What are my chances of getting into Columbia?

Chance Me / Match Me!
1

Hello!

Columbia is my dream school! I’d like to know if I could get in. I’d apply ED.

Gender: Female

Where I live: Georgia

School Size: 400-450

  1. I was born in Nigeria and my family moved to the US in 2005. I can fluently speak English and some of my native language. Low-income.
  2. I go to a top 10 private boarding high school in Massachusetts, after skipping 3rd grade and attending Georgia public elementary and middle school.
  3. I have an SAT score of 2300, and an SAT 2 Literature score of 700.
  4. My GPA is 3.5, which is my school's average GPA. As mentioned before, really tough school.

Extracurriculars:

I’m captain of my school’s Varsity Volleyball team and have won NEPSAC All-League champion for 2 seasons. I’m a Jack Kent Cooke scholar, one of 50 across the country in my cohort. I’ve taken a psychology pre-college course at Brown, and an Intro to Legal Studies course at Stanford. This summer I’ll be taking Economics and Creative Writing at Cambridge University, England. I’ve spent a summer rebuilding homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina, and this summer I’ll be building libraries in Nicaragua. I’ve also volunteered in the Massachusetts special Olympics. I’m a good writer (I won a national contest in 6th grade and won regional awards in the Scholastic Art and Writing competition last year), so my essay will be on point. I was also Sophomore Class Representative, and spent the last semester at a semester away program stationed in New York City called CityTerm, which has close ties to Columbia (2 program alums currently attend Columbia). I will also be interning at the Georgia Innocence project this coming August. I’m a writer for my school newspaper and wrote while on my semester away. I’m in Model UN and debate team. There’s some more odds and ends but I think these are my strongest points.

My school doesn’t offer AP classes but the course load is very rigorous. And as I said my family is not rich at all, so I am at my school with full tuition, and all of my trips are scholarships.

Honest opinions and advice are appreciated.

2

That’s good that you will apply early decision. What year are you? It’s hard to predict chances very accurately with standardized tests especially with that low of a GPA (of course in a difficult school but colleges may not know that). Do people often go to Columbia and HYPSM and Ivy Leagues from your school? Are they familiar with the rigor? If so, that may help. Best of luck!

3

I’m a junior. Columbia’s pretty familiar with my school, and my school’s a feeder school to universities like Taft, Brown, Yale and a few go to Columbia. They’d be familiar with the rigor. Thank you for your response!