What are my chances at Vanderbilt? Low scores/GPA but minority

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

<p>Hi everyone! Could you tell me what my chances are at Vanderbilt? I attend an extremely competitive high school with a difficult course load that is ranked highly everywhere, but had no test preparation at all for reason I'd rather not go into:</p>

<p>AP Exams:
U.S. Government - 3 (sophomore)
World History - 4 (junior)
Spanish Language - 5 (junior)
English Language & Composition - 5 (junior)
Biology - 5 (junior)</p>

<p>SAT Scores:
January - M 680, R 660, W 720 (total: 2060)
June - M 630, R 690, W 740 (total: 2060)
Superscore: 2110</p>

<p>Taking Math II, Lit, and Bio M SAT IIs in October.</p>

<p>ACT Scores:
Composite: 31
English: 31
Math: 29
Reading: 29
Science: 35
Writing: 10</p>

<p>GPA: 3.4 (Unweighted), 4.04 (Weighted). Let me explain this - I did very badly freshman year, and okay sophomore year, but my junior year GPA is about a 3.8. So I did slack off at first, but I have an upward trend.</p>

<p>Senior Year Schedule:
AP Spanish Literature
AP Literature & Composition
AP AB Calculus
AP European History
Honors Anatomy & Physiology
Senior Seminar - required for the program I'm in at school
Honors Marching/Symphonic Band</p>

<p>I am an active participant in my school's Humanities & Arts program, which requires participants to take extra credits in the humanities/arts depending on their focus (I am a humanities focus and so am taking six total years of Spanish, including 2 APs, and four years of history, including 2 APs, along with four years of music, all honors), and also requires senior participants to write a Senior Independent Project, which is an extended research paper of eighteen to twenty pages.</p>

<p>I know my scores and grades are not exactly fantastic, but I have other things working for me:</p>

<p>Extracurricular activities:
Private piano lessons 10 years
Marching band 3 years
Spanish Honor Society 2 years
Tri-M Music Honor Society 3 years
Softball 3 years (JV captain 2 years)
Class Planning 3 years, Freshman Class President
A bunch of new clubs senior year just because
Over 200 community service hours - 60 hours working at the Residency & International Admissions Office this summer (where people go to register their children in my county's school system), 46 hours working to teach children how to use computers before high school, and a bunch of other stuff here and there. </p>

<p>Common App Essay: on the Tunisian political revolution, my visits to the country every year and especially my ability to discuss politics with my family due to being multilingual (I speak fluent Arabic and French and also am basically fluent in Spanish). </p>

<p>Hooks: African-American, from Tunisia (immigrated to the US as an infant, parents started out with nothing and now make 200k, and visit Tunisia every year).</p>

<p>I plan on majoring in psychology or something history-related with a pre-med track, and then going on to vet school.</p>

<p>If you guys could also chance me for NYU, BU, and Emory, that would be awesome! :) Also, if I could get into Vanderbilt, do you know what kind of financial aid I would be getting? 200k family income but three children and one going to college the year after me.</p>

2

<p>I would say that with a 2100 SAT, and some good AP scores, you have a good chance.</p>

<p>When it comes to URMs, the colleges are not always looking for the MOST qualified candidates, but rather, qualified candidates who can do the work at their college.</p>

<p>So it is my feeling that if they see your 2100, they will conclude you are qualified, and given the dearth of qualified URMs, and a dearth of URMs with 2100 SATs, I think you have a good chance.</p>

3

<p>Thank you floridadad! Do you know what the financial aid at Vanderbilt is like?</p>

4

<p>Spazmine:</p>

<p>I just saw a post on CC just yesterday where someone said that Vanderbilt had good financial aid. However, I am not sure that would apply to a family with 200K income. </p>

<p>By the way, my son raised his ACT score from a 31 to a 34 with zero studying, so you might want to take that again too. </p>

<p>I would say you will get into NYU, BU, and Emory for sure.</p>

<p>In fact, I would apply to a couple “reaches” that are even higher ranked than Vanderbilt or Emory. You never know.</p>

<p>Assuming you count as a URM, you don’t have to be the “best” candidate applying to an Ivy League school, but rather, just be a very qualified candidate.</p>

5

<p>My problem is that though my parents do have a high income, they cannot spend more than 20k for me on college every year, because they have almost nothing saved up in college savings compared to other families within the same income bracket. Plus, my sister will be going to college the year after me and my brother two years after that, and they don’t want any of us to be drowning in loans, especially if we go on to grad school. I heard Vanderbilt has loan-free financial aid, but then I don’t know if they’d give me anything at all…</p>

<p>Right now Amherst is my biggest reach school, but I might put an Ivy on the list somewhere.</p>

