Waiting while decisions roll across the country is hard - only time I regret my location!
Good luck to those of us waiting, congrats to those who have been accepted and much love to those on another path - I know you will have awesome options (preparing that speech here, lol).
I need to decide. It is so close to home and I have friends going there. My dad did his Masters there. Great Coop program. Comes to same cost as other schools with merit.
GPA (UW/W): 3.81 UW/4.8 W (Upward Trend - 9th: 3.57, 10th: 3.92, 11th: 3.95, my mid-year report is struggling tho lmaoo)
Rank (or percentile): Top 10% (Class Size: 150)
# of Honors/AP/IB/Dual Enrollment/etc.: 11 AP/DE, a bunch of honors classes (I basically took the hardest classes whenever possible)
Senior Year Course Load: AP Enviro, AP Gov, AP Stats, AP Calc AB, DE English, Honors elective, Non-Honors elective
Standardized Testing
ACT: 31 (35E, 28M, 32R, 28S) (Did not submit to reaches (accept for Georgetown), sent to all matches and safeties)
AP/IB: APHUG (1 lol), APUSH (3), AP Lang (4) (Did not submit anywhere)
Extracurriculars/Activities
School Newspaper (10-12) - Co-Editor-In-Chief (I also write but not a lot): Oversees staff of 15. Manage social media accounts. Published in two local newspapers.
International Relations Research (11-12) - This was done through a summer program. I don’t want to say my topic since it can easily be doxxed, but I wrote a research report about a global issue with a team. I also made a presentation and presented at a virtual conference. There were some people who worked for the UN (but not like in super high up positions), and others who worked for NGOs at the conference.
Independent Study (11-12) - I wrote a paper talking about lying and its connection to global politics. This wasn’t published in a journal or anything, but I ended up learning more about the topic and two a few Coursera courses.
Model UN Club (11-12) - Founder and President: I founded a school-based Model UN program, and reached out to a bunch of students in my town. We also talk about global issues during our meetings, so you could say it’s an International Relations club too lol.
Debate Team (9-12) - Member: I debate lol. I placed decently in a few competitions, so I would say I’m meh at it. I got acknowledged by my school district once though.
Middle School Debate Mentor (11-12) - I teach middle schoolers how to debate. I also judged a competition once.
Volunteer Tutor (11-12) - I do this through two different organizations. At the local one, I tutor adults in ESL, and at the national one, I tutor children in different subjects.
Book Drive (11) - I did a book drive lmao. I collected around 500 books and then donated them to after-school programs in my town.
Summer Programs (9-11) - Over the years I’ve done a few summer programs, and they were all based around International Relations, so I put that down on my application. One was a school trip to Europe, another was a summer program at Yale, and one was a summer program from Adelphi University.
Awards/Honors
National Honors Society
Honor Roll
High School Department Award - Elective
High School Department Award - Core Class
Mentioned a debate award in my activities section
Letters of Recommendation
I have no clue how to rate these so I’ll just explain who I chose. I chose a math teacher I had for two years, a history teacher I had for two years, and the economics teacher I had during junior year. I would say I was well-liked, I always talked in class since I always found what we learned about to be pretty interesting. My economics teacher was my Model UN club adviser, and we related to this since she also did MUN in high school. My history teacher (I hope) liked me cause I was the only person in class who would talk lol. My math teacher (I hope) also liked me since I would talk with her after class.
Interviews
I suck at interviews lmaooo. I interviewed with Georgetown, Claremont McKenna, and Connecticut College. Georgetown was ass, Claremont McKenna and Connecticut College were average.
Essays
My common app was about the highway behind my house, and how it made me more curious about the world. I kinda connected it to what I do now (like I didn’t talk about ECs, I just talked about my hobbies) and what I learned about the world around me + my city. I went through about 5 or 6 drafts, and I feel like most strong common app essays do this as well.
