[ b]Objective:**
[ list]
[ *] SAT I: 2360, 760 M/ 800 CR/ 800 W
[ *] ACT: N/A
[ *] SAT II: 770 US History, 790 Bio E
[ *] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.0 UW, 5.1 W
[ *] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): top 10%
[ *] AP (place score in parenthesis): Bio (5), US History (5), Lit (5), Euro (5), Chem (4)
[ *] IB (place score in parenthesis): N/A
[ ] Senior Year Course Load: AP Gov, AP Art History, AP BC Calc, H Physics, H Spanish 4, H English Seminar
[ ] Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.):[/list] National Merit Finalist
[ b]Subjective:
[ list]
[ *] Extracurriculars: NFTY Regional Religious and Cultural Vice President (youth group leadership), School Support for African Vitality and Education Club Vice President, Various lead roles in school theater group, founder of school theater group marketing team (2 Cappies), National Honor Society, 2 years JV Track, Semester study abroad program in Israel, special needs teaching fellowship, Spanish exchange program
[ *] Job/Work Experience: not on my application (recent development), but I work at a local newsstand
[ *] Volunteer/Community service: 5 years as a religious school aide for special needs kids
[ *] Essays: My common app was about my relationship with my brother. He has Asperger’s, and we have had a complex relationship. I know that sounds hackneyed, but I used the failure prompt in a creative way and my college counselor loved it. I think it was my best work, especially because it was so intimate and personal.
[ *] Teacher Recommendations: My AP Chem and AP Lit teachers- I don’t know how good they are. They both are very hard to read, but I did very well in both of their classes, and my college counselor assured me that they are solid recs.
[ *] Counselor Rec: I think he likes me a lot so I hope it was good!
[ ] Additional Rec: N/A
[ ] Interview:[/list] I did not interview, but I reached out to my admissions counselor when I had to miss his visit to my area. So I think presenting my interest in Wes, even though it was just an email, worked in my favor.
[ b]Other
[ list]
[ *] State (if domestic applicant): PA
[ *] Country (if international applicant):
[ *] School Type: Medium-Large (350 in grade)
[ *] Ethnicity: White, Jewish
[ *] Gender: F
[ ] Income Bracket: upper middle class (150-200 K)
[ ] Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.):[/list] none
[ b]Reflection
[ list]
[ *] Strengths: Scores, GPA, Essay, Semester abroad
[ *] Weaknesses: Few Awards/ Competitions
[ ] Why you think you were accepted/waitlisted/rejected: see above
[ ] Where else were you accepted/waitlisted/rejected:[/list]
Accepted: Connecticut College, U of Rochester, Wesleyan
Waitlisted: WUSTL, Vanderbilt
Rejected: nowhere yet…haha
Deferred Yale SCEA
[ b]General Comments: Very Excited!! Congrats to everyone who was accepted!
[] ACT: 35 composite (36M 35E 34R 36S 11W)
[] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): I honestly have no clue bcs our school is on a 5 point scale and finding your unweighted GPA is near impossible. I’ll just say I had an upward trend of Bs with a few Cs to mostly As some Bs, all four years taking all AP/Honors classes
[] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): my school doesn’t do rank. the best I can guess is top 25%
[] AP (place score in parenthesis): AP Euro (4), AP Chem (3), AP Lang (5), APUSH (5), AP Sem (4)
[] Senior Year Course Load: AP French, Physics Honors, AP Gov, AP Macro, AP Calc AB, AP Research
[] Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): National Merit Commended, AP Scholar w/Distinction, im p sure im forgetting one but whatever
Subjective:
[ul]
[] Extracurriculars: Violin (solo performance, student leader of chamber ensemble that tours worldwide, concertmistress of youth symphony)
Piano Performance
Theatre (Student Business Director for my senior year)
Model UN (won a research/writing award for a committee at a significant conference)
[] Essays: 8/10 talked about living in a mostly conservative and ignorant town and how I grew to become a social activist. I didn’t like it that much but the woman who edited it for me said she loved it.
