Emory is my dream College and I know it’s really hard to get into so I just wanted to see where I stand at the moment. My sophomore year is going to end in less than two weeks and I have a 4.0 as of now (finals haven’t come in yet). I’m in as many honors classes as my school allows and my GPA based off of 8th grade (I took algebra one and French), 9th grade, and 10th grade is a 3.9. I’m retaking the one class I got a B in over the summer to get it up to an A so I will have a 4.0 by the start of my junior year. I will be taking AP classes next year so its going to be difficult to maintain straight A’s but I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure it Happens.
I haven’t taken the ACT yet, but my goal is to get at least a 33+. I got a 1360 on the PSAT this year, when put me in the 96th percentile for people in 10th grade. I also do tons of volunteer work, I’m planning to volunteer all summer at a hospital if I get in to the program. And I’m #12 in my class, I want to get into the top 10 by my senior year though. Thanks.
I’m a senior, I am in 4 school honor society clubs, hold leadership positions, have over 350 volunteer hours, got accepted into a prestigious surgical summer program, have taken 12 AP courses, hold a part-time job, am 8 credits away from my Associate’s degree through dual enrollment, have a weighted GPA of a 4.6 (#6 in my class), wrote a killer essay, and received several community awards and recognitions and I still got wait-listed. I’m not trying to discourage you, but emory was my dream college too and I thought I would get in. If I had to do it again I would apply Early Decision because you may have a better chance. I think I may have gotten in if I applied early decision. I chose to remain on the waitlist so fingers crossed I get accepted. But make sure if you apply Early Decision that you can afford it because it is a binding agreement so basically if you apply Early decision and get in, you have to go.They may give you aid, but if it isn’t enough it will be a hassle to undo the agreement. ED is if the school is your absolute number one, so don’t apply ED unless you are absolutely sure emory is where you want to be.
Also, apply to both Emory and Oxford…
@hahahahahahaa :Uhmm are you being sarcastic? I think retaking a B makes you look bad especially if both grades show up. It shows weakness and pettiness. You should instead focus on using the summer to build an EC profile and to do something interesting,
And lots of people do volunteer work. Aim for something that distinguishes you (like wins award or is a unique service opp). Apply to both undergraduate campuses (Oxford and main)
@Syd340 : a 4.6 is #6 in your class? What type of grading system and patterns does your school have. Do they super weight AP/IB or something as well as honors? Jeez. Also, did you do decently on the AP courses. It could hurt if you had a high GPA and did not do well in the exams I would imagine, but no doubt your case is a a shame. I think with all the extra application volume, there were lots more students with similar profiles. The worst case scenario is that you were yield protected
@Syd340 Impressive stats. I think it would be nice to know how you fared on standardized testing. While it may not be everything, perhaps it was what was holding you back?
@bernie12 Not sure if admissions would know AP test results… I can’t remember if my son sent these… I don’t think he did…
@nightstalker160 : If you send them, they would usually look at them I am pretty sure. I typically strongly recommend that students who have mostly good ones send them (it is similar to a strong showing on an SAT Subject test). I cannot be absolutely sure how Emory does it, but at one point someone posted a small article about how Stanford evaluates and they were definitely taking them into account. BTW, folks should be aware that the next cycle applying will be exposed to a reduction in AP credit accepted and they may even be moving the threshold for the scores upwards to only 5 in some depts. I am convinced that besides maybe chemistry, this is a partially a money making/retention scheme (want to have less folks graduating early maybe?). Regardless it seems to be a move many Emory peers and aspirational peers made a while ago.
@bernie12 I guess we’re lucky he got in without sending 
to be honest, they didn’t ask and I don’t think we thought about it. I would agree, there seems to be a trend toward increasing scores and for many top schools not giving actual credit (just allowing you to waive a course but not give you credit). This, then, requires students to take a full load for all four years. I agree it seems like a money making decision more than anything.
