<p>I am a junior in high school and I want to attend an ivy league college. I'm white and first generation. </p>
<p>GPA: 3.9 (unweighted) </p>
<p>Number of AP classes: 7 out of 18 (counting AP's planned for senior year)
(Calculus BC, Chemistry, Stats, Physics C, Us History, European History (5), Spanish Language) </p>
<p>Number of AP exams taken: 9 (self-studied 2 AP exams Micro and Macroeconomics)</p>
<p>ECs:
JV for 9th and 10th Grade
Varsity during junior year (coach told me already)
Dance Team (preformed in 3 states and 5 countries)
Debate Team (won multiple awards)
Love Photography but not in any clubs or competitions </p>
<p>8% of the grade gets accepted to an ivy league colleges in my school (average)</p>
<p>But seriously, test scores look good. GPA is good, but doesn’t mean much without rank.
EC’s seem sort of generic. What are you varsity in? Dance Team?</p>
<p>Well you seem like a pretty solid applicant, but nothing in particular stands out. My advice would be to focus a lot on your essays and make sure you have some other schools that will be matches/safeties. Also, keep in mind that “Ivy League” is just an athletic conference, and that the schools in it are very different and won’t be good fits for everyone.</p>
<p>I agree with the “lecturing.” If you lump them all together then I have to assume you have not visited them all. I know it made a big difference to my daughter to see them in person (went to most, but not UPenn). </p>
<p>That said, your stats seem to be in the range, but who knows with such competitive schools-- and if you don’t apply your chances of getting in are 0. Maybe you should read more about the schools if you cannot visit and narrow down your list-- and add schools that are also great, but not ivys. </p>
<p>You might want to read “The Gatekeepers” for an interesting perspective of the admissions process.</p>
<p>Just for fun, let me jump into the role of the OP. What if s/he were to respond “Many of the best students in the world aspire - rightly or wrongly - to be at one of the Ivies, and I’d like the opportunity to benefit from living and learning with them. And because of the value of the schools’ brand names, I hope that during the early part of my adulthood others will give me the benefit of assuming that I share the characteristics that they - rightly or wrongly - attribute to that brand name, affording me a longer or extra look than they would have otherwise given me.”</p>
<p>Would that strike you as a justifiable reason to seek admission to one of a group of eight schools, despite the fact that they have differing demographics and curricula?</p>
<p>That would be a logical rationalization, but it would exclude the idea of personal fit and potential happiness. A brand name doesn’t warrant four years of unhappiness in my books. It would also seemingly limit intellectual superiority to those eight schools and ignore the “best students” from other esteemed colleges.</p>
<p>To me? No. It would seem entirely justified to say “I want to attend one of the best universities in the land” (or more broadly, LAC’s, if you wanted to include them as well." But to arbitrarily pick those 8 because of a shared athletic conference is very odd to me. They are simply 8 of the best, and if you took off the Ivy name and reshuffled the top 20 or so, you’d find different “pods” of schools that resemble one another, and the various Ivies would be mixed in with other schools. Columbia and U Chicago might fall together. Penn and Northwestern might fall together. Etc.</p>
<p>“But to arbitrarily pick those 8 because of a shared athletic conference is very odd to me.”</p>
<p>Hmmm. I don’t think being in a shared athletic conference has anything to do with why they’re popular today. They’re old east coast famous excellent schools, lumped together for historic (athletic!) reasons. Those who don’t need the prestige in their careers (or for their parents) can do fine elsewhere.</p>
<p>To reduce further digression from the OP’s intended purpose for this thread, I would say that they seem to have a good chance at top schools, but a number of factors that are not mentioned will ultimately be deciding factors. What were your scores on those AP exams? Class rank? And even more so, how will your essays and recommendations reflect who you are? Best of luck.</p>
<p>After several years of reading assertions from CC prospective students about their notions of “fit,” I’m not that big an advocate of fit anymore. A 17-year-old is a work in progress, and should go through a lot of changes in college. But I read a lot of posts from HS students saying “I’m on this end of the political spectrum, so I need a college that matches me” or “What colleges are strong in such-and-such a major?” despite the fact that they’re statistically more likely to change majors than stay in the one that dictated their “fit.” Trying to gain access to the most talented peer group that you can has merit as a strategy.</p>
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<p>Seven of the eight were closely affiliated with one another for over two centuries before the athletic conference was created.</p>
<p>Agreed with gadad, a college is not a designer handbag. it doesn’t have to fit your personality. 17 year olds don’t even have mature personalities anyway. go to the best college possible with a culture of excellence. allow yourself to be molded by that culture.</p>
<p>plus aiming for ivies is fine. they are avenues of power and cultural fixtures. pizzagirl can argue that WUSTL accepts kids with just as high grades and scores. that’s true but WUSTL is in missouri and not a cultural fixture and not an avenue of power.</p>