[] Teacher Recommendations: Teacher #1 10/10, it’s from the department chairs of Social Studies and Science, both who love me like one of their own children and who see wild success in my future (even tho i don’t even believe in myself that much lol). They probably raved about my research and genuine intellectual curiosity.
Teacher #2 10/10 probably the most positive human being on earth, she was my AP Lang teacher and I really went above and beyond in that class, entering a writing contest outside of school that required her to sponsor me, and I did a kickass job on the final exam project
Teacher #3 8/10 my AP Calc teacher. He had me in Precalc H as well. I get 100s on the test no sweat and show real interest in the subject. He just doesn’t know me as well as a person as the other two letters would.
[] Counselor Rec:7/10 Nothing really special my counselor barely knows me tbh but I met with her a few times and she says hi to me in the halls so I can’t imagine she wrote anything bad
[] Additional Rec: I know an alum as a family friend. We don’t know if he sent a rec letter but he was very enthusiastic about me and my application so he might have.
[] Interview: 10/10. My interviewer said and I quote “You’re so Wes, it’s crazy. You’re almost more Wes than I am.” She loved me and I had a fantastic time. Felt great coming out. [/ul] Other
[] State (if domestic applicant): IL
[] Country (if international applicant): USA
[] School Type: Public
[] Ethnicity: White
[] Gender: F
[] Income Bracket: 70th percentile. So almost upper middle class but still not wealthy enough to afford tuition so I applied for FinAid
[] Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): none, although I did let them know I struggled with undiagnosed ADD for my first two years of high school. Maybe that counts?
Reflection
[ul]
[] Strengths: Test Scores, Recs, genuine interest in the school, Interview
[] Weaknesses: Grades. That killed my application. Although a girl at my school with better stats than me grade wise got waitlisted so I have no idea.
[] Why you think you were accepted/waitlisted/rejected: I’m pretty sure it was my grades. As my dad lamented, “you’re smart enough to get As in all of your classes but you weren’t smart enough to start working towards it until junior year”. That, and I hear they tend to get most of their midwest students from the north shore of chicago, so maybe I had a geographical disadvantage.
[li] Where else were you accepted/waitlisted/rejected: Accepted at Kenyon, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, Denison Rejected at Grinnell [/ul][/li]General Comments: It was heartbreaking at first. Wesleyan was my dream, still kind of is. I would have jumped through flaming hoops to go there. I’m not just saying this–I was a perfect match for that school. I guess the admissions committee doesn’t care about fit (so much for “holistic”). But whatever. I can learn to love again. Kenyon is turning out to be just as perfect, so I’m feeling ok in the end.
Phroia, that is heartbreaking, particularly after such positive praise from your interviewer. Your facts are strong in every way except one. I’m sure you’re correct that in the end it was the grades that did you in. For all the talk that schools do about holistic, that’s only true in the margins. Grades, rigor of what was offered at your school and the current/historic performance of other applicants from your school is still by far the dominant factor I think. That’s why more than anything, students are competing with their own schools more than the applicant pool at large.
My S had strong test scores and fantastic EC’s and good grades (3.83 UW) but in a school of overachievers there were some better with better GPA’s. And when you study the data after all the decisions, with one outlier exception in either direction, the strength of his EC’s and everything else gave him a 0.1 boost on his weighted GPA across the board – i.e. he was consistently accepted (with one waitlist exception) to schools where the average GPA of previously accepted applicants from his school according to 8 years of Naviance RD data was up-to 0.1 better than his, and he was consistently waitlisted or rejected where the average GPA was more than 0.1 (with one exception). And he applied to many schools so there’s a lot of data points. Comparing his peers, the same story played out but with various degrees of boost or penalty factor depending on the strength of the EC’s (except for recruited athletes or, to a lesser extent, kids with strong legacy connections who got into schools beyond their stats). So the strength of his EC’s helped, but within a predictable and relatively minor range within his school’s historic GPA data per college. Given some of his EC’s were interesting and his role significant, had the application process truly been equal in it’s holistic approach you would have expected to see more variation in the range of schools that accepted or rejected outside the GPA averages. The fact is they have all these things down to a near science. All the non-GPA stuff matters in the margins of kids on the bubble, but doesn’t trump the hard data for most decisions. Of course there are people with exceptional hooks where this wouldn’t be true. And even a perfect GPA can be hurt by kids sufficiently weak in EC’s (since there are enough great in both). But for most people, the data rules and you can have a very good idea where you will get in based on it.
