<p>what is franklin olin? I know olin is the school of business at WASHU. Is that what you mean? If your family makes less than $30,000 a year why wouldn't you apply on a fee waiver!? it'll save you like $400!</p>
<p>er nm there was some immigrant with a low GPA on here too, confused you with him. Sorry.</p>
<p>your list is great.
8 is perfect and they are well distributed.</p>
<p>Franklin Olin is a new engineering school that provides free tuition for those who are accepted. A kid from my school went there a few years ago.</p>
<p>Franklin Olin is hard as anything though. Princeton Review does rankings for hardest to get into, and Princeton is ranked #3 (MIT is #1), and Olin is #5. But I've heard that Olin can be more loose with GPA then other schools, so I think its worth a shot (a long, long shot).</p>
<p>
[quote]
Reach:</p>
<p>Webb Institute of Naval Engineering
Johns Hopkins</p>
<p>Target:</p>
<p>Carnegie Mellon
Harvey Mudd
Rose-Hulman
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Another vast misconception of the selectivity of Mudd. Mudd is more selective than JHU, so if you are going to call JHU a reach then Mudd should also be at least a reach.</p>
<p>If anyone finds this pertinent, I've only considered Princeton because they sent me a letter that was all flattering and stuff. </p>
<p>So yeah, and then I saw that I had SATs in their middle 50th percentile, so I decided to make it a reach, since I figured it had to be hard to get into, having such a cool name and all. </p>
<p>But do you think the letter was just a mass mailing, or was it just that Princeton only saw my SATs and saw me as a good candidate. If its the latter, than I really feel a lot of regret that I haven't done very much with GPA and haven't tried for any good ECs.</p>
<p>it's just a mass mailing. every school sends tons of those letters. unless you're an amazing athlete</p>
<p>Your SAT scores won't keep you out. Don't listen to the people that tell you that. I got low 700s in all of mine, got a 32 on the ACT, had mostly As, etc and did fine.</p>
<p>What people are saying when you post your scores is that you lack a unique trait that is a "hook" that gets you in. You need something more special than your current accomplishments.</p>
<p>So, you could either try to be an uber student by getting 2300+ on the SAT and great grades, OR try to do something this summer/in the school year that is very different and unique. Use your head, and don't do a tried-and-true approach. Maybe volunteer/take the initiative on something obscure (so not homeless shelters, soup kitchens, building houses in Costa Rica, etc. That's easy to sign up for and takes little thought or creativity.)</p>
<p>For example, distributing software programs you created to help non-profits in Costa Rica become more efficient/ other people would be kind of neat.</p>
<p>I say volunteer work because it's much easier to make a difference and say to someone "hey try this" than say "hey try this and pay me."</p>
<p>Can I ask what your hook was for "doing fine"? </p>
<p>I guess in terms of potential hooks, this is what I got so far, and this is the potential I have: </p>
<p>-I like foreign policy issues, maybe if I submitted an essay or something to a journal in the field, a newspaper, or something of that sort. </p>
<p>-I like programming, I've written nearly 1000 pages in tutorial about programming, if you count a 550 by 400 block of 12 font text "a page". </p>
<p>-I'm writing a program to help a relative's company sort projects. </p>
<p>-I'm working on a bunch of programs for modeling math problems that I hope I can get published on my school's website. </p>
<p>-I can do decent quality essays/fiction. </p>
<p>But then again, I think if I could get 2200 if I took the SAT again, 2300 though, I don't know. Maybe on the reading, a lot of that seems to be the luck of the draw (do I get the types of reading passages I like). And on the Math most of my problems come from silly mistakes (like writing x when the question asks for 2x).</p>
<p>Well I have several activities that could have potentially piqued admissions officers’ interest, some of which would pertain to you. I won’t go into all of them, but I played chess too and won a section of HS nationals, and T3rd in another one. I also won several national/international photography awards, and like to invent and create stuff. It didn’t pay off for a while but I now have several patent applications.</p>
<p>The important part is that you be creative in what you are good at. It is way cool if you really do spend lots of programming; it is even cooler and very unique if you actively seek to use your skills to help others. So writing about how programming is really creative (I have dabbled in it myself…there are all sorts of ways you can go about accomplishing a given task even in one language) and how it presents a challenge to you, etc., could be a great essay if you are good at writing. </p>
