somewhat atypical student

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

<p>sorry if this pops up twice, i tried posting before and the website got a bit screwy.</p>

<p>okay. getting into columbia has been my big dream/goal/obsession for the past two years now. being accepted would probably be the single most personally validating experience of my entire life. i know this is a bit of an unhealthy way of looking at colleges. i know i shouldn't place my entire sense of self-worth in getting into a school that i'm not entirely sure will want me. but hey, whatever.</p>

<p>i don't think that i'm your average student. i mean, average grades, average standardized test scores certainly (if not low ones). but my extracurricular situation is an odd one, and my school situation is even more odd. i know columbia looks for students with a hook, i'm just not sure if i've got one that's interesting enough.</p>

<p>stats:
GPA unweighted - hovering between 3.4 and 3.6. i doubt it would ever drop as low as a 3.6 but i wouldn't put it past me.
GPA weighted - around a 4.1 or 4.2</p>

<p>my GPA situation is also sort of strange. at the school i attend, every course is considered to be an honors course, and thus, they only release our weighted GPA. I've no idea what columbia looks at.</p>

<p>as of now i've only taken three AP's (my old school discouraged underclassmen from doing them and my new school has a limited amount). i've only gotten scores from two of them so far (a 5 and a 3).</p>

<p>SAT - i'm currently bolstering a 1330 (not including the new writing section). i got a 610 on the writing. i generally consider myself to be a good writer and a better test taker than that, but that test took me completely by surprise, and was nothing like the old SAT. i know i'll break 700 in verbal and writing next time, but this is what i have for now.</p>

<p>i've yet to take the SAT II's</p>

<p>Extracurriculars -
at my old school i was a member of
the philosophy club,
amnesty international,
i worked on the John Edwards campaign here in North Carolina,
i did an incredible amount of babysitting,
i was/am a member of a band that goes by the name of "Famous Nudes". </p>

<p>at the school i currently attend,
I'm the president of the obscure and independant film club,
the presidenent of DYAO (i'll explain in a sec.),
and i'm founding a webzine with a friend with the working title of "evil is whatever distracts".
I'm a regular writer on the school news paper,
an editor for the school literary magazine,
and an english tutor.
had a main role in the school musical (guys and dolls)
i ran a seminar on russian literature
I've also been taking guitar and piano lessons for the duration of my high school career and i've one a couple of random, small time short story and poetry contests.</p>

<p>the two things that are weird with my EC's i think is my band and that whole DYAO thing. my band is a contemporary rock band which i'm the lead singer of. I know this doesn't sound too impressive but while i was at my old school we put an incredible amount of work into it, we had six hour practices nearly every saturday, we all saved up to buy relatively expensive recording equipment, even when i moved to my current high school we continued to work together by sending songs back and forth over the internet. last summer i spent at least 18 hours of straight non-stop work developing our website. DYAO is a club/collective i started this past year. the acronym stands for "dance your a** off". as a club we spend weeks scouring the internet for new and old forms of underground dance music and then we create a playlists of about an hour and forty five minutes of music and we throw these huge dance parties at my school. organizing the event has taken a lot of work and we see mto go bigger and have more things every time we throw a party.</p>

<p>i don't know if columbia would care about either of these, because they're not your typical debate club/key club/national honor society type thing. but this is the kind of thing that i'm passionate about, and that (aside from actual academics) i've put the most work into.</p>

<p>about my current school. i currently attend the north carolina school of science and math. for those of you who haven't heard of it, it's a two (junior and senior) year boarding school in north carolina that's completely run by the state and tax payer money (i.e. free). getting in i would say is pretty competitive, you have to do pretty much the same thing you would do when applying to a college (which includes taking the SAT, writing an essay, and all that good stuff). the school is pretty prestigious and i believe it's well known amongst the academic community. i spoke with a representative from columbia and he said that they certainly take the schools reputation for having a very rigorous course load and the fact that they don't have a lot of AP courses into account when looking at your transcript. </p>

<p>my final thing is that i'm african-american. normally i wouldn't even mention this because while i'm a supporter of affirmative action, i really don't feel like sparking another debate. however, i'm a lot more african than most african-americans being a first generation immigrant. i was actually considering writing my essay on this and my experiences for the six weeks i lived in africa two summers ago. but once again, i don't know if they'd really care. </p>

<p>so should i give up? do i have a chance? i know i have bad regular stats but i think that as a person i'm pretty interesting. some honest opinions would be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>p.s. and of course i'm going to apply early decision.</p>

