<p>What can you possibly be doing for the environment 20 hrs/week? I'm president of Ecology at my school, and we run short of ideas apart from educational booths/fairs/beach cleanups/recycling/etc.</p>
<p>Umm when I posted this, I didn't know what colleges the class of 2007 went.</p>
<p>Valedictorian - Stanford
Sal - Carnegie Mellon</p>
<p>Then Baylor, SMU, UT, UT, Southwestern, Texas A&M, and 2 others, forgot.</p>
<p>Bump. 10 chars</p>
<p>Well, you're certainly competitive, and kudos for staying true to what you want, and not what you think colleges want to see. The biggest single EC I think you have is being an Eagle Scout. Outside of that, a lot of your other EC's are of a nature that makes them hard to compare to other applicants. For example, a lot of the awards you recieved in the business arena seem very specialized, which makes it harder for AO's to judge against the rest of the field. This will make your essay's very important. You'll need to show that you're passionate about something. Your stats make it clear that there are many possible things you could potentially be passionate about (community service, your website, scouts), but your essays will really need to bring one or two of these things out and develop them in detail.</p>
<p>Don't retake the SAT, any improvement in your score will be mitigated by the additional sitting of the test, and your score is already right in the range for the top tier schools anyway. Not to mention your ACT score is above average for that same group of schools. I don't know if I would retake both those SAT II's, a 740 in Chem is fine (I had a 740 on my Bio SAT II). Instead, perhaps retake one of them and then take a couple new ones?</p>
<p>As for the RD/EA choice, I think the advice you have recieved so far is spot on - if Stanford is your first choice, then go EA. If another school is your first choice, then you should apply early there should the option be avaliable to you. If the time comes and you still are up in the air as to what score is your sure fire first choice, then I would go ahead and pick Stanford (or the other one, should you deem it more competitive). No matter what people say, I think you have at least a slight improvement in your odds of admission if you go early. How to quantify that slight improvement I'm not exactly sure, so whether it's worth it or not to go early comes down to the specifics of your particular case, so if I were you, I would discuss it with your college counselor and see what they have to say.</p>
<p>Well see, the thing is, if you look under Business Professionals of America, the events I won in aren't Business Related. They are technology related...."Network Design Team"..."NOVELL Network Administration"..."PC Servicing & Troubleshooting". I really don't have much in business besides the one I run. But some people are also saying that owning your own business gives an edge as well?</p>
<p>My point was only that those awards aren't as recognized as some, which means that while they can be impressive to someone with intimate knowledge of them, someone without that knowledge might be led to believe that they are just another one of the cookie-cutter awards so many organizations are giving away these days. It would be to your benefit to try and explain in every way possible what makes those awards significant, challenging to earn, and what exactly it is they are for.</p>
<p>Yes, owning your own business is a significant and unique EC, and one that under the right circumstances could give you a big boost in your chances. But with that you can run into a similar problem to the one I described above. What's to stop some kid who runs a lemonaide stand one day a year on his street corner from calling it a "Business", naming himself "Founder & COO" and pasting it all over his application like it was the bloody yellow pages? Is he technically accurate in his descriptions, yes, but for all intents in purposes he's lying through his teeth. I'm sure admissions officers see situations like this more than you might think, and I would wager that it biases them towards viewing kids who say they started their own business with a critical eye. I mean, you can't really blame them, kids starting a business is certainly a rare occurance, especially one that has any longevity or actual, real value.</p>
<p>And while all of this sucks for you, I think there are a couple things you can do to help your cause. You should be very specific in your description of what it is you created and of your continuing role in its development. I also might shy away from saying that it is merely a home-grown business in favor of saying its a certain type of forum with XXXX many users, XXXX much traffic per day, with XXXX much revenue. The more you can convince the admissions people that your business is legit, the better off you'll be.</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm going to include that somewhere. The actual stats of the forum.</p>