<p>My daughter has worked very hard since middle school to get into a good college. Her goal has always been an ivy. As a rising senior, she now doubts her qualifications to even make an attempt to apply. I think her resume is fantastic and that she should just apply and let the chips fall where they may. Do you think she is average or above?</p>
<p>Unweighted GPA: 4.0
Weighted GPS: 4.53
Class Size: 330 (All girls school)
Class Rank: I assume top 5%</p>
<p>Classes:
AP - 7 (includes 2 classes to be taken her senior year)
The rest are honors
Dual enrolled in a local community college</p>
<p>She will receive a Great Books Seal on her diploma</p>
<p>Extra Curricular:
Hospital volunteer 2 years
Youth ministry group leader for middle schoolers
Numerous Piano awards (has played for over 10 years)
Mu Alpha Theta - Math Honor Society
French Honor Society
National Honor Society
JV lacrosse
School Student Ambassador
Phi Theta Kappa (Community College NHS)
Tutor for elementary school students</p>
<p>Hi Robin - welcome to CC! The median SAT at Harvard is just under 1500 (on the 1600 CR+M scale), so she’ll be well under that, but of course half the students in the entering classes come in with SATs below the median. The vast majority of Harvard’s applicant pools are fully-qualified academically but they only have room to accept 6%, so it’s the value-added (hooks) in accepted students’ resumes that make them stand out. At Harvard, those hooks are often state or national titles in various fields. The odds for your daughter are not large, but then they aren’t for any applicant - over 50% of 2400 SATs get turned down there. So apply and let the chips fall? Sure!</p>
<p>And even if she doubts her chances at Harvard, she should make sure to apply to “low reach” schools, that are still very selective, but less so. HYPSM (and possibly now Columbia? That’s a change from when I started applying.) are one tier of ridiculous selectivity; Duke, Brown, Dartmouth, Northwestern etc. are still very, very selective, but not quite so ridiculous. She should apply to at least one of each. You don’t want her to be one of the students who applied only to her state flagship, Harvard, and Princeton, gets rejected from H and P, and ends up at State U when she could perfectly well have ended up and ended up thriving at, say, Cornell or Georgetown. (There is of course a range within these “low reaches”: Cornell’s harder to get into than Georgetown; I just think these are useful examples of the category.)</p>
<p>And then has she thought about liberal arts colleges, or women’s colleges? The top ones are, I think, just as good as most of the Ivies, while being much easier to get into. Her SAT scores are much closer to the 50% mark for Wellesley, for example, than to Harvard’s.</p>
<p>One thing: She probably shouldn’t submit her SAT scores. Her ACT 33 is roughly the equivalent of an SAT 1460, i.e., a full 100 points higher than what she has, and a pretty meaningful 100 points at this level. The writing 760 does not add much if anything at Harvard or similar colleges.</p>
<p>Her hard work WILL get her into a good college, provided she applies to the right ones. She can’t count on it getting her into “an ivy”, but that isn’t the definition of a good college, and it’s not even the definition of a college that’s better than the alternatives. While it’s fine to encourage her to apply to Harvard and other hyper-selective colleges, it is also important to support her desire to find some other great schools where she can apply and have a much higher chance of success. And to make certain she knows that both she AND her resume are fantastic, but she should stop thinking that admission at Harvard, Dartmouth, wherever, is the measure of success.</p>
<p>Cornell and Georgetown are almost exactly equivalent in terms of how hard it is to get into them, by the way, although they attract somewhat different populations of students. She needs to fall in love with some schools that are a notch or two less in demand. Thinking about a women’s college is a great idea, or a public university honors program, or a LAC that isn’t one of the five or six that are as selective as Cornell.</p>
<p>The combination of the ACT 33 and her 800s in the subject tests along with her GPA certainly get your daughter into the mix from an academic perspective and show she is more than capable of doing the work at a top college. I certainly would not worry about the SAT 1 scores at all since there is no need to submit them to most schools if the ACT is submitted instead. One can submit either the ACT or SAT I scoresboth tests are looked upon equally. Obviously, the 800s are the top SAT II score and a 33 on the ACT is just fine.</p>
<p>In the end, it will be the other factors that differentiate your daughter from the rest and determine the strength of her application–the quality of her essays, extracurriculars, and recommendations. Feel free to post in the H parent forum if you have additional questions.</p>