<p>Northwestern and U of C have been my two dream schools for as long as I can remember. Basically I'd really like to know where I stand and what my chances are. I'll be a junior this September, so I still have a bit of time before I apply, so I'd also like to know where I can improve.
I've gotten all A's in high school except in gym for one semester. So my unweighted GPA is around a 3.95, I'll graduate with 11 or 12 AP credits and am definitely taking all of the hardest classes my school offers (with all A's if I can keep it up), I am co founder of a science research club and I am working on independent research, I am in my school's chapter of National Honor Society and am on the membership comittee, I am a girl scout who has earned the Gold and Silver Awards and the Presidential Service Award and is an assistant leader, I founded an organization to prepare female students from underpriveleged socioeconomic backgrounds (all of whom are first generation students in America) for a selective enrollment high school admissions exam, I am a teacher (voluntary) at an early childhood development center for first generation students in America (religious community based), and I volunteer in a hospital every summer becaus eI am interested in medicine. I will most likely score a 32-34 on the ACT. How do my chances seem??</p>
<p>Write good essays and I’d consider you competitive. However, that’s “if” you score that. Smarts/grades and GPA don’t always mean high ACT score.</p>
<p>You seem like a very nice applicant - competitive for sure! No guarantees with schools as good as those, but you’re a good applicant nonetheless. They’re reaches, but you know that. Oddly enough, you’ll see many applicants get into Chicago but not NU or into NU but not Chicago because they tend to look for very different things. If you’re interested in medicine, you may like NU more because it has a less demanding core curriculum and may not have quite the grade deflation of Chicago. They’re both fabulous schools though, and if you were to get in you’d be just as well off going to one or the other. </p>
<p>Essays are huge. Chicago always has quirky, idiosyncratic essays where they force you to personalize the application. Northwestern’s are a little more straightforward, but they love interest and knowledge shown in their essays. So a little different, and that’s why you’ll see applicants getting into one or the other often. Very different schools.</p>
<p>i would say your chances are at least 80%</p>
<p>^ </p>
<p>Oh please. I think that the applicant has a good shot at both of those schools, but ultimately Northwestern and Chicago will probably have around a 12-14% acceptance rate next year. That means valedictorian-type applicants (4.0/2200+) get rejected/waitlisted in hordes. I remember at some information session for another top school I applied to, an admissions person said that 80% of people are qualified that apply, but they still have to whittle it down to a low teens acceptance rate. By all means, scsc, I think you could very well get into one of those schools. But with the way things are in the college world today, don’t let false praise like this fool you.</p>
<p>^ Oh please.(; From my school, two friends got in.
Indian-3 APs out of 33 possible [2 blowoffs], two clubs, okay 30 ACT.
White- 5 APs, student council, 27 ACT.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot for the input! Do you see anywhere I expecially need improvement?</p>
<p>Thanks Indian! Out of the 30,000+ applicants a year, two friends of yours really makes a great case to support your point. Here’s my anecdote: multiple valedictorians from my high school got waitlisted. Another val. got into Chicago alongside myself. The rest waitlisted/rejected as well. And if you think I come from a weak public school, we had people admitted to NU, Chicago, Cornell, Dartmouth, Penn, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Stanford, etc… Having said that, not every valedictorian applied to each and every single one of those schools, but many applied to an assortment of those schools with varied results. I know someone from my HS a year before me admitted to Penn with a 1200 on their SAT and a 3.4 GPA. News flash: IT HAPPENS. Go on collegeboard.com and look up any one of those schools and you’ll see outliers. But to gauge an entire school and extrapolate off of a handful of anomalies you know personally is absolutely ridiculous. And that’s why everyone has the same chance of getting in, and that value is somewhere in the mid to low teens. None of that 60%, 80%, 34.7689% BS flies when it comes down to an admissions officer looking for intangibles on an application that might make no sense to you or me. A seemingly perfect kid gets rejected while a fringe applicant is in disbelief that he was accepted. </p>
<p>And to answer your question OP, it’s quite late to be worrying about improvements. Sudden changes your senior year may scream of resume desperation more than anything. It would be rather transparent, but don’t let that stop you from doing other activities. Sometimes an applicant with less than stellar ECs will load up senior year to fill the emty void. However, I love what you do outside of school, but do you have any activities inside the boundaries of the school? You mentioned a science club - I was just curious if others existed you simply didn’t list.</p>
<p>scsc2010</p>
<p>Your stats look competitive at either school. By this I mean, that if we were to list stats for the ACCEPTED students at these schools, yours would fit right in. Percentage chances of getting in are fairly meaningless, since all of the top 15 schools (which I assume is your target group) reject many many highly qualified students. </p>
<p>My advice – apply to both NU and UC if they are our dream schools. If one of them is a ‘first choice’ consider ED. Also, find at least 4-5 other schools in this tier to apply to. There is an excellent chance you’ll get into one or more.</p>
<p>BTW – I’m just curious (not being critical), while both are EXCELLENT schools, they seem to have very different feels – what do you see as the similarities that they’re 'co-Dream Schools"</p>
<p>You can apply EA to Chicago and ED to Northwestern. Chicago is not single choice early action. That’s pretty much as good as it gets if they’re your two dream schools.</p>
<p>Also, I participated in a 7th and 8th grade program at my highschool, so I’ve been earning high school credits since 7th grade. However, in 7th and 8th grade I got probably a total of 6 or 7 b’s. I know that’s really bad, but since it wasn’t even high school yet (and since I’ve obviously done a lot better since then) how much will colleges care about this?</p>
<p>^THey won’t care about it. DOn’t worry about grades before 9th grade, whether in HS level classes or not.</p>
<p>^^if they don’t show on your transcript, you’re fine.</p>