<p>Hi, I was just wondering what my chances would be for UW-Madison and if it would be considered a match or a reach for me. I am probably going to be majoring in Political Science and I currently go to a fairly competitive suburban Chicago school.</p>
<p>Stats:
Unweighted GPA: 3.4
Weighted GPA: 3.8
ACT: 31
Class Rank: Top 15%
The AP Classes/Tests that I have taken are US History (4), US Government, Macroeconomics, Latin Literature, English Language, Human Geography, and I will be taking Calculus AB and Chemistry next year.
My main EC's are Varsity Basketball and Mathletes. I am also in a couple other honorary societies. Thanks.</p>
<p>i’m applying for undergraduate admission later on this year, for the class of 2014, and i’m wondering what my chances are. 
international student
SAT: 2170
class rank: pretty high, in an extremely competitive class/school
EC: active from year nine to eleven but not so much in year twelve
probably going to get pretty good recommendations.</p>
<p>ilovehf: if your class rank is high, you should be good (based on the admissions chart).</p>
<p>how large is your class?</p>
<p>btw, is hf ho-flo? i graduated in the 1980’s!</p>
<p>Agree with the chances chart listed. That’s the source of opinions. Improving grades help a weak gpa, ie it is better to get better grades now than in the past for the same gpa. Unweighted grades are used.</p>
<p>I don’t claim to be an expert on UW admissions policies, but my junior son is hot to go there and as a MN resident who’d pay in-state fees, so am I. But I can tell you with some certainty that UW employs a semi-“holistic” admissions process and doesn’t simply plug and chug the numbers to make a decision, although the famous probability chart and numerous other signals from the school may indicate as much. When UW visited my son’s HS this past fall, the rep said “if we wanted to fill our spots with 4.0s, we could do it easily. But we don’t want a school full of one-dimensional students.” You’ve heard all this, I’m sure, but it bears repeating. Your essay and your ECs must reflect who you are as a person, and what you might bring to the UW community. My son has a 31 ACT but only a 3.6 weighted (can’t bear to unweight it) GPA but I am optimistic because he’s been in Scouting for many years, is an Eagle and can tell (hopefully) a good story about how this has developed him as a person. Again, I’m no expert, but most of the “chancing” threads in the UW forum are portraits of the same kinds of kids, agonizing about minute details of their academic records. My hope for you and my own kid is that if you’ve done something with your young adult life besides study and participate superficially in resume-padding activities, take heart and have some confidence in what you’ve become. Tell the story through your essays. Show that you’ve grown and maybe give a <em>@</em>^ about other people in your community. If this plus a very solid academic record don’t get you in, well… there are another couple dozen schools on par with UW who might be very happy to have you. Best of luck.</p>
<p>Grades and test scores are a better indicator of being preapred for and handling the rigors of college than EC’s. Most top students also have a lot of EC’s to fill their time. I would worry about spending time doing nonacademic things if it meant a student didn’t have time to learn the school material. Having good grades, without giving extra points for taking the typical courses most UW students take in HS, means being best prepared for the college courses. Improving grades do matter. “…bring to the UW community…” this is an academic institution, not a social club. I know Eagle Scouts who couldn’t get into any of the state colleges- EC’s do not make up for poor grades. Remember those are chances, there will always be someone at the bottom of the class statistics who has beat the odds by showing reasons they may be able to handle the work, but there will be many more with similar low stats who don’t get in.</p>
<p>wis75, it is not my intent to engage anyone in a debate about the VALUE of good grades and test scores vs. ECs. I am trying to make two points only. First, the comment about “bringing something to the UW community” was direct from the mouth of their admissions rep and thus, to my thinking, carries some weight. I see that you are a frequent poster and perhaps have good first-hand knowledge of the UW admissions process. If so, I defer to you. My second objective was to offer some hope to kids obsessed with their stats and chances at acceptance, but you don’t seem to be buying it.</p>
<p>As for it being social club vs. academic institution, I can tell you that 25 years ago when I was there in engineering, it was as much the first as the latter, if not more so. UW’s new exclusivity is as much about demographics as quantum leaps in the quality of their faculty and programs. The UW website itself speaks at length about the supply/demand crisis and its role in driving admissions.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. UW’s an excellent university of national reputation, but the primary reason it’s become tough to get in is because there are too many bodies for too few seats, complicated by the fact that students today apply to far more schools than we used to.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses…anyone else?</p>
<p>Having gone through the admissions process with four children, if I had a student with a weighted GPA of 3.6 (and was shuddering to think of what it would be unweighted), then I’d advise him to focus less on being an Eagle Scout and more on bringing his grades up. The single most important factor in college admissions is, by far, the high school record, and UW is no exception. It is no sure thing that being an Eagle Scout will make up for a transcript that puts the applicant in the bottom quarter of the entering class. This is particularly true in the case of a student with a 31 on the ACT, because it suggests that the student is uninterested in school work and isn’t doing nearly as well as he or she is capable. I predict that your son ultimately will be admitted, but not before being postponed.</p>
<p>parent2009, my posts really weren’t intended to be about my kid and certainly weren’t intended to defend his record which does, as you point out, suggest that he’s a smart kid who’s underperforming. I have been telling him this for over a year now and that if he fails to get into UW and we have to pay more for him to go elsewhere that he will have to pay this difference. Unfortunately, he controls his own destiny and whether he attends UW is entirely up to him.</p>
<p>Really, if you’d do me the courtesy of re-reading my original post, I hope you’ll see that my real goal was to relay what a UW admissions person told a group of students at his school, which is that it is NOT ONLY THE NUMBERS THAT MATTER. The admissions guy himself made reference to Eagle Scouts, this is not some self-serving defense of my kid that I’m offering up. And really, the whole anecdote was not really about MY kid at all. It was to offer a little perspective to the original poster who was about the millionth kid I’ve seen offering his/her numbers for “chancing,” a practice which clearly causes or results from a lot of anxiety, which is something I hate to see.</p>
<p>So it’s fine that you and wis75 have taken me to task over my kid. You’re both right. He probably won’t get in and yes, that disappoints me and will disappoint him when that letter arrives. But you know what? There are alternatives. UW is not his only option. In fact, it may not even be his best option given its size, etc. And this was the other message I was really trying to deliver to the “chancers” out there: to not get so hung up on your numbers and chances at University X that you think that you have no other options.</p>
<p>Actually, beastman, if you’ll re-read my post you’ll see that I’ve predicted that your son WILL ultimately be admitted after first being postponed. I think the 31 will lead the adcom to conclude that he should be given a chance to show what he can do in the first half of his senior year.</p>
<p>I really didn’t mean to single your son out to pick on him. I merely used your son’s credentials to illustrate my firm belief, based on my own experience, that regardless of what adcoms may tell us, extracurriculars matter only at the margins.</p>
<p>I also might add, going back to your post, that the essays matter even less.</p>
<p>Nonacademic Qualifications</p>
<p>Numbers alone do not determine admissibility. We look for students with special or unique talents, who give of themselves, and who learn outside the classroom as well as inside. Please remember, however, that while nonacademic indicators will make a good applicant strong, they will never make an academically weak applicant admissible.</p>
<p>-direct quote form admissions site.</p>
<p>Note- “special, unique, as well as inside”- academics count the most.</p>