2

<p>i wish i could give you some help after you took all the time to write that out. in the end none of this "what are my chances" malarkey is useful at all. if some random kids on a message board told you you had no chance, you'd still apply anyway, and if we say "you'll definitely get in" we'd be talking out of our arses since we're not the admissions officials. in the end the only answers you'll get are vague answers like "i'd say you'll maybe have a somewhat decent chance of perhaps getting in," uneducated responses like "they only accept people with 1400 or higher on the sat, 6 AP's, blond hair, and blue eyes," or just plain rude ones like "my extracurriculars are way better! i was the [insert meaningless title] in my school's [insert more meaningless organization.]" If you're that desperate for the "odds," just go to the threads where acceptees/rejects have posted their stats and see how you compare. Just apply and see how it goes, it's more exciting that way. Also, I know you think columbia is your dream school and that the world will end if you don't get accepted, but that's just dumb. Apply to a bunch of schools and see how you do. If you get into columbia, I look forward to seeing you there. If not, I look forward to seeing you succeed elsewhere, as you seem like a very motivated individual (if a little caught up on the prestige of the Ivy League.) Good luck in the rest of your high school days and even better luck beyond that.</p>

<ul>
<li>Kyle J. Scholz</li>
</ul>

<p>P.S. Somewhat off topic, but for some reason I would interpret a "first generation immigrant" as being someone who actually migrated from one country to another. You sound as if you are the son/daughter of an immigrant, which I would call a second generation immigrant. Of course it's possible that i've interpreted your message incorrectly, or that i'm completely ignorant of immigration terminology. Either way, you should probably check it out before tagging the phrase all over your college essays.</p>

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<p>I always throught first generation = your parents are immigrants, and second is when your grandparents did the migrating. If you yourself are an immigrant, I don't think you get to have a cool ordinal number.</p>

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<p>well, thanks for responding and thanks for bothering to be at all not a bastard about the whole me-having-horrible-stats thing. i definitely see your point here. i get that no one can tell me for sure whether or not i get into any school, and from what i've seen with the wide, WIDE array of applicants accepted there every year, (i knew one guy with stats almost as low as mine who got in) i'm sure making predictions for this particular school is sort of asinine. i don't know. i think i came here because i was just sort of freaking out about it more than usual and i was really looking forward to some superficial support. generally, i would tell my parents about it, but they're delusional enough to think that i have a sure shot at harvard.</p>

<p>i don't know if i'll get into columbia or not, i mean, no matter what anyone in these forums had said i still would have sure as hell gone on and applied. i'm not caught up in the prestige of the ivy league, when i first fell in love with it i thought either stanford or m.i.t. was the eigth ivy, i didn't even know it was that prestigous. i'm more into it because of the core, because of new york, and because after obsessing so much about it and telling so many people about my obsessing about it i don't really seem to have many options.</p>

<p>eh, well,
thanks again,
-- rob.</p>

<p>ps. you know, i thought that the immigrants themselves would be the first generational ones too, but someone asked me why they wouldn't just be "the immigrant" and i didn't have at all a good answer. i should probably look that up.</p>

<p>p.p.s. and don't feel bad, i'm just longwinded.</p>

5

<p>I think you have a pretty decent chance Early Decision and if not there is always Barnard where I think you are definitely in. Also apply to Brown RD, its an awesome place and they are more forgiving of GPA/ Stats than Columbia.</p>

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<p>Your stats remind me alot of mine when I was applying. I wouldn't worry about it, so long as you write a not-so-typical, standoffish essay (which it seems like you won't have too much trouble doing) and keep true to yourself on the application. </p>

<p>Now this applies to everyone in general who asks for chances and things -- I think the problem with alot of kids applying to college is they try so desperately to make themselves look like superstars, when that can become transparent. A genuine </p>

<p>And hey, stuff in the 1300's is really not that low! CC just REALLY brainwashes you into thinking that. There's always room for improvement, but still... I got a score in that range and was accepted. Just a forewarning: don't kill yourself over scores.</p>

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<p>Slipper:
1. I think this is a guy.
2. Barnard doesn't have a core, so doesn't seem like there's much of a draw for him there, anyway.
3. These stats are below Barnard's averages, too. ECs are awesome though.</p>

<p>Regardless, good luck to the OP.</p>

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<p>Haha whoops, I dont know why I assumed it was a girl.</p>