ACT: 30
GPA UW: 3.837
AP: USH and BIO ( wasn’t able to take AP till junior year, have 4 AP senior year PSYCH, CHEM, ENGLISH LIT, AP CALC AB
Extra curricular/ Awards: Varsity Gymnastics grades 9-11, state athlete of the week 2 years in a row, King5 news blitz performer of the week in 2017, state finalist gymnastics all three years and top 15, Varsity Rowing 9,11,12, top 3 in all regattas 2018 season, Secretary of Athletic Medicine club 11-12, volunteer at public library
Other: From Island in Washington, No alum, Attend competitive High School
Class Rank : None
Race: White
Gender: Female
Try to get your ACT up. While Emory has historically been less selective than many of its peers, its averages for test scores has been rising over the past few years.
Otherwise, I would say you have a decent shot.
I wouldn’t say that Emory has been “less selective” as opposed to saying that their review is not traditional. They reject some with high test scores and grades and admit some with lower scores and grades. There is no set formula and that is a reason not to do chancing for Emory. They look at everything, including in this case, the varsity competition and leadership. Some here say that they look for debaters or a certain type. I think they are looking to build a diverse class with people with different strengths and backgrounds.
If you really are motivated to attend Emory, apply Early Decision 1 as there is a bump there based on motivation to attend Emory.
@ljberkow I’m honestly gonna have to get out of the habit of only describing selectivity as just the numbers (as I don’t even believe in that). I think what we should say is has “lower stats”. There isn’t too much evidence that it has been “less selective” especially versus near ranked peers. Emory’s outcomes (post-grad prizes and prestigious fellowship/scholarship winners) for the past few years have been on par or better than places with better stats. I say we should just say: “Emory has traditionally had lower scores than peers”. I do not want to conflate it with selectivity as that would imply that the differences in stats has led to some serious disadvantage outcomes wise. This seems not to be the case. I think USNWR rankings and this website for drilling the conflation into many of our heads. Tons of folks still saying stuff like: “Our school is better than yours because it has higher scores” when the schools are essentially the same or the higher scoring one is worse in all other meaningful metrics such as post-grad success, curricular offerings, strength of graduate programs, etc. Lots of folks are deceived by buying into the “stats”=“selectivity” line of thought.
@bernie12,we can’t even be sure that there even are “lower stats” anymore. With applications up 15% and average SAT scores of admitted students way up, it’s hard to say how much the bar has been raised or if this past year was an aberration. Regardless, given what we saw for the Class of 2022, it makes it much more difficult to even guess, especially for any applicant in that 25/75 percentiles for GPA and SAT/ACT. The stats = selectivity line definitely works for the state flagships, especially the most competitive ones.
@ljberkow : Again, they actually aren’t too much different since the cycle before this past one. From what I saw, USC, Michigan, Notre Dame, Berkeley, Cornell, Stanford (yes, I said Stanford. They were never stats whores in the first place, nor are they now), Georgetown, and Emory (Emory actually surpassed Gtown in SATs, barely and Emory is a bit more higher than USC which was not the case) basically converged, or have irrelevant differences statistically. A place like Stanford basically differs in terms of how “prized” their admits are, so caliber beyond stats will matter much more in distinguishing places. Minus Stanford, Emory undergrad was basically similar caliber wise to all of these places and for some reason, with the new SATs, the stats reflect it. In the ACTs, not as much, but most schools have a bias towards the amount submitting ACTs if there is a significant bias. Emory is nicely split between both and has closed the SAT gap with its “frienemies” lol. I just wonder if other schools have gotten wind and have focused more on scores this cycle to ensure that their relative position in the hierarchy resets to pre-2016/2017 cycle. Soon that will be impossible as the ranges at nearly all of them will be too compressed to the top draw meaningful distinctions.
Publics…more in-state that is the case where they seem to apply cut-offs. OOS, you pretty much have to already have high stats to be considered and by then, all of those applicants look similar. For OOS Berkely and Michigan (Virginia, though I think their stats are tiny bit lower than those two…perhaps due to the fact that those two have huge engineering populations and engineering admits at top schools that have them drive up stats significantly as that seems to be the primary consideration, at least the quantitative components are), the OOS admits are probably not going to be vastly superior to in-state stats wise as their range is already fairly high (you just better be at least in the IQR if applying to either OOS). Same with non-flagship elites like Georgia Tech.
@bernie12 I doin’t think you should dismiss the increase in applications at Emory for Class of 2022. When a school gets more popular, by definition it gets more competitive. The 15% increase in applications does send a message. It will be interesting to see if the last year’s rate can be sustained.
@ljberkow : I am not completely dismissing it. I am just saying that the “stats”, at least the scores are already there with many peers when they were not before. Also, remember that there were several years where the number of applications increased, but the scores didn’t change much (basically, as it was rising from 17k or so to 20k"ish"…statistics did not change too much, and we must wait to see if their were non-numerical aspects that made said classes better). Whether it is truly getting more competitive depends on, if in any given year, the applicants got better. If not, you are really just getting tons of additional applicants who may not have be taken as seriously as those who would have been admitted in the past. At that point, it just looks nice on paper to have more applications and see the lower admit rate. The peers I listed in the other post reflect this reality as I think most saw increases in applications that cycle, but they didn’t really maintain their relative position in who they were admitting or at least recruiting “statistically”. In that group, most kind of fell, except Emory and Cornell.