<p>I just finished junior year in a new school. I am Ecuadorian, and i studied their my whole life till this year in which I moved to Phillips Exeter Academy alone. The change was brutal to me and thus my usual 3.6 GPA got destroyed till my spring term grades in which I almost have a B+ average. My fall and winter terms were both B- average.my cumulative gpa for Junior year was a 7.4 which is midway between a B- and B Do you think Harvard will understand that? I am hoping that my senior fall grades will be around an A- average.
My class this past year haven't been AP but I was in accelerated Russian and above average level math class. I am planning on next year taking a lot harder courses.
As for my extracurricular activities, I have done 4 years of swimming, 1 year of fencing, 1 year of golf. Except for swimming (JV) i have never tried out for teams. I won a gold tournament in 9th grade back home.
I have worked at a pizza restaurant that past couple summers. I also used to volunteer as a translator for Doctors that came to ecuador to operate for free. I also used to have an internship at a vet clinic. I have been in the Student government as a class representative and participated in MUN. At Exeter I volunteered at a nursing home once a week for 2 hours and I am also part of the student listener organization, which is a club that helps and listens to other students when they have problems, and the International Student Organization.
I am proficient in English, Spanish, Russian. I can understand Italian, and I have just finished one year of Latin.
I spent last summer in Siberia teaching English and Spanish. This summer I am going with a program to Tanzania to build schools and orphanages and then to Israel for some more volunteer work. Before this I spent a one month of my sophomore summer at a summer school in Switzerland and another one in London.
I havent yet taken the SAT II so I am unsure of the scores but I am hoping to have well above average scores.
As for the SAT I took it the first time June 4th, the scores still haven't arrived, but because of all the practice tests I think I will get above a 2000 but below a 2300.
So do you think I have a shot at applying to Harvard?
Thank you for reading it all</p>
<p>Definitely go for it and apply. Your grades will definitely hurt you, and it is kind of stretch, but I wouldn’t rule it out. You never know- you have some great extracurricular activities and that’s important.</p>
<p>(1) Don’t put identifying information on an internet forum. Adcoms sometimes come on here, and so might other people who you don’t want knowing who you are.
(2) Given the school you go to, your guidance counselors will be able to give you a much more accurate picture of your chances than we can.</p>