All right all right, so I’m a high school junior and was wondering how my stats look, whether there’s anything I should be worried about, whether I could actually get into schools like NYU, Bowdoin, Williams, Kenyon, etc. Here we go:
GPA: ~3.8
SAT: 1540/1600 (essay 19/24)
APs: Euro (gr 10), APUSH, APLit, APStats (gr 11), and I’m planning to do Bio, Psych, and AP Lang next year
ECs: school literary magazine (4 yrs), editor of said literary magazine (2 yrs), piano lessons (11 yrs), varsity XC (4 yrs), varsity track (3 yrs), school newspaper (4 yrs), page editor for school newspaper (1 year), volunteering at library (~72 hours so far), creative writing (on my own time)
Awards/recognitions: 2 gold keys, 1 silver key, and 4 honorable mentions for the Scholastic Awards, published in a creative writing anthology, published in city newspaper, a couple of 3rd places and honorable mentions in various other writing contests that aren’t that important
As you may be able to tell, writing is my “hook” and I’m trying to play up that strength as much as possible, so if anyone has any suggestions on how I can do more of that, please let me know.
Those are pretty good stats man. if I were you, I’d really just try to maintain those numbers/activities and focus on your college application essays and nay interviews you might have. You definitely have a chance at getting into those schools, but like anything else in life, there is ambiguity! So you never know for sure what might happen.
Is your GPA weighted or unweighted? If weighted, what does it mean?
“you never know for sure what might happen”
I agree with this. I have seen students with significantly higher unweighted GPA get turned down at Bowdoin, and one student with significantly lower GPA get in. It is hard to predict particularly when going for very selective schools with pretty good stats.
Definitely spend time finding safer backups that you will like. Definitely run the NPC and see if the results are okay with your parents (or whomever is paying).
Chances at Kenyon would be reasonable, given your strength in writing and your stats. Oberlin is also strong in creative writing and I believe has a slightly higher acceptance rate. Merit scholarships are possible at both and Kenyon offers scholarships specifically for writing talent.
For an admissions safety, maybe look at Iowa - they also offer discounted OOS tuition for high stats students.