<p>
Please refer to Rob Rankin’s most recent thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-miami-florida/1468579-why-you-should-come-university-miami.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-miami-florida/1468579-why-you-should-come-university-miami.html</a></p>
<p>Does anyone here think I have a shot to get an invitation for the Singer or Stamps interview with these stats? I am in the RD pool this year. Thanks!</p>
<p>Demographic:
-White Male from Colorado
-Family income= < $60k </p>
<p>School:
-Public Nationally Recognized High School
-3.74 Weighted GPA on 4.0 Scale (School doesn’t calculate Unweighted)
-Will have 12 AP classes by graduation and all the rest Honors (grades in Honors Classes are not on weighted scale)
-ACT: 33 Composite, 35 English, 29 Math, 33 Reading, 33 Science
-AP Scholar Award
-National Honor Society
-National Society of High School Scholars</p>
<p>Extracurricular:
-Eagle Scout (lots and lots of service!)
-Volunteer Camp Counselor at Children’s Camp every summer in Seattle area
-2 Year Varsity Soccer Letter Winner
-2011 State Soccer Runner Up
-Captain of Club Soccer Team 2005-present
-2nd Team All Conference Soccer
-Boy Scouts of America Honor Camper
-Started an award winning pet sitting business in 2007 that I continue to manage today</p>
<p>Other:
-Wrote essay on how Boy Scouts IS really all about knots, but the figurative knots that tie a scout to his community rather than the real knots
-Rec’s from Counselor, AP English Lit teacher who went to Wash U St. Louis and AP Physics C teacher/2 year JV soccer coach who went to Pomona College</p>
<p>If you were eligible, it would only be for Singer (Singer/Stamps is only for ED/EA). As far as chances for an invite, I’d say pretty slim. Your GPA is the main concern. However, they may look over that with the fact that you’ve taken 12 AP classes and being an Eagle (coming from a fellow Eagle, that’s HUGE to an admissions committee). If it’s enough to outweigh your GPA, it’s hard to tell. What’s the breakdown on your GPA by year? What’s your class rank? If you show an upward trend in GPA, and if your class rank is pretty high, those could push you over the edge for a Singer invite.</p>
<p>Now, THAT’s one satisfied customer. Thank you so much for directing me to that link. We are really getting down to crunch time and decisions will have to be made very soon. I am hopeful that everything will work out for the best one way or another.</p>
<p>MTNest and anyone else who is interested, Sundays are particularly bad for airport security because that is when the cruise ships come back to port and everyone is going to the airport to get their flight home. And yes, it starts very early. I generally find it a good thing to arrive an hour before my flight. The airlines at MIA are very strict about being at the gate half an hour before to board. I have been to other airports that are more lax about boarding. But get there earlier on a Sunday.</p>
<p>@dhar32-</p>
<p>Ive only been on the CC Miami board for a year and a half and have no experience as a chancer but marinebios questions/feedback are, as always, right on target. Didnt you post here a while back with your stats? I remember reading about your knot essay which sounded wonderfully creative. I thought you had posted something about your current rank and that it would likely move up by the end of the semester? </p>
<p>As marinebio said, you wont be in contention for a Stamps award if you receive an invite since the third scholarship competition for RD applicants is for the Singer scholarship only and Stamps was held this past weekend.</p>
<p>About rank - when the _ published merit award criteria in the past, besides grades and ACT/SAT scores, class rank was broken down into different cut-off levels as were test scores. That info isnt published currently and the whole process seems more flexible than what had been published in the past, but rank is still one piece of the puzzle. Those old charts listed requirements for scholarship consideration of top 1%, top 5%, top 7%, and top 10%. I have heard often from veterans here on the Miami board that rank has historically been very important at Miami, especially for merit scholarship awards. </p>
<p>Since so many schools have stopped ranking (or say they have anyway) recently several posters have asked if that lack of rank might hurt their chances for merit awards. I wondered that too and found Rodneys recent take on this illuminating. </p>
<p>I believe Rodney is a private admissions counselor based on careful reading of her posts (which is how I also gleaned the info that Rodney is a female : ) and she has posted some very interesting nuggets about the _s admission and merit practices that only someone keeping tabs on them for years professionally, I believe, would have observed. Not all of her gems are posted on the Miami board, but elsewhere on CC, so it helps to stalk her posts!:</p>
<p>Rodney 2-11-13
</p>
<p>Heres something else to consider that may work in your favor - another oldie but goodie here on the Miami board, malaml, is always a source of astute observations about this process and had this to say recently about another possible consideration:</p>
<p>2-11-2013 malaml
</p>
<p>@Marinebio444 My freshman year GPA was 3.2, Sophomore was 3.4, Junior was 4.15, and last semester was 4.33, so a big jump after sophomore year. My class rank is just around 20% in a class of 466, but my counselor has told me that my course load over the 4 years in high school was more difficult than any other student’s in my class, and she said she reflected that statistic in her report. If you don’t think i can get a singer invite, what amount of scholarship would you predict for me? Thanks!</p>
<p>I think with the course rigor and the increasing GPA, you have about a 50/50 chance of getting a Singer invite, maybe 55/45. As to the amount of scholarship, that’s really hard to predict this year as the University has essentially overhauled their entire scholarship system.</p>
<p>@illinoismom93 yes, you are correct I did post earlier about chances for admission so I just thought after reading some of this thread I would inquire on my chances for one of these invites. Yes my class rank did move from 106 to around 90, but i thought it would have been a much farther jump with getting a 4.33 GPA this last semester. I guess many other students in my class have been keeping their grades up as well. Thank you also for your input and information!</p>
