any suggestions for other colleges that are Reed-like as back ups? My guidance counselor said the University of Chicago, but it just doesn't click for me in the way Reed does. I also really want a smaller college.</p>
<p>Also, any advice on what type of paper to send for the writing sample? Are they looking at your thought-processes or grammar skills? The papers I feel best about in terms of expressing ideas are ones I wrote for English this year, but my English teacher red-inked them up mainly with comments about grammar and not following MLA style so I'm not sure if I should send them.</p>
<p>I would say that correct grammar is assumed, and that they're looking for how you think. Target one of your fall papers for submission, and make sure the grammar is perfect.</p>
<p>They don't need this paper to check your grammar but as vossron says it ought to be grammatically perfect.</p>
<p>My assumption (when my son applied) was that they wanted to see how well you write about a subject that doesn't have "me" as the central subject and that's very likely to have been written by you, not by a committee.</p>
<p>My son submitted a literary or character analysis from his AP English class (I don't recall the exact topic). It was a succinct and insightful character analysis. It wasn't overwritten or flowery or self-conscious. It had some red marks and critical comments from his teacher on it.</p>
<p>I'm a Chicagoan here, and I think if there were any other college I'd go to, it would be Reed.</p>
<p>I think Sarah Lawrence College and Reed are friends-- enroll in one, you can do a year at the other-- but I can imagine that they are very different schools. I second the Carleton suggestion, as well as Oberlin, St. John's College, Swarthmore and Ursinus. It depends how academically intense you want to be versus how happynerdyweird you want to be.</p>
<p>A plug for Chicago: it feels a lot smaller than it actually is, and the campus has its own sphere of influence outside of a "crammed in" urban setting. Chicago's a sort of hybrid between a school like St. John's and Reed and an Ivy League, so I would guess that Chicago has less quirk to it than Reed. The students I know who were between Reed and Chicago and chose Chicago (there are a lot) say that the schools are similar in a lot of respects, but that Chicago felt more connected to the outside world.</p>
<p>My Chicago friend visited Reed the other weekend and she said that what impressed her about Reedies is that they get into anything they do, whether it be a dance party or Eurypides.</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is that Chicago has almost no drug culture outside of alcohol and the occasional marijuana. My understanding is that while there will always be students who abstain from everything/ use drugs lightly, Reed has more students using more drugs more often than Chicago.</p>