<p>And you’re right - I think I’ll sign up for the October ACT. :)</p>

6

<p>Bump? (10char)</p>

7

<p>vanderbilt has very good financial aid</p>

<p>i know someone who was accepted to vanderbilt. his parents combined make about 100k a year, they negotiated with the financial aid office and now hes going there paying ~10 or 15k a year instead of the full cost (60k?)</p>

<p>i think you have a pretty good chance, but retake the SAT/ACT to raise your chances. vanderbilt actually has a surprisingly low average highschool GPA for students who were admitted, if i recall correctly it’s around 3.6 unweighted. the average test scores are very high though, in the 34, 2250 range</p>

8

<p>Thank you! Anyone else?</p>

9

<p>At 200k, I’m not sure that they will give you very much financial aid at all. I’ve heard at that level they will give maybe ~10% of tuition at most schools.</p>

10

<p>Thank you, Jacques! I thought so too. I think I’ll just apply for the Chancellor’s scholarship, a bunch of outside scholarships, and see how it goes.</p>

11

<p>And as for actual chances, you already know your GPA is weak, but if you do very well on SAT/ACT and shine in the subjective areas, combined with URM could be enough to get you in. Good luck!</p>

12

<p>Hooks: African-American, from Tunisia (immigrated to the US as an infant,</p>

<p>?!?!?!?!?!?</p>

<p>This is confusing to me. Do you mean that you were born in Tunisia of black, American parents who later brought you home to the US? If so, you are what colleges consider black or African-American, and an underrepresented minority. </p>

<p>But if both your parents are Tunisian and the family emigrated here, you are NOT “African-American” By defintiton that only applies to people having their roots in sub-Saharan Africa. There have been many threads on CC about this that you can check. ( Now of course, you might have a Tunisian parent who came from sub-Saharan Africa, or one black American parent or something like that, in which case this is not relvant.) But if both parents are Arab north Africans, you are NOT "African-American.</p>

<p>And what is your citizenship, Tunisian or US or dual? This may affect your financial aid. </p>

<p>All these will be factors in how any college views your application, in addition to your grades, course, GPA etc, all of which are more than respectable.</p>

<p>But do not try to pass yourself off as African-American if your ancestry is totally North African. It is unethical and unfair to those black people who really are African-American and for whom the system was designed to help. Get to college on your own merits, which appear substantial, and be honest. Don’t try to game the system. Admissions officers are not so dumb that they won’t figure out your subterfuge anyway.</p>

13

<p>My grandfathers on both my mother’s/father’s sides are from sub-Saharan Africa, and immigrated to Tunisia. My grandmothers are North African. Therefore, I’m kind of a mix of both, and I am writing that on my application, but I’ve been told by my counselor and other people that I can be considered African-American. I was born in Tunisia, and my parents lived there all their lives until they moved here with me.</p>

<p>I have a dual citizenship.</p>

14

<p>As long as you describe your heritage in yr application, as you say you will do, I think you are not being dishonest. </p>

<p>I do disagree with yr counselor that you can be considered African-American however. Being born in African and moving to the US may make you that is some strictly literal sense, but doing so, I believe, defintely violates the spirit of affirmative action and what it is about. And I do believe admissions people could very well be quite skeptical of your claim to be African-American in the sense that they use to determine an undrerepresented minority. </p>

<p>In any form that asks about race/ethnicity I would either say nothing (which is always an option because you can choose to decline a question about your ethnicity) or check the “other” box and add something like “Arab” or “Arab-American”. That is true, unambiguous, and does not requre you tracing your ancestry back to your grandparents! AND if will not conflict with anything you say in an essay or personal stement.</p>

15

<p>I think with your parents income level you should probably expect little to no financial aid from Vanderbilt. When you have both your siblings in college you may recieve something as many colleges take this into account. I would say that for Vandy and your other schools you are a good match. Also do you go to Wootton High School by any chance?</p>

16

<p>BigAppleDaddy misses the mark a bit when it comes to the ethnicity issue as concerns African Americans and U.S. colleges.</p>

<p>Firstly, “African American” is a term which is nearly exclusively a U.S.-only construct, just like the term “Hispanic” was introduced years ago into popular, i.e. academic/data reseach use by the U.S. government; the census department, to be specific. It was hard to find the term Hispanic written anywhere in news accounts, popular culture, etc. before then.</p>

<p>Getting back to African American, in the U.S. the term in not meant to be applied literally or to to be exclusively grounded in contemporary regionalism. The term African American is meant in this country to define the descendants of enslaved Africans (in the main, since there were communities of free blacks in antebellum days) and later Freedmen whom were subjected to legal, political, social and cultural discrimination in the U.S. until the advent of the modern Civil RIghts Movement. Colleges do not apply the description ‘African American’ to blacks of Caribbean or South American origin, or to contemporary immigrants from the continent of Africa. And rightfully so.</p>