Decision: Finalist
Objective: •SAT I (breakdown): 720 CR, 730 W, 720 M
•ACT: 34 (36 Reading, 35 English , 35 Science, 30 Math)
•SAT II: not taken
•Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.61UW, 4.17W
•Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 57/647 (Massive Public School)
•AP (place score in parenthesis): AP Lit (5), AP Lang (4), AP Calculus BC (5), AP European History (4), APUSH (4)
•IB (place score in parenthesis): not offered at my school
•Senior Year Course Load: AP Calculus BC, AP Psychology, AP Chemistry, Chamber Singers (My school’s top audition choir, state-award-winning), US Gov’t (required), French 3, Advanced Psychological Theater. My school runs on a 5-hour trimester system, and AP classes are full-year, which made it impossible to take as many as I would have liked to while still fulfilling grad requirements.
•Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): Not necessarily “major,” but I was a member of the Michigan School Vocal Music Association All-State Honors Choir last year, which is a high honor. I was the only student who made it from my school. QB College Prep Scholar last year, invited to and attended QB Admissions Conference at Emory this summer.
Subjective:
•Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): 4-year Musical Theater (lead roles 11 and 12 plus summer productions). School choir since 5th grade (member of my school’s top women’s and co-ed audition choirs, plus private voice lessons since 9th grade). Very serious about freeskiing, where I am the only female freeskier in my area–I went into this a lot in my application, one of my 200-wds related to it. Just joined my school’s Rotary Interact Club this year after being selected for a fairly prestigious Rotary Leadership Conference for my area. A lot of yoga.
My school is very sports-oriented and does not have a Model UN, Forensics team, Mock Trial, or pretty much any national organization club besides Interact, and our NHS is a joke ): so I did not even apply. Still, I made it very clear that I can’t wait to get involved in college in a bunch of things including political activism, student council (that is also a complete joke at my school and has pretty much 0 power), student radio and newspaper (we have no school newspaper), and extracurricular outdoorsy athletics.
•Job/Work Experience:
Worked as a tutor at Kumon Learning Center for a few months in 2014. Nannied this summer for an only child and three girls.
•Volunteer/Community service: 4-year volunteer by invitation at Grand Rapids Civic Theater summer camps, teaching kids the love of all things theater. Used to be very involved in church volunteering and activities, while I haven’t lost my love for volunteering at those places, have lost some of my love for the church so haven’t done as much this year… definitely did not go into that in my application, lol.
•Summer Activities: Hiking, reading and writing, exploring Michigan’s dope landscape which spans lots of lakes and forests (come visit!). Yoga outside, that’s pretty much it. I’m sure I listed it more nicely on my app but can’t remember right now. Never had the money to attend any big summer programs. Also mentioned my crazy passion for NPR
•Essays (rating 1-10, details): 10 for both of the big ones, honestly. I worked really hard on my essays and had at least three people go through them, one of whom (the best) was a college counselor by profession and former admissions officer for a prestigious east coast university. I connected with him through a Reddit forum.
For my secondary essay, I chose the "Tell about an experience you had that changed your perspective/opinion on something, and I wrote about an experience I had while traveling through an Israeli occupation military checkpoint in Palestine a few years ago. I am immensely proud of it, and sure it was very unique.
200-word Intellectually Stimulating Concept: 7, I didn’t run this one by anyone else and changed my mind at the last minute. Talked about something that probably has been done before (neuroplasticity) but I know I said it well. Wasn’t killer, but wasn’t a deal-breaker.
200-word Person you would meet: 8-9, I didn’t feel like I had enough space, but definitely wrote about something they’ve never heard before, talked about Sarah Burke, a pioneer for women’s freeskiing that I really looked up to when I started the sport and always wanted to see in the X-Games, who died after a training accident when I was in middle school. She is the reason women’s freeskiing made it to the Olympics a couple years ago, and she would have been a top contender, she never lived to see it happen.
•Recommendations (rating 1-10, details):
•Teacher Rec #1: 10, from my AP Lit teacher, a class I had with all seniors last year as a junior. After the seniors graduated I spent a few weeks as the only student in the class where we talked about english, philosophy, religion, and general distaste for some societal structures… I know he knows me well and would write a good one, although I haven’t read it.
•Teacher Rec #2: Went out on a limb and got it from my calculus teacher who is the most straight-forward person I have ever met. He is very honest about the boundaries between intelligence and hard work, and has seen mannnnny students much more intelligent than I. But I like to talk to him about a lot of my general feelings about life and the world, and I knew he would say something worth listening to.
•Counselor Rec: 8-10, I’m sure it was very generalized, I don’t know her particularly well and we have 4 counselors in my school for ~1800 students grades 10-12. Talked to her a few days ago, and she said she wrote a really good one mentioning a lot about my drive for learning for the sake of learning, which is true and hopefully something colleges would like to hear. I’m sure it was fine.
•Additional Rec:
Other
•State (if domestic applicant): Michigan
•School Type: VERY Large Public ( ~2200 students, 600+ in my class)
•Ethnicity: White
•Gender: Female
•Income Bracket: My mom makes ~$15,000 a year, but it ends up more than $60,000 on the QB app because of her retirement stuff. She is 57, so the retirement stuff kinda matters. We explained this in the app.
•Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): Dad died when I was very young, single parent no siblings because he died before they could have more children. Had to overcome ADD+Depression+Anxiety and a pretty overwhelming sense of mortality, all of which I mentioned in some way or another.
Reflection
•Strengths: Essays felt compelling and well written, test scores (for liberal arts, not planning on going into engineering so not too concerned about the low-ish ACT math)
•Weaknesses: GPA, extracurriculars/volunteering
•Why you think you were selected/rejected: Really killed the essays. I’ve never been more proud of something I’ve written, besides some poetry. Unique and well-spoken. Test scores put me above the QB median range.
Colleges ranked: Swarthmore, Wesleyan, Colorado, Amherst, Yale
General Comments: Made it very clear I’m in this for the liberal arts education and definitely catered my application towards the smaller liberal arts schools that I am focused on.
Interests listed: Philosophy, International Relations, Journalism, Linguistics
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