@nightstalker160 @bernie12 This is about a different school, but UF lets you use up to 45 AP credits (and you only need 120 to graduate). A 5 in Chemistry, Biology, and BC Calc (even a 4 on bc calc) each get you 8 credits. 3 classes tests you out of 20% of your degree. That’s just crazy.
@AimingTop50 : Yes, public schools are known to be super generous with AP credit. Privates, especially elites are much more stingy. They already have to give students substantial discounts so manipulating time spent on campus is a key way to keep revenue in check. In addition, at some privates, the AP version is perhaps less likely to correspond to a course offered. One example at Emory is with psychology. Emory actually has a 2 semester intro. psyche sequence (rare) and AP psyche only excludes students/gets credit for one of them because it is not equivalent. Hardly no private or top tier private I know has equivalents to the politics or history exams. Like Emory is no longer giving credit for AP comparative politics or U.S. I don’t think or they have to check the syllabus of the AP version and it often gets denied. History is so specialized/modernized in coverage that they don’t give credit for U.S or European and definitely not World History (the concept of which is ridiculous). And Emory used to be on the 4 hour system, so one could get 8 credit w/a BC credit (now 6). Is UF on a 4 hour system or do courses like calc. just have a 1 hour recitation that they actually count in the credits?
Courses are not necessarily harder in psyche, history, and pols than AP equivalents just substantially different in how they cover material (like an AP comparative course may be “by the book” with a very specific textbook and a couple of standardized supplemental readings whereas at say, Emory, many primary and other types of research articles may be incorporated into the reading load. Course may end up more cognitively complex for this reason without necessarily being more intensive/workload heavy).
Given these exams: https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap16_frq_comp_gopo.pdf
https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap16_frq_us_gov_pol.pdf
I can see why Emory is so reluctant to take this credit.
A US Politics syllabus at Emory: http://polisci.emory.edu/home/documents/syllabuses/100-200syllabi/POLS%20100_Spring%202016.pdf
An AP U.S. Politics syllabus: http://www.jths.org/assets/10/7/ap_government.pdf
Both are respectable rigor wise but the Emory course is more “focused”/is bent to the professor’s interest, something that cannot happen as much in AP (also notice an emphasis on teaching students to use flashcards…in the AP version) because as it borderline admits, the course is largely geared toward the exam. In college, unless section is SUPER large (like at some publics), standardization is unlikely and course is largely geared towards whatever instructor wants to talk about
@bernie12 I don’t know the UF credit system works. But yeah, it makes sense that private school courses are not standardized.
@bernie12 my school weighs AP/IB the same as every other school, 5.0 for an A in an AP class and yes a 4.6 is #6, #1 has a 4.75, I am an AP scholar with distinction which means I have never gotten lower than a 3.5 on any AP exam to answer your question. I’ve never failed an AP exam and most of my scores are fours and fives.
@AimingTop50 thank you! And I’m sorry I meant to include my ACT scores for OP but I guess I missed that in my super long ranting paragraph. I have a 33 on the ACT superscored (most schools don’t superstore), and a 32 in one sitting. It’s questionable whether Emory super scores the ACT or not because they, like duke, will not give a straight answer. When you ask them they say they don’t superstore it but they “consider” the highest section score, but they won’t tell you if they add the highest up, which is what it sounds like they do, but I’m not sure really.
@Syd340 : This thesis writing mess has my sleep schedule out of whack. I was not aware every school weighted that way. I went to a school that presented transcript grades on a 100 point scale. AP courses awarded 5 points for those who passed. That is like a level and a half usually on a 4.0 scale right? Regardless I think various schools actually do it differently, but there appears to be tons that do that 5.0 sort of scale.
http://apply.emory.edu/apply/exam.php
This seems to suggest they take a “holistic” approach to evaluating the ACT score…but do not superscore it perse. I think Emory is more interested in subject level strength than a lot of places that do not require SAT2s more so than particularly high scores on SAT or ACT composite (or w/e, I took SAT don’t really know how ACT scoring works), which is why I am big on students submitting AP/IB scores and in cases of IB, if really passionate about an area and a person took special topics IB courses (Emory gets an extreme amount of students who took these in say biology or chemistry), would definitely mention that those courses were taken.