BTW, since you have noted you’ve been on an upward trend the last two years, you could always kill it in your first year at college and try to transfer, if you still want to by then. My guess is you will come to love your school and won’t want to transfer in a year which is a great result. But if, as you say, it remains your dream, it doesn’t have to be the final act.
@citivas I can’t transfer because the admissions person said they don’t offer financial aid to transfer students. Also, I’d rather just stay in one place for 4 years unless I’m transferring based on a program I want to be in (ex. Wes’ film program is what attracted me there in the first place).
I really appreciate your words of wisdom. No one from my high school has ever gotten into Wes. My sister (6 yrs older)'s best friend applied with much better grades, probably a point or two lower on the ACT and was rejected. The girl waitlisted at my school is a friend of mine and has virtually perfect grades, comparable test scores, good extracurriculars, and is a URM (so overall stronger app, still a waitlist). Our school is a pretty highly regarded public school, maybe not as much as the north shore schools but definitely not low in standards and/or rigor of courses (teachers have won multiple awards here) so I don’t really know why Wes doesn’t want to accept students here.
It’s a really frustrating and heartbreaking situation, especially because I think a Wes education would have catapulted me towards success with the incredible alumni connections as well as the stellar academics, but I can’t change it. I still have options at least. Maybe one day, they’ll see me forging an outstanding path and they’ll say “shoot! We rejected her! And she really wanted to go here!”
Thank you for the kind words. They mean a lot.
I have a feeling you’re going to do as well as you speculate. In the end, a great school can help, but it’s still ultimately more about the individual. Strong-willed, driven, talented individuals will eventually succeed no matter where they went to school. In fact, often the extra effort required helps in the long run. And anyone going to Wes who is counting on the alum network to boost them is likely to be disappointed – not picking on Wes, that’s true anywhere. This is particularly true of film if that is an interest of yours as your post suggested. I went to one of the most renowned film grad schools in the country and my overall attitude about it was it was a good place to meet other potential future industry peers and to use my film school status to make industry contacts and get good internships. But the degree itself, and the classes frankly, were meaningless to getting any work in that industry. I’m not exaggerating in the least. The film industry could care less where you went to school or what your degree is. Use your time at college to create some interesting work – videos, screenplays, clever mash-up edits, whatever. Then work extra hard to score an interesting summer internship. It will matter much, much more than where you go.
@citivas That was a lot of good information, thank you! Not getting into a college isn’t going to damper my will to succeed. I just think of this as the first of many bumps in a long journey. The free time of whatever school I go to will give me space to create and try new things on my own, which I think will be great as I can finally start making the scripts I write into a reality. I already have my sights set (probably not for freshman/sophomore year, but later) on applying for an internship with Last Week Tonight/John Oliver’s show, The Daily Show, or Colbert. I know they have summer interns who are usually college age and I would love to work for part of my life as a researcher-writer for one of those late night programs who tackle real issues in the world in an entertaining way. But really, I’d take almost any internship that would help me score connections within the industry, because I don’t really have one specific job I’d like to do for life. I want to write, I want to direct, I could even see myself editing one day. It may mean I’ll have to work twice as hard to catch up to USC/UCLA/Wes film grads, but it’s work I look forward to.
