<p>Which do you think is better as far as EC's go: quality or quantity.</p>
<p>In other words, if an adcom were to receive two apps, and one had many ECs while the other had a few high quality ECs, which app would be considered better?</p>
<p>Admission officers are very clear that quality is preferable. The problem is that many people have both.</p>
<p>I know what you're saying. A lot of people have both quantity and quality. While all Princeton hopefuls are good students, is it really true that Princeton (and the ivy league schools in general) adcoms seek diversity? In other words, are they just looking for those who score perfect or near perfect on SAT/ACT, or do they want to look for those who have decent scores, decent grades, decent rank, decent ECs, as well as those other "better" students. </p>
<p>I'm just worried that my relatively low GPA (4.11W) will be lost in the myriad of 4.5+ GPAs. I'm worried that my good EC's will be lost in the shuffle of all the amazing EC's. And so on and so forth.</p>
<p>Is that GPA due to you not performing well in your classes or because of special circumstances that would prevent anyone in your situation from achieving a higher GPA? If it's the latter, you have nothing to worry about as they take the whole applicant into consideration, though the former could mean some trouble.</p>
<p>The rest of your question depends on what you mean by "decent." Most applicants should definitely shoot for at least 1400+/1600 SAT, top 10% of their class in rank, a few solid and consistent (over the course of a few years) ECs with at least some leadership. Some people do get in with lower stats than these, though there needs to be a reason: Princeton wouldn't strongly consider a student that doesn't compare favorably to other students without a good reason (and good, of course, tends to be subjective, though it may refer to family background, environment, or an aspect of their application that sets them apart from the others, such as essays or some sort of accomplishments).</p>
<p>As for your original question, without a doubt quality is more important than quantity. Much more. Same goes with community service: they don't care much about the kids who do thousands of hours if they don't really think the applicants wanted to truly serve the community rather than look better for colleges.</p>
<p>JoeTrumpet:</p>
<p>The "special circumstance" you were referring to was that I was home schooled my first two years of highschool. Thus all classes were weighted 4.0. I didn't have any weighted courses (AP, IB, or honors) at my disposal.
I have only gotten one B in highschool: honors precalculus in junior year.</p>
<p>(Will that B hurt me by the way?)</p>
<p>Would you mind chancing me?</p>
<p>I got a B in honors pre-calculus my sophomore year and none of my colleges seemed to care :).</p>
<p>You don't need to worry: Princeton will undoubtedly take into account the fact that you were homeschooled. This shouldn't be a concern at all. They have accepted students in the past who were purely homeschooled with no "GPA" or "rank" to speak of, after all.</p>
<p>One thing you should do is forget what your weighted GPA is. Princeton is going to recalculate it using their own system. Instead just consider the overall difficulty of your courses. Have you taken all honors and AP when you had the opportunity to? This is what's important, and this is what weight attempts to measure (albeit through awkward and nonuniform methods). On your guidance counselor's recommendation form, he or she will have to check one of several boxes measuring the rigor of your course selection. You want to ask yourself, looking at your courses, if you believe they will check "most rigorous course selection." That's what matters.</p>
<p>Unweighted GPA will also be taken into consideration, but Princeton does not strictly play by the numbers. Your 3.96 UW GPA will not look unfavorably compared to another student's 4.0 assuming a similar courseload: at this point the adcoms will, most likely, view you two as equivalent and find some other basis on which to admit one or the other. The same goes for SATs. If you scored a 1510 and someone else scored a 1530, this does not give them an real advantage. The adcoms have more important factors to base their decisions on than this (essays, recs, ECs, community service).</p>
<p>For the record, I believe the average (or maybe median) Princeton GPA unweighted is 3.91. They reject plenty of 4.0s. Similarly, the average (or maybe median) math + verbal SAT score is about 1510 or so. They reject plenty of 1600s.</p>
<p>Quality. They want people who will continue with those ECs in college--the newspaper editor, the debate star, the rugby stud, etc--so they want to see commitment. And just think about the successful people you know. Were they good at a thousand tiny things, or a few big ones? Are you more impressed by the guy who writes for a tiny local magazine, is on school board, has an eBay store, cycles daily, works out three times a week, coaches Little League.... or the guy who has his medical articles published in major journals, performed the first cardiothoracic whatever surgery, and coaches one of his son's sports teams every year? I think the first guy sounds a bit unbelievable, and he hasn't really accomplished much except loads of stress. The second guy has evident passion AND talent and also seems like a pretty cool guy.</p>
<p>I liked your example, glassesarechic.</p>