<p>Currently I am a junior in High School. I plan to major in marine biology or chemistry.</p>
<p>Transcript:
9th
Dance - A+
Chem - A
Eng I Honors - A
Geometry Honors - A
Japanese II - A+
Beginning Women's Choir - A</p>
<p>10th
Advanced Women's Choir - A+
Alg II Trig - A
AP Chem - A
Concert Choir - A+
Eng II Honors - A
Japanese III Honors - A+
World History - A+</p>
<p>11th (1st Sem/not final) - 4.67 GPA
AP Lang/Comp - B+ (I might be able to raise it but I'm not sure) (I will have an A next sem though for sure)
AP Japanese - A+
Adv Women's Choir - A+
AP Environ Sci - A
AP US History - A
Pre Calc - A</p>
<p>12th (plan)
AP Lit
AP Gov/Econ
Calc BC
Marine Bio
Adv Women's Choir
?? (any recommendations for the 6th class?)</p>
<p>I plan to take AP Biology at an online college</p>
<p>EC:
Choir (will do 4 years) (Dance Captain)
Volunteer (500+ hours)
Clubs (leadership positions in 4, will gain more next year hopefully)
Plan to do internship this coming summer in my major's field
Many more small things</p>
<p>Test Scores:
SAT I - 1980 (will retake & aiming for 2100+)
ACT w/ Writing - 32 (will retake & aiming for 34+)
SAT II - Chem (680) & will take more this year (aiming for 700+)
AP - Chem (5) & this year aiming for 4/5s on all my APs</p>
<p>So, my question is, with those test scores and 1 B, do I still have a good enough chance to get into schools such as Duke or UPenn or Cornell?</p>
<p>With those test scores, your chances are very low. Increase that to 2200+, and you’ll have a decent shot. Keep working on your ECs as well. Maybe do something related to your major? And don’t wait for summer, start now.</p>
<p>Hey,
So first of all you have pretty good grades and one B+ is not going to harm you. At the same time, try your level best to raise that grade in Lang to an A- at least.
And yes, retake the SAT and aim for a 2100+. A 2100+ on the SAT will allow you to have a really good chance of getting into those universities.
You seem to be a very artsy person with choir and dance talents, that is definitely a big plus so work on maybe winning awards for those and make sure to send a recording of a dance or your singing.
The weakest point of your app is that you have relatively few AP’s. I know there are people who get in with few AP’s, but it is better to be on the safe side and take more AP’s as that will increase your chances. So, take more APs senior year and try to self-study a few.
Overall, you have a really good chance of getting into those universities. So keep working hard and stay positive!</p>
<p>@CosmicTurtle13 - I agree with everything except the AP part… Too many APs drive colleges away? Where did you hear that? Of course colleges want you to take the most rigorous courses that you can handle, so it’s ridiculous that they would penalize you for taking too many challenging classes… So 4-6 is not ideal, the ideal is as many AP classes as you can handle without letting your performance drop, assuming that your school even offers more than a couple AP courses.</p>
<p>@ivanov2014: It was something one of my mom’s friends (who’s a “tiger mom”) said - her (the friend’s) neighbors’ kids took like 13 AP courses and got 4s/5s in all of them, but both got rejected from the Ivies. She chalked it up to the colleges thinking “Hey, they don’t know what they want to do! Let’s reject them!”</p>
<p>Sorry, but I don’t think that’s true. Taking a bunch AP courses is not enough to get accepted to an Ivy, and that person must have been rejected for other reasons. There are plenty of kids who take AP classes in fields that they’re not planning to major in. It’s just more interesting than wasting your time in regular classes with zero courseload. I’m pretty sure that the admission officers see it the same way, and will never reject a kid because he/she took too many rigorous classes in different and unrelated fields.</p>
<p>Please inform your friend’s mother: prospective students don’t even send in their official AP scores until AFTER they’ve been accepted to colleges and picked the one they wish to matriculate to. The only scores colleges are aware of at the time of application are the ones the applicant chooses to SELF-REPORT. </p>
<p>In other words, if a college actually rejected someone based on having “too many AP scores”, that’s implying that the adcoms not only trusted the applicants’ word on what they got on their APs, but also discriminated against them for having stellar academic achievement…which makes zero sense. Also, most high school seniors do not have a solid idea of what they want to study in college so a student being rejected for being academically ambiguous is just ridiculous. Bottom line, she’s laughably wrong.</p>
<p>@bloog+ivanov2014: Yeah, that makes sense. I assumed that because she’s been through the process, she knew about everything…
Anyway, this is good news (and I didn’t know about the AP send-ins at all) - I’m looking forward to taking APs and was disappointed for a while because I thought they’d be detrimental!</p>