Please chance me for Columbia ED, Uchicago EA, and Brown, NYU and Cornell regular

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Please chance me for Columbia ED, Uchicago EA, and Brown, NYU and Cornell regular
GPA (as of right now)- 3.77 uw, 4.125 w, mostly A's and A-'s, with B's in math and a B+ last year in french, take two honors languages
SAT- 700 cr, 760 math, 800 writing, 2260 overall, have only taken once
SATII- 730 biology, 750 US history
extracurriculars- junior state of america- current director of activism for New england region, organized a clothing drive for city children, 4 best speaker awards at conventions, n, organizing book drive this year</p>

<p>Fencing- 4 years varsity, squad placed 2nd in state soph year, 1st junior year, placed 5th individually junior year, fence year round for a club in tournaments around new england, mens captain senior year</p>

<p>Academic bowl- 3 year varsity member, captain junior/senior year, 2 top scorer awards at yale and brandeis tournaments</p>

<p>School advisory council- elected for senior year, liason between school principal and student body</p>

<p>Environmental club- member, take care of endangered turtles and pull invasive plant species, did research this year with my teacher on bacterial infections of local insects
Moot Court- Made quarter finals first year, advisors said I wrote the best speech of the competition during that round</p>

<p>went on a community service trip to south india this summer for 4 weeks of working in a village</p>

<p>took a conservation biology seminar soph year, took a roman literature seminar last year, now in a poetry seminar</p>

<p>interested in majoring in classics, history, or anthropology</p>

2

<p>Probably not: Columbia, Uchicago, Cornell
Wouldn’t blow my mind: Brown
Goodish: NYU
Gl hf!</p>

3

<p>could you elaborate?</p>

4

<p>Polymath, Brown, Chicago, Columbia and Cornell all have acceptance rate under 20% (under 15% if you were not applying ED to Columbia). Even 4.0 students with 2300+ SAT scores have sub-30% chance of admission. As such, those four universities are reaches. </p>

<p>You are in at NYU, unless you are applying to Stern, in which case, NYU is a match or perhaps even a slight reach.</p>

5

<p>First of all, are you absolutely sure you want to go to Columbia if you are accepted?
Secondly, what is your race/ethnicity? Do you have any “hooks”, i.e. outstanding factors? An example of a hook is being a legacy, or having established a national organization, or a multi-million dollar business.
Lastly, though you have good numbers (scores and academics), I would say that the lack of focus in your extracurriculars and the general lack of direction in what you hope to do in the future will hurt your application. The lack of leadership doesn’t look good either. You definitely want to try and find something to rally your credentials around, possibly related to public advocacy or politics seeing as that appears to be the only vague unity between what you’ve done. I’d generally consider Columbia and Brown to be reaches to far reaches, UChicago and Cornell to be reaches, and NYU to be a reach to high reach.
Let me know if you need any more help or input. Good luck!</p>

6

<p>@justanothertry</p>

<p>Thanks ! I have just been doing what I like to do ( politics, civic service, fencing), so that may account for the wild nature of the extracurriculars. By lack of leadership do you mean apart from in school? I have no hooks that I can think of ( upper middle class white guy), but I am on the cabinet for a whole region of Junior State of America. I’m not feeling terribly confident at this point, just because I’m very average for where I’m applying</p>

7

<p>good advice</p>