<p>i am a senior and i have no idea where i can get in with my stats. here they are:</p>
<p>-about 1320 on the sat (2010 on new one)
-captain of varsity sport for couple years
-involved in 2 varsity sports all 4 years
-200 miscellaneous volunteer hours
-top 20% at competitive private school
-founder and president of minority awareness club (though i am upper-middle class, non-URM)
-latin club
-several athletic meets with OK placement </p>
<p>i am looking at wake forest, cornell, tufts, BC, emory, amherst, nyu, BU, and UTaustin</p>
<p>...and do i have a chance at shcolarships??</p>
<p>top 20% doesn't tell much. What's you're GPA? Honestly, I just went through the college admissions process and I have to warn you, you may be overshooting with some of those schools. I would say NYU and B are good matches, Cornell, Tufts, BC and Amherst are probably reaches...I don't know about the other three...</p>
<p>yah. you are def. overreaching. apply to schools where you're pretty comfortable about and they'll give you more $$.
and 200 hours is not impressive. 2000 hours didn't even get me into cornell---and i had LOTS of leadership/excellent grades/Volunteer/ECs/Sports.</p>
<p>BC is not a reach, and neither is Tufts, Cornell is always a reach because it is a member of the IVY League so those rules of unpredictability apply...</p>
<p>Wake forest is a high match
Cornell is a low reach (its the easiest ivy to get into, but hardest to survive)
Tufts is a low reach
BC is a match
Emory is a low reach
Amherst is a reach
NYU is a high match
BU is a match
UTAustin is a match??</p>
<p>But really, its a crapshoot because you're likely to get surprising acceptances and some surprising rejections
Good Luck</p>
<p>2000 hours of volunteer work?! that's crazy! anyway, i had less than 200 and it was enough for georgetown and nyu to both tell me they were very impressed with my "dedication" to community service...
also, yeah, 20% doesn't say much but i also went to a competitive high school and i was just a little above top 20 percent and i had a 95 average so our school decided not to rank students.<br>
btw, i was a ccepted to stern, and am in the stern scholars program (i have no idea why, i had no so awesome extracurriculars too)</p>
<p>so i would say it's a match for you and sometimes, it's just a crapshoot.</p>
<p>definitely apply. and up those sat scores. with nyu, that could help a lot.</p>
<p>Honestly, community service isn't even an issue next to GPA, SATs and essays. If you've done it, that's good, but having spent more hours at a soup kitchen than another applicant is not what's going to get you accepted.</p>
<p>2000 hours isn't only crazy, it's pretty damn retarded, unless of course you actually love every second of what you do (and you'd better, doing it for 2000 hours). But in that case, why would you go to college?</p>
<p>I don't have ANY community service or EC's. I preferred to live life and have fun in HS. Now in college, who has time for that when you work and go to school and have a boyfriend? I wouldn't even know where to go to service my community, unless I broke the law and was told where to go by a judge. Do you go to the town hall walk in and say, "I want to do some community service...help." ???
I think it's lame that some colleges care about that stuff anyway.</p>
<p>Oh I have a soul, just not for the lazy, homeless drug addicts/alcoholics that people feed in soup kitchens. I am a social darwinist.</p>
<p>I donate to the ocean conservancy, ASPCA-other such charities. However that cannot be totaled in an amount of hours, as it would be ridiculous to set a timer to add up the time it takes me to write a check and mail. It would be dumb to list the charities I donate to on a college app. I care about helping defenseless poor animals that cannot help themselves. Most poor people can help themselves (disabled can't I understand, but they get plenty from the govt.) I don't give to beggars on the streets of Chicago- ironically some of them dress in brand name clean clothing, nice shoes, jewelled up the yazoo. I don't give to that. They can get a job if they really wanted to, or they could join the army, convent....whatever. I have walked for the march of dimes once (because that's a good cause that doesn't cater to lazy homeless people), but that's not really comm. service. </p>
<p>Usually people that do a lot of comm service while they are in their teens do it to impress colleges, and those aren't for the right reasons. Most people that do it for the right reasons are adults...more times than not, the "be a good samaritan" bug (bad term, I know) doesn't kick in until later in life, when one acquires a heartier appreciation for the gift that is life. Things like that just aren't on the minds of teenagers, they're still growing emotionally. For schools to expect someone going through all the dung teens go through trying to even find THEMSELVES (you know, we've all seen identity cases) to actually grow up fast and be a good samaritan is nuts. </p>
<p>I signed up to participate in the International Coastal Cleanup on Sept 18, because litter is something I feel strongly about. Am I supposed to time myself and add the hours so I can put it on my app? Seems lame to do that.
All I'm saying is, a couple things should be good enough, one shouldn't need some long list, or hundreds of hours of comm service to get into a good college.</p>