<p>You should still take the opportunity to increase your SAT score (2200+ is preferable), but also focus on programming and using it – for a job, for a charity, for your uncle – but use those skills to make a difference and then write about it and highlight it – or else schools will not know. You need to let Princeton know apply your math & programming abilities to other fields and are not just myopically “good” at it.</p>
<p>And BTW, foreign policy is difficult to break into since A) lots of people are into it and B) the journals and newspapers, etc. are a bunch of good ol’ boys who often won’t even look at “outsider’s work.”</p>
<p>And the reading section really IS a crapshoot - I can totally relate :-)</p>
<p>From doing practices, I feel like I can get my score up to 2250, but I have real trouble going any higher. </p>
<p>Are there any journals/newspapers/magazines that would treat a well written, outside article on the topic with acceptance? Even a psychology journal would do. </p>
<p>I think I'll end up writing my essay starting about my freshman year (2.9 GPA), and talking about how I was unmotivated and then go on to how I discovered a passion for mathematics and how it turned my academics around. </p>
<p>All my letters of recommendation will be from my math teachers, so I think its an apropos topic for an essay.</p>
<p>Okay, with everything in mind I think I'm going to apply. Hopefully I'll be able to take AMC (I've done practice sets, and I have a good feeling about it), retake and nail the SAT, make my ECs look better on the AP, write a nice essay, and things will look good. </p>
<p>As for class rank being the weakest part of my application, I hope Princeton will look at how much I've improved and my good performance at the community college. Btw, my class rank might actually be top 15%, top 10% at the very best, since the 20% figure came from early Junior year, and I've improved since then. </p>
<p>I still realize its a long shot, but I still think its worth it - whether I get in or not.</p>
<p>All your recs will be from math teachers? BAD, BAD, BAD IDEA. They won't buy that essay topic because didn't u ahve math freshman year?</p>
<p>The AMC is in late March. You probably won't have your score in by that time. You say you have a passion for math but why are you not in Math team, on the math bulletin, never taken an AMC before, done math research, gone to math summer camps?</p>
<p>I feel it is quite insensetive for colleges to send out mass mailings to everyone even kids with the lowest scores you've ever seen. Its like saying "Apply here. You won't get in but we will get to reject you and boost our selectivity ranking in U.S News"</p>
<p>I'll point out again that my SATs ARE in the mid 50th percentile for PRINCETON, so clearly 40% of Princeton's student body has "the lowest scores you've ever seen". </p>
<p>"BAD, BAD, BAD IDEA"</p>
<p>Why?</p>
<p>I guess I can show my passion for mathematics with the following: </p>
<p>-Self-studied for AP computer science
-Wrote math programs for high school website (work in progress)
-Concurrently enrolled at Community College during summer and school year to take math classes beyond HS curriculum</p>
<p>And as for the other things: </p>
<p>-I didn't know the AMC existed until yesterday
-What's a math team?<br>
-What's a math bulletin?<br>
-Math research? I guess I've created programs that solve math problems, but idk if I'd call that research
-I've been taking math classes at the community college during the summer, so clearly I am applying myself to it.</p>
<p>That is not passion for math really.
Kids who are really passionate about my math school are on math team which is a team for solving competitive math problems such as state contests, math bulletein which is an school journal to which people submit articles. Making programs that solve math problems is not research rotflmao. Math research is like finding a formula like a new formula for a certain fractal like Sierpinski's triangle which is what I did for my term paper. But people do really advanced topics if they have a passion for math.</p>
<p>Btw none of those things you listed are hooks.</p>
<p>I was wondering if my activities show passion for anything and how they are overall.</p>
<p>Pre-Med Society(9,10,11,12)
Chess/Go Club(10,12)
Key Club(11,12)won distinguished key clubber award.Projects Committee head.
American Cancer Society Club (12)
Dental Internship (9,10,11,12)
NeuroScience Research (11,Summer,12)
State Pre Enrichment Program at Columbia Medical School
Job at Hospital. Directly Interacted with patients. (Summer before 11)
Job at a Community Center (Summer before 12)
200+ Hours of volunteering at a hospital. (11, summer, 12)
Job at Barnes and Nobles (12)
College Now Program- will take college level macroeconomics (12)</p>
<p>I am also a low income student.
Any advice will be appreciated.</p>
<p>My school doesn't have a school journal or a math bulletin. </p>
<p>To be honest, writing a program that solves a math problem is just as rigorous as expressing a solution to a math problem as a function/equation/etc. </p>
<p>Your ECs look good to me, dental and neuroscience research seem pertinent to me. Good job.</p>
<p>Princeton's need-blind in admissions, but they have an excellent grants program.</p>