Either way you could have been a borderline yield protect case or other random stuff…who knows? RD sucks because there are too many apps and many folks have similar profiles to yours so there will be randomness like: “Oh we’ve read so many apps before this that had a lot of X so I am bored”. Admissions readers are human, so process is imperfect. Regardless good luck and remember that you and many people actually do deserve to be admitted (even many denied applicants do). Do not let anyone on this board or outside of it tell you otherwise (I have seen students in some threads zt other schools maybe express dissatisfaction about a denial or waitlist and other admits come in and claim crap like: “Well we just deserved to get in more than you”…sickening non-sense).
Wow that’s weird that you got waitlisted @Syd340, in my opinion. Very weird.
@bernie12 Is there a place to self-report AP scores on the common app? I’m not sure.
It can get expensive sending a legitimate report to every school you apply to.
@bernie12 I would say the “generic” GPA is a 4.0 unweighted max and a 5.0 weighted max. +.5 for honors and +1 for AP/IB.
My high school has up to 4.33 unweighted (4.33 for A+, whereas most high schools treat A+ the same as A for GPA) with the same boosts for honors and AP.
@AimingTop50 how is it surprising being rejected with a 32 (33 superscore) ACT. A 4.6 weighted is around a 3.6-3.8 UW ( I personally had a 3.88UW 4.85 weighted so I’m guessing based on that). So although a good applicant she is technically avg to slightly below avg for Emory. Add the fact that @Syd340 is most likely an unhooked student that applied RD, then it’s not surprising at all.
@Syd340 I’m not trying to offend you, however just stating reality, unhooked applicants should be approved the avg (around the 75% range) when applying RD.
@AimingTop50 : Yeah, my school did not weight honors. I am from Georgia and I do not know if it was a Georgia thing back then or a district thing. My school, for one year before the policy change (I am old, may have been reversed lol) weighted honors by adding 3 points out of 100 and AP by adding 5. So assuming a college scale, this is typically a 0.3 or 0.4 increase depending on which border you are on though a 5 point can bump one up 2 levels I guess. If you hit at least 88, you get an A on the 4.0 scale (my school didn’t do 4.0 and I imagine it would not have given A pluses) if in an AP. However, if on a more solid border like say 80…then someone’s B- would go to B (if they had gotten another 2 points would have been B+). I am sure most elite schools like Emory and even solid schools in general take those weights off (especially honors) and then reweight them based on how “hard” they think the AP/IB courses were. As in apparently some schools were known to deem some APs as easy and look the other way if it is an AP or IB that they have no credit equivalency for (again more common at privates than publics. Like a public may have a World History equivalent for example).
@VANDEMORY1342 : That is kind of a dangerous range though (maybe somewhere between 50 and 75% because otherwise you get in the yield protection range where I am also not surprised many are denied or waitlisted)…but yes Emory is more GPA picky among the students it gets.
As of now, I don’t think we have enough information to give a correct assessment. You are only a sophomore with basically a year and a quarter left and a lot can happen (I did the majority of the “heavy lifting” in my junior and senior years). You really should take the ACT asap and get good scores on subject tests as well. Additionally, you really need to build up your resume if you have not already; test scores are not everything and colleges like Emory care about ECs. If all you have is community service, there will be a big issue getting in; make sure you have more than that and be involved in the school and the external community.
The PSAT score basically means nothing unless you are a commended student or a semifinalist/finalist. Since you have one last shot in junior year (where it actually counts), I recommend you start studying for that; if you happen to do exceptionally well in practice tests, try taking the SAT instead of the ACT (there are minor differences between the SAT and PSAT and if you are resilient you can probably figure both systems out).
Also, have confidence in yourself. Just because a class is called “AP” doesn’t mean it’s gonna be hard. Study well and you’ll be fine.
Best of luck