<p>@Marinebio444 Thanks again! Hopefully I will find out soon!</p>
<p>Not a problem, I wish you the best of luck! Always rooting for my fellow Eagle Scouts!</p>
<p>@dhar32 - does your school rank on weighted GPA? Or are you saying you attend one of those schools that ranks on UW, so that students with less rigorous course loads are above you in rank? </p>
<p>If that is the case, and it sounds like it might be based on what your counselor said she cited in the school report, I’d see if that has been documented properly. In our case, our school calculated rank based on weighted GPA, with additional weight for honors and AP courses, so rank did reflect the difficulty of each student’s schedule. The only thing that was wacky was the weighting of PE class. Since Illinois is the only state I know of that currently requires four years of PE, five days a week, throughout high school (I’ve heard the PE teachers union is incredibly strong in our state and has been able to maintain this dictate even in this time of cutbacks across the board everywhere else - our state is in a very poor fiscal situation). </p>
<p>There are a few ways around the PE requirement though - anyone playing a sport can be granted an exemption for their junior and senior years (our bowling team was a very popular way to avoid PE). Since PE grades at our school were calculated into weighted GPA that hurt students who continued to take it for the last two years. Other schools in our area recognized this problem and allowed students who were not exempt to take PE pass/fail or they just didn’t include PE grades in weighted GPA. </p>
<p>IllD93 was ranked #1 for the first 2 1/2 years of high school, but when junior year ranks were released in February she slipped to #2 since the new #1 had obtained a PE exemption starting the previous fall as our state law permitted. What her guidance counselor did was something that might help you. Perhaps your counselor has done this exact thing, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask! IllD93’s counselor wrote on the guidance counselor recommendation an explanation of the ranking process at our school and how the PE exemption situation had cost her the top spot. </p>
<p>I don’t think #2 vs #1 made any difference at the []_[] for us, but in your case, perhaps there is a bigger difference if your school isn’t ranking based on weighted GPA? An explanation of what your rank would be in a letter from your counselor might help here; hopefully that’s exactly what she did already but have you seen what she wrote?</p>
<p>I did not see what she wrote, but she assured me she conveyed the extreme rigor of my schedule. I do believe it is ranked on a weighted basis, but I am not sure. One thing that I think may be in my favor is the fact that honors courses are not weighted at my school, only AP. So i could get a 3.2 my freshman year with all honors courses and have the same class rank as another student who had the same GPA but with all regular courses. That can give some explanation for my lower end GPA and class rank in my opinion. Maybe UM will recalculate my weighted GPA with the standard of having weighted honors courses as well as AP courses instead of un-weighted honors courses and just weighted AP courses like what is done at my school? I hope so.</p>
<p>Gosh I hope so. Perhaps you could contact admissions to explain your situation and ask? That’s one thing I’d do. I’d also check to make sure your counselor explained exactly how the lack of honors weighting impacted your class rank. Perhaps you don’t feel comfortable quizzing your counselor for the details but this is your one shot and I would want to make sure everything that could be done was done. </p>
<p>Having watched our over-extended high school counseling department (all the money went to paying those PE teachers, not hiring enough guidance counselors!) present misinformation to parents repeatedly over the course of ten years (two kids - six years apart) I became used to doing my own research and checking to make sure things had been submitted properly. </p>
<p>Our counselors not only had huge workloads but spent lots of their time counseling students with various problems, and we lacked a dedicated college counselor which neighboring schools had. Most top students aspired to the flagship and most who ended up elsewhere had parents who figured out the process with little help from the guidance department. Our val (after the PE swap : ) went to MIT. His mother worked at the high school as the math resource tutor and I’m assuming she used her own excellent research skills to figure out how to get him where he needed to be.</p>
<p>If anything, contact with admissions shows interest which is a plus especially if you haven’t visited yet?</p>
<p>I just read this on the Stamps Scholar facebook page. Maybe it helps explain how they choose Stamps Scholars:</p>
<p>"Selected for their leaderships skills as well as a passion for innovation, Stamps Scholars are certainly not the type of students who would let the generosity of their donors go unappreciated, but instead of returning the favor to the SFCF, Stamps Scholars are paying forward the generosity. Penny and Roe Stamps have always hoped that their students will use these scholarships to help others with their education, and make a lasting impact on the world. Through that mentality, the SFCF is touching countless lives around the globe every day.</p>
<p>I’m interested, Dhar, what are thinking about studying? I get the feeling that “Singer” caliber students often have some idea about what interests them, or at least have something they’re passionate and can talk about</p>
<p>@illinoismom93 I will definitely shoot a counselor an email, especially since I have not visited yet. Thanks again for your advice and information!</p>
<p>@dumbo11 Thank you for the description! I think that works in my favor.</p>
<p>@kidfromthebeach I have wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon since I was 12, so definitely pre-med more on the biology track.</p>
<p>So have RD emails already gone out for the last weekend?</p>
<p>I don’t know if RD Singers have gone out yet for the April 5,6 weekend. Last year they went out around March 6. So should be any day now. Cristi Busto in Admissions is always very helpful so can send her an email or call her for an update.</p>
<p>Ah. Hopefully it’s soon! Thanks!</p>