<p>Hehe.</p>
<p>Middle-class white male in Alabama
High school: top ranked in nation, very competitive</p>
<p>The numbers:
GPA: ~4.2 weighted, 3.7 unweighted
Class size: 226
Class rank: technically all above 4.0 are called valedictorians, but I'm definitely top 5%
SAT: 2310 (800CR 800M 710W)
ACT: 35 (36 superscored - 36E 35M 36R 36S)
SAT Subject Tests: 800 Math II, 770 Literature, 720 Physics
AP: 5 in Composition, 4 in APUSH, 3s in APMEH and Chemistry
IB: 6 in Philosophy SL, 4 in Chemistry SL</p>
<p>Extracurriculars:
-Work as a sales associate at Sears 25 hours/week
-Math Team
-Scholar's Bowl (A team)
-Mixed Ensemble (most selective school choir, award-winning)
-Music - piano and guitar primarily (I take piano lessons, play recitals), but I'm proficient at half a dozen other instruments - lately I've also been composing
-National Honor Society Tutoring
-MUNA (Best Resolution 2 years in a row at assembly)
-French Club (various service projects)
-Science Club
-Student Government, Parliamentarian
-Service Learning/Work Study (4 hrs/week)
-Appalachia Service Project (every summer for a week - 8+ hours/day repairing homes of impoverished families in Appalachia)
-Research assistant for my father on a rare species of plant indigenous to the area (this past summer for around 4 hours/week)</p>
<p>Awards/Honors:
-National Honor Society
-Presidential Scholars Nominee
-National Merit Finalist (234 PSAT)
-Ayn Rand Essay Contest Semifinalist
-National French Contest, 3rd in state, 8th ranked in nation
-Science Fair (freshman year) - regional: Herbert Hoover Young Engineer Award, NSPE Award, Army Award, Navy Award, 3rd place Engineering, advanced to state level for honorable mention
-County Math Tournament - 1st place Precalculus (junior), 1st place Algebra II (sophomore), 4th place Geometry (freshman)
-Mu Alpha Theta
-2006 Boy's State nominee - rose from city judge to city council to the House of Representatives, where I authored a successful bill and argued for bills on the floor</p>
<p>I'm sure I'm forgetting at least one relatively important extracurricular or award I've received, but you get the general idea.</p>
<p>Teacher/Counselor Recommendations: should be quite good</p>
<p>I did the supplemental essays when they were offered, and for Williams, Princeton, and Duke, I had a friend write a supplemental letter of recommendation. I also enclosed the typical resume of my activities which wouldn't fit on the Common App.</p>
<p>My biggest worries are my grades and, perhaps less significantly, my AP scores. In the second semester of my junior year, I managed to have almost all Bs and B minuses in my classes. The situation was fairly complex, but in short I was experiencing a sort of multi-pronged internal dilemma (probably in part because I was taking IB Philosophy at the time). I stopped doing homework in most of my classes for a period of perhaps two or three months, and if I hadn't worked like crazy for the last few months of the semester, I would have failed at least two of my classes (since that semester the greatest weight in the final grade had been given to homework). Other than that one semester, I'd received mostly As.</p>
<p>This past semester, I got the following grades:
AP Physics Mechanics: 100 (A+)
AP/IB Calculus: 90 (A-)
AP/IB French IV: 96 (A)
Western Culture: 98 (A+)
IB History of the Americas: 88 (B+)
AP/IB English Literature: 87 (B+)
AP/IB Biology: 87 (B+)</p>
<p>The three B+ grades I received were very good in actuality - the class average in AP/IB Biology was literally around a 65....at one point in the year, 13 of 19 students in a particular block were failing. The Literature class had perhaps three As out of the entire senior class, and those were at or below a 93 or a 94. The History of the Americas class was originally a 91, but the exam brought me down; like Literature, only a small group of people had high grades, and those grades were low As.</p>
<p>Also, I had no idea what to expect in APMEH (sophomore year), and in general only a few people got 4s (one person is rumored to have gotten a 5 out of about 100 students). A 4 on APUSH was the best grade for my particular class to my knowledge with a new teacher. On Chemistry, I did well on the multiple choice but spent too much time on the first free response, leaving me perhaps twenty minutes to do all of the others I had to do.</p>
<p>I'm not sure how much colleges will realize pertaining to these factors. In my common app essay, I made reference to my grades the second semester of junior year and explained their cause briefly to show their anomalous status. In addition, my guidance counselor may have referred to them in her recommendation. As for my AP scores, I've heard varying reports as to whether or not they're even taken into consideration. After some though, I did self-report all my AP/IB scores, just in case they assumed I had failed the ones I would have chosen not to report.</p>
<p>Also, before I forget, I've taken probably the most challenging courseload available at my school. By the time I graduate, I'll have taken over a dozen AP/IB, AP, and IB courses, and as my schedule shows, I'm certainly not slacking in my courseload senior year.</p>
<p>Also, I should definitely mention I have undergraduate/graduate legacy status with Duke and graduate legacy status with Yale, both through my dad. He did well at both schools. In addition, we have other connections to Duke - my mom was assistant curator of the museum, and my dad was a librarian there for quite some time. In fact, there's a small collection in the library given by my dad's family which also relates to my dad's family's history.</p>
<p>Given all of this information and all of these explanations, what are my chances for:</p>
<p>Brown
Bucknell
Duke
Harvard
Middlebury
Princeton
Williams
Yale</p>
<p>Obviously I've already applied to all these schools, so be honest.</p>