<p>Ethnicity/Gender: Vietnamese Male
Class Size: 400</p>
<p>9th Grade(First Semester Grade/Second Semester Grade):
Religion-A/A
Geometry Honors-A+/A
Biology Honors-A/A
Spanish 1-A+/A
Social Studies-A+/(Free period 2nd)
English 1-A+/A+</p>
<p>10th Grade:
Spanish 2-A/A
World History AP-B+/A
Religion-A
PE-A
Chemistry Honors-A-/A
English 2 Honors-A-/A
Pre-Calc Honors-A-/A </p>
<p>11th Grade:
Spanish 3 Honors-A+/A+
Physics B AP-A/A
Calc AB AP-A/A
AP US History-A/A
English Language AP-A/A
Religion-A/A </p>
<p>12th Grade Classes:
Faulkner Honors/Science Fiction<br>
Multivariable Calc Honors
Religion
Euro Geo AP
Biology AP
Spanish 4 AP
Total GPA(unweighted): 3.9</p>
<p>EC:
Speech and Debate: 4 yrs.; 2 time State Semifinalist in Speech; National Qualifier in Speech; Debate Captain
Symphonic Band: 4 yrs; Most Improved(9th Grade)
(My school doesn't have honor societies or stuff like that) </p>
<p>Summer Activities:
9th-Debate Camp, Independent Study(Algebra II)
10th-Leadership conference, volunteer work
11th-independent study(Calc BC), work </p>
<p>Awards:
Sophomore Leadership Award
Principal's Letter of Commendation
AP Scholar with Distinction
NFL Academic All American
Community Service Award (School Award given for 200+ hrs.)</p>
<p>SAT I
CR: 750
MAth: 760
Writing: 740</p>
<p>SAT II
Chemistry 740
Math II 760
Literature 750</p>
<p>Which schools specifically are you looking at? </p>
<p>You seem to have as good a shot as anyone at the top schools.</p>
<p>Ivies are all about rank. Will you tell us your rank at your school, please?</p>
<p>calcruzer,
my school doesn't have a class rank to "reduce in-school competition among students"</p>
<p>I see you getting into Cornell, Brown, and Penn.</p>
<p>I see you getting rejected at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia.</p>
<p>Dartmouth, I see getting waitlisted--and then accepted if you really work at it.</p>
<p>Just a guess on my part, though.</p>
<p>Good luck</p>
<p>anything i can do to increase my chances of Harvard, Princeton, Yale?</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>Remember that these threads are made (mostly) by HS students, just like you. There's no way to know for sure if you're going to get in for not, these Chances threads are basically for fun.</p>
<p>If you really want to know, get in touch with the school and ask what they look for specifically. But don't do stuff just to get in because that just makes you look fake.</p>
<p>The only thing I see at this point would depend on what you've been doing this summer</p>
<p>For example, most people accepted at HYPS would have been doing a variety of the following:</p>
<p>Working internships at top companies or the UN or other top volunteer organizations; organizing top club activities or election-type work for presidential candidates; participating in activities designed to benefit their home communities through formation of new community centers, homeless shelters, grant-writing activities; academic or science competitions; study in extremely prestigious academic or research programs; or working to help their families if the family is very poor.</p>
<p>If you haven't already been doing one or more of these, then I don't know how well you are going to come across--or what you are planning to write your essay on.</p>
<hr>
<p>Consider that not all Ivies are good matches for all people--and you haven't told me which Ivies you are interested in or why. This makes me wonder why you think the particular schools are going to consider you a good match. They can tell when someone is applying, but really don't know hardly anything about the school. </p>
<p>You might want to consider what it is about each Ivy that actually interests you--and then use this data in your application. </p>
<p>P.S. On this subject there was a good thread awhile back--maybe someone on here can remember the title. It was something like "Chance me at all Ivies--why?" or something similar. It basically described some students who--like you are doing here--want to apply to all 8 Ivies without apparently knowing anything special about any of them.</p>
<p>Sorry to be a bit harsh--but you asked what it would take to improve your chances--and that's what it's going to take.</p>
<p>Also, go to this site:</p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=294755&page=2&highlight=official+decisions%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=294755&page=2&highlight=official+decisions</a></p>
<p>and read some of the acceptance statistics (and this is for USC, not an Ivy and ranked #27 best national university--whereas the lowest Ivy, Cornell is still ranked about #18 or so). You'll see that the first 20 people accepted (who mostly applied ED) all had better stats than you. If USC's top students have higher stats, then you know that the majority of applicants to Harvard also had higher stats--yet Harvard only takes 7-8% of applicants. </p>
<p>The point I'm making here is that there is more competition than you realize at these schools--and sometimes there just aren't enough spots for all the great students.</p>
<p>Calcruzar, </p>
<p>Those stats from the link are definitely impressive, but I doubt those students could have just gotten into to USC. They probably applied ED b/c they received full scholarships to the university or they just liked the school. Just b/c they applied ED to USC doesn't mean they couldn't have gotten in somewhere else. I can tell from the last message that you're just trying to discourage me from applying to these top schools. I know my stats aren't the best, but I'm going to give it a shot anyways or else I'll regret it.</p>
<p>On the contrary, I'm not trying to discourage you from applying, I'm trying to have you be more selective in which of the Ivies you apply to. That is, I want you to understand why you are more interested in one school or another--because once you understand this, it will come across in your essays and application--and this will improve your chances at the school where you do apply.</p>
<p>If you want to apply to all the schools, that's your choice--but the schools can tell which schools you are applying to--and if you apply to all of them, they will conclude that you really don't know anything about the advantages of one over the other--and are just taking a "shotgun" approach. </p>
<p>Usually students who do this decrease their chances at all of the schools as a result.</p>
<p>In my own case, I applied to exact one--yes, one--Ivy, which was Brown. I knew a lot about Brown, including the exact program I was most interested in (applied math). I knew a lot about some of the classes they offered that would have seemed unusual, but were a required part of the program (for example, using applied math to compute the navigation of a boat out of the harbor during a period of changing tides and winds--a class many students actually failed because it was so demanding--but which I considered a real challenge). By writing about all of this detailed info--I was accepted at Brown, despite a mediocre SAT CR score (only 670). My UW GPA was 3.96 and my SAT I math was 770 and my SAT II Math was 800--so this helped, naturally. But I'm convinced that the fact that I only applied to one Ivy, and that I knew the school curriculum really well, had to be the deciding point in being accepted. I have no doubt that many people with higher SAT scores than me were rejected because they didn't know anything about Brown except that it was an Ivy league school. This is the point I'm trying to make here.</p>