<p>Hi there. </p>
<p>Last year was my senior year of high school, and while I did apply to and get into some very good colleges and programs, I can't say that I am entirely satisfied. I am taking a year off before I start college in the Fall of 2011, so I figured that I might as well send applications to some of the colleges that I got rejected from, as well as to some that I have not yet applied to. I think that I am a fairly unique applicant, and hopefully I can convey that here without giving too much information for my own good. So, without further ado, here is what my application would look like:</p>
<p>Objective:[ul]
[<em>] SAT I: 740 Math, 690 Reading, 730 Writing, 12 essay, 2160 Total
[</em>] ACT: 33 Composite, 35 Math, 34 English, 33 Reading, 28 Science
[<em>] SAT II: 650 Literature, 700 Math I. These are pretty lousy, mostly because I took them against my will without studying. Perhaps I will take them over.
[</em>] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): roughly 3.7
[<em>] Rank: School does not rank
[</em>] AP (place score in parenthesis): English Language (5), English Literature (4), Psychology (5), Statistics (4), US Government (3), Chemistry (1). Needless to say, I didn't try on Chem and I'm not showing it.
[li] Course Load: My HS transcript has that cliche "upward trend" that everyone has been raving about. I went to a parochial school with a dual curriculum, so each year I had to take a few religious studies classes in addition to my secular coursework. I always took the middle track in these religious studies. For schools like mine, (and I know this for a fact) colleges put much more emphasis on the secular coursework. So, just note that if I say, "I was in all honors,"I am referring to my secular classes. My school has 5 levels of classes; from lowest to highest they are academic, college prep, accelerated, honors, AP. That being said:</p>[/li]
<p>Freshman year: 1 honors, the rest were accelerated
Sophomore year: 1 accelerated, the rest were honors
Junior year: 3 AP's, 1 honors, 1 accelerated (only 2 other people in my grade took more than 2 AP's. Starting to see the upward trend?)
Senior Year: Virtually identical to Junior year.</p>
<p>The thing I am concerned about is that in my Junior year I got all A's in my AP classes, whereas in my senior year I got B's in 2/3 of my AP classes due to senioritis. I had A's in the first semester though.</p>
<p>[/ul]Subjective:[ul]
[<em>] Extracurriculars: Wrestling (Captain 11th & 12th). I devoted most of my free time to wrestling and I have a lot to say about it. I know that the whole "be passionate about something" idea is incredibly cliche, but wrestling really was a huge part of my life and persona and I would be a completely different person without it. Through wrestling, I had to solve some really adult problems as a 15 year old kid due to a unique situation I had which will take far too long to go into here. I was also on the soccer team, and during my senior year we won a championship, making us the first team to do so in the history of my school in any sport. I dabbled in other EC's but I was not passionate about them, so I won't mention them.
[</em>] Job/Work Experience: Golf Caddy, Construction. This summer I have been working full time in construction and renovation.
[<em>] Volunteer/Community service: No time for it, really. My school day was from 8-5:10, and after wards I had wrestling or soccer practice and homework.
[</em>] Summer Activities: EMT class, summer programs at Columbia, wrestling.
[<em>] Essays: I have a talent in writing and I am very creative, so they should be pretty good.<br>
[</em>] Teacher Recommendation: Did not read so I really have no idea. I assume they were good. I overheard that one of them goes into length about how I am a huge patriot or something.
[<em>] Counselor Rec: The best possible.
[</em>] Additional Rec: I might include a recommendation I received from a Columbia professor saying that I am exceptionally gifted in Economics (my intended major).
[li] Interview: I know how to present myself really well. At the end of my interview for Penn last year, my interviewer said very plainly that she was really impressed with me. For whatever reason I did not get in, but it was not because of my interview.</p>[/li]
<p>[/ul]Other[ul]
[<em>] State:NJ
[</em>] School Type: Parochial
[<em>] Ethnicity: White
[</em>] Gender: Male
[<em>] Hooks: None that I'm aware of.
[</em>] Awards: National Merit Commended, AP scholar with distinction, student athlete award from my HS (only given to one person), high honor roll.
[li] Results from last year: Accepted at University of Michigan Honors Program, West Point, and a bunch of safeties. Rejected from Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Penn.[/li][/ul]
The applications process for West Point was so time consuming and overwhelming that I did not really go all out on the rest of my applications; I used essays that were not really tailored well enough for the questions being answered, I had to pass on some interviews, etc. Also, my guidance counselor thinks that some of the schools I was rejected from may have assumed that I was going to West Point because I had already been accepted there and wrote my essay about my experiences there.</p>
<p>Anyways, these are the schools that I am interested in:</p>
<p>Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Penn, Stanford, Yale.</p>