not super sure how to format this so im just gonna try my best
gpa: 4.0 unweighted 4.64 weighted
SAT: 1410 (took once) (EBRW 730, Math 680)
APs: Human Geography - 5, US History - 4, Physics 1 - 2 (didn’t submit), Lang and Comp - 4, Lit - 3, Seminar - 5, Spanish Lang - currently in, Drawing - currently in, Calc AB - currently in
Honors: High Honor roll all semesters, was in a bunch of honor societies (music, social studies, math, spanish, nhs) but ended up only staying in two (spanish and math) by choice, 2nd place Optimist Essay contest winner, AP Scholar with Distinction, QB CPS,
ECs: Student council (general member), Audition vocal jazz group, did some other one’s freshman and sophomore year but didn’t do anything notable, 250+ hours of community service (parents made me help during church), job at Walmart since summer before junior year.
hooks: first-gen college, queer, URM (mexican), undocumented parents (one was forced here, not sure if this is a hook???)
Financials: EFC ~3300 , family makes around 67k a year (only father can work), around 15k of that is overtime, apartment has dropped like 10k in value from buying price, 0 assets
course load wise I basically took the hardest courses my school offered through Junior year. Senior year I figured out the direction I wanted to go (the arts) so I didn’t take as many intense classes.
Essays: for 1st short answer - wrote on how getting an honorable mention in my school art show was the highlight of my junior year (mentally my lowest and messy homewise), for 2nd short answer - wrote about how the historical figure i’d love to meet would be my mother at 17, for the personal essay - wrote about my parents being mexican immigrants and their expectations, how finances created stress and being gay, for the second essay I wrote about how working at walmart and doing nothing as a door-greeter taught me patience and gratitude for the mundane. in the additional info section I shortly talked about my mental health struggles, particularly junior year, and how I was improving
I go to a public high school in the illinois suburbs, around 2600 kids in total, they dont rank anymore but select nhs candidates if they’re roughly in the top 10% of their class.
Letters of Rec: One from my junior year english teacher (shared a lot of my personal home struggle situation with her so she said she talked about my grit), one from my pastor (this one was kinda weird, im not really religious anymore so i have no idea what he wrote about given that i havent been to any in person student events in basically two years, I worked with him a lot though volunteering for the kids ministry), I think my counselor also did one?
Personal thoughts: I think my essays were the strongest part fo my app, had a couple different people look them over to give general notes. my advice would be to take advantage of every short answer and space where they invite you to write. I wrote all mine as if I were having a conversation with who ever was reading my app, formal but lax.
I ranked 10 schools: Brown, Northwestern, UChicago, Dartmouth, Amherst, Oberlin, Grinnell, Denison, Wesleyan, MIT (in that order)
If there’s anything y’all got questions on im happy to elaborate!